Yesterday I got a frantic call from one of our clients. They were concerned that one of the marketing campaigns we manage through our lead system was not performing. They mentioned after looking at some reports they were concerned that this campaign had shut down. Leads were being submitted perfectly fine one day then not at all the next. They thought the system was broken. It was a valid question. I investigated.

During the conversation I looked at the reports myself and quickly realized that someone was messing with us. They were submitting leads at an almost 1 for 1 basis to visits. This was not the pattern we saw for any other lead campaign. 50 visits to a lead was more realistic. This campaign was not only performing at an almost 1 to 1 basis, but all leads were valid on entry. This is of course not realistic either. Normally we see a 5 to 1 ratio on a user submitting a lead and it passing all the validation checks to make sure it’s a real lead. This is not standard for everyone, I am sure. Depending on the validation logic your system has the numbers can be very different. Either way, this was a problem.

We are dealing with this now by adding preventative logic to the system.

Why do they do it? What can be done with people like this?