A resolution is not a lead. How to read identification numbers honestly.
Visitor identification produces big numbers. Knowing what each number means is the difference between a useful report and a misleading one.
When a visitor is matched to a contact record, that is a resolution. It is useful, and it is easy to oversell. A resolution does not mean the person asked to hear from you, made an inquiry or became a customer.
Four outcomes, kept separate
A clear report keeps these apart: visitors identified, recovered contacts, appointments and customers. Each one is smaller than the one before it, and each one tells you something different. When they get blended into a single "leads" number, the report looks better and becomes less useful.
What a healthy month looks like
For planning, expect to match a quarter to a third of visitors. Expect a small share of those, often 2 to 4%, to respond to follow-up. Those percentages sound modest. On paid traffic you already bought, they are often the cheapest customers you will get all month.
Questions to ask any provider
- What share of my traffic did you match, and what share could you not?
- How many matched visitors became a reply, a call or a booked appointment?
- What did my cost per acquisition do against the baseline?
- What else changed this month that could explain the number?
If a report cannot answer those four questions, it is a list of names, not a result. Ours is built around them. See how we report.
