A lead generation campaign is only as good as the leads that reach your team. A list full of mistyped emails, duplicate sign-ups and people who never meant to opt in costs money twice: once when you pay for the lead, and again when your sales or marketing team wastes time on it. Lead validation — checking each lead against agreed rules before it is accepted — is how you make sure you only pay for people who are real, reachable and genuinely interested.
Agree the Rules Before the Campaign Starts
Validation works best when both sides agree in writing what counts as a valid lead before a single one is delivered. That avoids arguments later and lets the lead supplier filter at source, rather than you rejecting leads after the fact. Typical rules cover format, uniqueness, eligibility and consent.
Format Checks
- Email — syntactically valid, on a domain that exists and accepts mail, and not a disposable address.
- Phone — the right length and format for a UK number, and where possible checked as live.
- Postal address — matched against the Postcode Address File so that anything you mail actually arrives.
- Name — filtered for obvious junk entries.
Uniqueness Checks
Duplicates come in two forms: the same person signing up twice in one campaign, and someone who is already in your own database. Agree a deduplication window — for example, a lead is not chargeable if the same email has been supplied in the last ninety days — and, where appropriate, let your supplier screen against a hashed copy of your existing customer list so you are not paying to acquire people you already have.
Eligibility Checks
A lead can be real and still be useless if it falls outside your target. Set clear criteria: geography, age, whether the person is a homeowner, or whatever qualifies someone for your product. If you sell holidays to over-fifties, a twenty-two-year-old’s details are not a lead, however accurately they were typed.
Consent and Compliance
Under UK GDPR and PECR, you need to be able to show that each person agreed to hear from you, and how. Every lead should arrive with a record of the consent wording shown, the date and time, and the source. If a supplier cannot provide that audit trail, the lead is a risk, not an asset. Our lead generation campaigns supply consent records with every lead for exactly this reason.
Real-Time Versus Batch Validation
Validation can happen as each lead arrives, so it can be accepted or rejected instantly and passed straight to your CRM, or in batches before delivery. Real-time checks let you contact a lead while their interest is fresh, which tends to lift conversion. Batch checks suit campaigns where leads are mailed or called in bulk. Many campaigns use both.
Make Validation Part of the Price
On a cost-per-lead campaign, the price should apply only to leads that pass the agreed rules. That aligns everyone’s interests: the supplier is paid for quality, not volume, and you know exactly what each valid lead costs you. If you would like to talk through validation rules for your next campaign, get in touch.