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2007-03-27 - Jere Doyle of Prospectiv Interviewed

Title: Owner, President and CEO

Basic Information:

Full name: Jere Doyle
Title: President and CEO
Company: Prospectiv
# years in biz: 8
Corp. type: (public, private, llc, etc.) Private
Business partners:
Age: 41
Marital status: Married
# Kids: Four (8 – 16years – 3 girls and boy)
Home town: Boston
Place of current residence: Belmont, MA

Company mission:
Our company mission is to provide the industry’s best online lead generation platform.

Favorite quote: “There are three kinds of people: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who asked what happened?”

Most inspirational person: My father. He was hard working, honest, and most important had strong values. Although he wasn’t an entrepreneur, he knew what was important – and to him it was being a good father, and instilling his values in his children. I try to do the same with my 4 kids.

Questions & Answers:

1) Why did you start your company?

I love starting businesses. I am a serial entrepreneur. In my last business we always had trouble finding customers that wanted to hear from us. So I decided that I’d start a business that helped my clients find customers who WANT to hear from them. 8 years later that’s what I am doing.

2) What industry publications do you read?

- Advertising Age

- Adweek

- Wall Street Journal

- DM News

- iMedia

- ClickZ

- Performance Insider

- The CoReg Insider

- Ad Femme

3) How often do you travel? Where?

I travel often – usually to visit clients or speak at industry events. Now I travel all over the US. Before starting Prospectiv I worked in Europe for a travel marketing firm, and I got to travel all over Europe. I really miss that! I was born in Italy and lived in Europe until I was 10 years old. The flexibility of being an entrepreneur and traveling is great. I travel a lot for work, and am looking forward to traveling more with my family.

4) How do you balance being a father to 4 kids and a successful business man? Being a father is the most important of the two jobs. It’s a balancing act. A good father has to make sure that he spends enough time with his kids and talks to them often. I try to be with them before they go to bed and on weekends. I bring them into the office once in a while. It’s really important that I stay connected with my kids and because of the internet I can text message or send them an IMs – it’s great to stay connected electronically. I want to teach my kids 3 things: work hard, be smart and to believe in themselves… and I think they are listening. My 14 year old daughter is studying capitalism and entrepreneurship, and I love talking to her about my experience and how her school lessons relate to my work. I don’t try to push them too hard, just encourage them to work hard. With teenagers you have to make sure their self-esteem is high.

5) Which trade shows do you attend? Do you exhibit?

Prospectiv exhibits at Ad:tech, OMMA, MIXX and the Affiliate Summit.

I attend all of these shows as well as the DMA, IAB and iMedia events.

6) What is your overall goal for your business?

Our ongoing goal is to be the #1 online lead generation provider, delivering the highest quality leads to leading Fortune 1000 brands. I’ve always worked very hard, and tried to make the best decisions. Our goal has always been to build a long term, sustainable business that serves our clients well.

7) What is the most difficult thing about owning a business?

Owning and growing your own business is a lot of fun. The most difficult thing is also the most important thing, and that is putting together a great team. At Prospectiv we are lucky. We have a great team here, people who are really passionate about our clients and our business.

8) How many employees do you have?

More than 50 and growing.

9) Tell us about your office.

It is very much an entrepreneurial atmosphere with a lot of passionate people. I personally like to meet with every new employee candidate, and I encourage them to interview me, so they understand our culture. I want every employee to feel empowered and appreciated, and make sure they understand our mission and how they can be a part of it. Also, in the last year almost a third of our employees (14) have had babies. That’s added another dimension to the day to day life of our team.

10) Are you hiring? What positions?

Yes, we are hiring in several departments including sales, operations and technology. To learn more got to: http://www.prospectiv.com/careers.jsp

11) How do you market your business?

To our advertising clients we market our business in many ways including industry events, public relations, web seminars, in-house newsletters, and of course online.

12) How many advertisers do you have?

We’ve worked with over 1000 advertisers, including many Fortune 1000 companies in a broad range of industries including consumer packaged goods, pharmaceutical, retail, education, personal finance and travel. These clients include P&G, Purina, Johnson & Johnson and Wal-Mart.

13) Do you own your own sites? Which ones?

Yes, we own three vertically-focused websites:

1. Eversave.com - connects consumers with the brands and offers that interest

them most. Since 1999, Eversave has served as a premier resource for millions

of consumers to find information and promotions on top brands they use every day.

2. Healthier.com - a leading source for consumers to find information, tips,
promotions and products to achieve a healthier lifestyle

3. TheKnowledgestop.com - Matches consumers with leading online and traditional educational institutions.

14) How much traffic do your sites get per month?

Each day more than 100,000 consumers visit our properties and register for our client’s offers.

15) Do you have your own lead scrubbing and delivery technology or do you license it? If you license, from who?

Yes, we have developed proprietary lead validation and delivery technology. Our lead validation technology ensures clients receive the most accurate consumer contact data available, including email address, physical address, phone number and a good deal of demographic information. It also includes a fraudulent name filter to catch false names.

Our data delivery technology allows us to send data in many formats using either real-time or batch delivery.

16) Do you specialize in something else besides lead gen?

We also offer CPM email marketing and brand marketing solutions including display ads and sponsorships.

17) Have you tried any new lead gen methods? If so which ones (search, microsite, abandonment, telecpa, redirect, opt-2-pop, i-frame, etc.)

Yes, we have many very sophisticated lead generation products that engage consumers across the web. We do quite a bit through search, build micro-sites for many of our clients, use iframes when appropriate, and use banners where data is collected within the banner. We also have products for post purchase and abandonment. Product development is one of our strengths.

18) Do you broker your advertiser’s offer to get them more leads?

Very rarely do we broker out our advertisers offers. We usually don’t need to because we have the traffic to fill most of our advertiser’s offers and our clients love our traffic. However, recently we have been asked to do this by a couple of our clients. It allows us to extend our reach for our clients, while at the same time leverage our technology, media buying experience and attention to quality.

19) If so, how many affiliates/publishers do you work with?

We don’t need as large a publisher network as others. We are very careful with who we work with, and make sure we have a personal relationship with our publishers. The number is growing, but the bulk of our traffic comes through our own web pages.

20) How much does your largest advertiser spend with you per month?

Many of our largest advertisers are spending at least six figures a month with us.

21) Give us your 30 sec sales pitch to potential advertisers.

Our sales pitch is pretty simple because what we do is easy to understand. Prospectiv finds and acquires qualified consumers who are interested in your brand/products. These customers will sign up for your customer list and ask that you market your products to them. The net result is you end up with a list of highly profiled, very responsive customers who want to hear from you…and we do this on a CPL basis.

22) What do you feel are the true benefits of online lead generation?

I think both advertisers and consumers benefit from what we do. Online lead generation builds an advertiser’s in-house list of consumers who have requested to be marketed to. This “consumer driven” approach ensures they receive a very responsive lead, and it’s proven that it works. For the past three years, emailing your house file has been ranked as a top one or two online marketing practices, neck-and-neck with paid search.

Additionally, consumers benefit because they are receiving marketing messages from companies they want to hear from. So it’s a win/win.

23) If you could change something about the coreg biz what would it be and why?

I would like to see all lead generation providers abide by best practices through-out all aspects of their campaigns. Today, there are too many players that are looking to gain revenue quickly that don’t have their client’s, or a consumer’s best interests in mind. Best practices: makes sure people know what they are signing up for. We need to get rid of the third-party opt-in practices… opt-in bundles, etc. Deliver on what you promise – and be careful with incentives. The biggest threat to our industry is some of the crazy email practices where a consumer signs up for some type of a promotion and gets bombarded with emails…sometimes as many as 30-40 emails a day. And worst of all, they can never opt-out from the mailer because of the ridiculous 3rd party permission loophole.

24) What can coreg companies do to make money without becoming ethically un-sound? The have to fulfill their promise to the consumer AND their clients. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the same offer within one “reg flow” – its like “a flow within a flow, within a flow…” the site never ends, the consumers don’t get what they are promised, and the advertiser gets bad and duplicate leads that are impossible to follow up with and convert into a valuable customer. Instead, offers need to be targeted, making sure they are relevant to the consumer’s interests.

25) Who is your ideal client?

Our ideal client is a consumer brand marketer in the CPG, pharmaceutical, retail, travel, education or personal finance industry that is looking to build their in-house customer list by partnering with a proven online lead generation provider. Also, our best clients have a proven CRM or contact strategy in place to immediately reach out to the consumers we acquire for them and begin important dialogue that will ensure the success of the clients program.

26) How many clients have you sent to collections? Any scammers you’d like to make others aware of?

We’ve had a few. You have to be careful. I try to forget about them. You work hard, and you take for granted that everyone will be honest, but unfortunately not everyone is. It’s unfortunate, but you have to move on. You can’t dwell on the bad apples. Just learn from it!

27) How has your business evolved since you started it?

Prospectiv began in 1999 as Eversave.com, a website designed to help consumers find the best offers from major brands online. Since then, we successfully navigated the volatile internet market and developed a comprehensive lead generation platform to serve advertisers, publishers and consumers.

28) What are the next steps for your business?

I am a strong believer that you have to have passion for your business… I still do, and am excited to see where it goes! We will continue to enhance our lead generation products and services for our 3 core audiences and expand our customer base. We are also looking at several new opportunities, and we are always on the lookout for good, solid acquisitions that we could make to allow us to broaden our product offerings.



© 2007 The Coreg Insider