How to Evaluate an MVA Lead Vendor: A Buyer's Checklist
The question that separates real MVA lead vendors from resellers is simple: can they show you the campaign that produced the lead. A vendor generating their own traffic can name the channel, show the landing page, and produce a consent certificate per record within minutes. A reseller deflects on all three, because they bought the record from someone who bought it from someone else.
Questions about the source
Ask which channels produce their MVA volume, and ask to see a live landing page. Ask what the consent disclosure says verbatim and whether your firm is named on it or covered by a disclosed partner list.
Ask whether they generate or buy. Most vendors do some of both; what matters is that they tell you which is which, and price them differently. A vendor who claims to generate everything but cannot produce a landing page is reselling.
Questions about compliance
Ask which certification provider they use and whether the certificate identifier comes through on every record. Ask how they handle a consumer who withdraws consent, and how quickly that propagates to buyers who already received the record.
Ask whether they scrub against the National DNC Registry before delivery, and what their policy is on state mini-TCPA statutes. Remember that liability for the call attaches to you, so their answers are your exposure. See our fuller note on [TCPA consent requirements](/lead-generation/tcpa-compliance).
Questions about volume and delivery
Ask for last month's delivered volume in your specific states. Ask what happens on a short month. Ask how the lead arrives: live transfer, real-time post to your CRM, email, or a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet is a signal that the data is not fresh.
Ask about delivery latency between form submission and your system receiving it. On MVA, minutes matter; a vendor batching hourly is selling you a materially worse product than one posting in real time.
Questions about the commercial terms
Agree the return policy in writing before the first batch: disconnected numbers, wrong party, already represented, outside your state, outside your screening criteria. Agree the return window and whether returns are credited or refunded.
Ask for a test batch sized to produce at least 30 qualified conversations. Vendors confident in their product will agree to a test; those who insist on a long minimum commitment before you have seen a single lead are managing your churn rather than their quality.
TODO(usama): insert our own return policy, return window and minimum test batch size so buyers can hold us to the same standard.
Common questions
- What single question is most revealing?
- Ask to see the landing page that produced your last lead. A vendor running their own campaigns will send a URL immediately. Everything else can be answered vaguely; this one cannot.
- Is a long minimum commitment ever reasonable?
- Occasionally, where the vendor is building campaigns specifically for your states and criteria. But it should follow a successful test batch, never precede one.
- How big should a test batch be?
- Large enough to produce at least 30 qualified conversations. Below that you are measuring variance rather than conversion rate, and you will draw the wrong conclusion in either direction.
- What return rate is normal?
- It depends heavily on how tightly the leads are screened, so ask the vendor what they expect and hold them to it. A vendor who says returns never happen is either not screening or not honouring returns.
Put us through the checklist
Ask us every question on this page. We will answer all of them in writing, including the ones about volume and returns.
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