In this Q & A session, we discuss the return policy with our leads versus other legal lead generation companies, and the viability of buying auto accident leads in two different states, and the differences between Wisconsin and Tennessee auto accident leads.
PPLM Rep: How long you been practicing law?
Lawyer: 13 years.
PPLM Rep: Okay. So you’re up there and time under your belt. You know that the best referral is going to be an actual referral, somebody who you help and then a loved one a friend, a co-worker, they refer over to you. I mean, that’s like the golden handshake. Other than that, if you’re trying to grow your business there’s really only a few ways: there’s SEO, PPC, directory listings, really building your brand online yourself that all can just fall under traditional marketing which does and can yield the results you want which is the clicks, the calls which can translate to cases or it could generate nothing. You throw something as the wall and hope it sticks or you have a huge budget and just monopolize the digital space. So what we do is differently, we drive traffic to our own website, and then the people who have read a little info and would like a free consultation with a local car accident attorney, are asked to fill out a form on our site. From there we ask a series of screening questions, which determine whether or not that lead is a valid auto accident lead, personal injury lead, etc.
A lot of people have filling this out on phones and tablets so we our screening process is pretty simple & straightforward… were you injured in a car accident and want to speak to a personal injury attorney? Enter your zip code below to get started. So right away enter their zip code and then we ask a series of yes or no questions. These are going to be our vetting or screening questions. Were you or a loved one injured, yes or no? Was injury as a result of the car accident, yes or no? Were you at fault, yes or no? Do you currently have legal representation? And then when did the accident occur? So you want to make sure it’s in the SOL. From there we gather all the contact info, first name, last name, city, state, zip, email, phone number and there is unlimited characters space for comments. I see from my account, I see leads that come in some of them come in two, three words: I was in a car wreck. Some of them come in 200 words where they tell you everything that happened. Anyway once they once they hit Submit on their end they see the similar blue screen just as thank you for submitting your information a local personal injury attorney will be reaching out to you shortly. Within a minute of them hitting Submit, we scan the form two times make sure everything is completed correctly and then we send it over to your email and a text alert. So you’ll receive, around let’s say someone had submit one minute ago in Tennessee you’re working with us you get the notification for so & so auto accident lead in Nashville, Tennessee… in a car accident, yes; has a lawyer, no; at fault, no; when did the accident occur 2020, so on so forth. You receive all that information with a notification that you just got a new Tennessee auto accident lead.
From there it’s all completely dependent on your intake. If it’s decent, you’re going to turn some of these into cases. If it’s successful, then you’re going to turn more of these into cases. Our national average as far as converting the car accident leads into cases hovers around 20%, and some of our more successful firms break 30%. Two things before I get any feedback from you or any questions. This is what’s really going to separate us from you know, there’s tons of competition in the legal marketing space. The two things… one is that there’s no contract term. So we are 100% performance based and try to put as much of the risk on ourselves to deliver as possible. We do an intro batch of leads, usually around 25-30 for auto accidents, and when that order is up, which is usually about a month, I circle up with you and say, hope everything worked out well, hope you built a solid pipeline, here’s what we delivered, tell me your thoughts, your feedback, what are you doing. We decided we’re going to move forward and do another order never you paying a monthly premium on something you’re not 100% satisfied with. That’s the way it works from your intro order until three months, six months, three years down the road, we’re never going to bind you up in a contract. And lastly, we have a very liberal return policy. Meaning it’s very fair especially in the legal lead generation space. So all the questions we’ve asked for or screened for, all the information we get from the prospect if they lie or inaccurately type information, like the phone number, then we will credit you for the inquiry. So you can just take that return policy idea and attach it to every single thing that we ask. Were you injured, yes or no? So they say they’re injured in a truck accident, you call them they say they’re not injured or they say I was not at fault they start talking about they actually were at fault.
Anything we’ve asked for and it turns out that they lied or press the wrong button, all you do is submit it back to us and we get back to you very fast responsive manner. So no three day wait time to hear back from us, five day wait time. It’s going to be the same business day unless you’re submitting something late in the afternoon, in which case we’ll get back to you the next day.
Lawyer: What about what about say– I worked in personal injury for the last two years, I did plenty of my own intake too– what about a situation where client says I’m not at fault, I was rear ended… they call us we take a look at the accident report, accident report places them clearly at fault with two witnesses. No cameras, no other way to gather information. No other witnesses on behalf of our clients. Nope. I was alone in the car. But by God, that light was green. That’s something I’m turning down if they’re calling me directly. Is that something you guys are taking back? Do we fight over that?
PPLM Rep: No, no. If there’s a police report, especially, I mean, if you call the guy and he says, I wasn’t at fault, but the on the police report says that he was then we’ll credit the lead. I mean, that’s one of the things we screen for: were you found at fault for the accident, yes or no? And if they click Yes, we would never send it to you.
Lawyer: Okay. They may not know. I mean say they don’t have the police report yet. And then I get it and hey, it’s clear you’re at fault. Well, I wasn’t at fault I’m going to tell you I wasn’t. That’s something I’m credited for, right?
PPLM Rep: We have a 5 day window with which to return leads, so as long as you get the info that they were in fact found at fault, then we will credit you for the lead. Same thing if you get them on the phone, they’re like, “Well, yeah, I thought I was injured but I’m not. I had a headache. I’m good now. Thank you. Bye.” Then you forward that back to us and say, it’s property damage only.
Lawyer: Who makes those determinations?
PPLM Rep: On crediting leads?
Lawyer: Yeah.
PPLM Rep: So that’s going to be our accounting team. Primarily, it’s going to be this lady named Michelle. And she goes through these all day following up with returns. I mean, obviously, if a firm is submitting returns for the same thing over and over and over and over again, she might pick up the phone and circle back with the prospect and say, “Hey, do you already have a lawyer? I know Mr. blank reached out to you. I’m calling from PinPoint, do you already have legal representation because he’s got your form.” So she might circle back here and there on some of these returns. For the most part in disconnected numbers, people who already have lawyers, people who were not actually injured.
Lawyer: Those are obvious. I think what I’m worried about is questions of proof. You know what I mean? I’m an attorney. I’ve tried cases, I know what I feel I can prove and I can’t. Somebody else may disagree. That’s my question there.
PPLM Rep: So it’s hard to really anticipate what type of lead might be in question here in this campaign. But what I can tell you is we’re in the business of forging a long-term relationship with firms. We don’t want to do the he said, she said, tit for tat on one lead. If they click they’re not at fault we send it to you, you tell us that they actually are at fault. It’s not going to be-
Lawyer: Somebody turns down to lead, do you recycle it and send it somewhere else if it’s a question of liability?
PPLM Rep: That’s a great question. So I actually suggested that we do that just because we could save tons of money on doing it. But it really crosses over in some part of the American Bar Association on the ethics side. So two owners have been doing legal marketing for over 20 years, so they really know what we can and can’t do as far as third-party marketing. But to answer your question, no, every lead that you receive, only you are going to receive that inquiry. What you do once you have it is up to you. And if you do submit it for a return, no one else is going to ever see that information.
Lawyer: Well, it’s like, look, good attorneys can differ and believe me, I’ve differed with plenty of attorneys in the past as to whether something can be proven or not, but I’d say 99% of the time when one law firm has already turned it down. There’s a darn good reason for it. You know what I mean and it’s usually not going to pan out at all. So I agree with that stance, good stance. How long has PinPoint Legal Marketing been doing legal leads?
PPLM Rep: About three years.
Lawyer: Okay, so relatively new, but you said the owners have been doing legal marketing for years and years and years.
PPLM Rep: Yeah, they worked for lawinfo & findlaw for a long time prior to starting this, and when they started Pinpoint in 2015 it just took off.
Lawyer: And how many attorneys or law firms does PinPoint currently service? For example, are there any firms currently taking Tennessee Auto Accident Leads?
PPLM Rep:Oh, quite a few. We have clients in almost all 50 states for car accident leads, 44 or 45 I think. Workers compensation leads are probably our next biggest, and we’ve probably got 30-35 states covered there… plus a couple dozen general personal injury clients, a couple of big firms that take SSD leads on a nationwide bases, and some mass tort leads when there’s a big lawsuit like the takcum powder lawsuit or roundup. In total, probably we probably work with around 120-130 law firms nationwide.
Lawyer: Okay. How many cases leads can we expect during an order period, however you measure it? How do we measure what we’re getting as far as leads?
PPLM Rep: So on an intro order, we suggest that you start with 30 leads, that is where we see the highest renewal rate just because let’s say you started with 20 and you got 5, 6 cases but then you start with 30, and you’ve got 8 and the 7th one was just fantastic case can make the whole first quarter of next year, then you’re going to be a lot more likely to renew. It’s a numbers game with marketing. And we’ve been doing this for over 10 years. So we’re going to cast a huge digital net to get you that 200 pound tuna but there’s a chance there will be some smaller fish that come up and then that there’s going to be just absolute garbage that comes up, that’s why we allow and anticipate like a 12 to 15% conversion rate on these leads. So 30 gives you an honest shot at turning some good cases and getting a good feel for our leads… generally we see really high renewal rates at that number.
Lawyer: So the payment is per lead, am I right? You take out an order of a certain amount of Wisconsin & Tennessee auto accident leads over a certain period of time.
PPLM Rep: So the way we would work, if we were going to move forward right now and get the campaign up and running…The way it works is you choose the lead amount for the intro order, you pre-pay for that amount of leads then the money then will sit in a master account or a trust account whatever you want to call it. We get your email addresses, telephone numbers everywhere you want the leads delivered, get it all activated. Anywhere between 2 to 48 hours your lead should trickle and within that time frame. And from there just kind of get in quicker and gathers more steam generally they trickle and trickle in and they’ll start to come in more regularly and that pack 30 lead order can be fulfilled anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks.
Lawyer: If I want to order say I want to order more leads, say I want to tell you I want 100 leads, can I do that?
PPLM Rep: Yeah, absolutely. That would really help too because then we definitely wouldn’t have to pause the campaign at all for Tennessee for quite some time. I mean 100 leads probably take two and a half three and a half months to fulfill.
Lawyer: Okay. And what else did I want to ask? Oh, we have two locations. We have a location in southeastern Wisconsin and we have a location here in Middle Tennessee, that’s what I run. if I want to do two locations does that cause any problems for you?
PPLM Rep: No.
Lawyer: Well, we’re a small firm too but we’re looking to grow fast. So we’ll take anything we can get. We’re not going to be turning down for volume. I’ll hire somebody before I’ll turn it down for volume. So let’s see if there’s anything else I wanted to ask. The conversion rates how it works. So yeah, I think I’ve got it. You prepay to a trust account, 30 leads takes approximately 4 to 6 weeks to come in. So 30 leads we’ll be paying– is there any other costs on top of that?
PPLM Rep: No, there’s no startup fees, no cancellation fees, no monthly fees, just straight up cost per lead and a prepaid lead order. What I can do just so that you can see for yourself again what we vet for, all the screening questions we ask and I can also attach a copy of the return policy, you can see everything that we accept credits for and how that works. I can send that over in an email.
PPLM Rep: Okay. So yeah, let’s circle back on this once you have a chance to review the recap I imagine if you have two offices there’s somebody else you want to talk to about this as well.
Lawyer: Certainly. I want to talk to my partner who’s running the Wisconsin office. We’re doing a little shopping around to be perfectly honest with you. So I got a few other phone meetings set up this morning with other legal lead generation companies. I will circle back once I have spoken with everyone.