Marketplace

The marketplace is where leads go when they need a second chance. Maybe no bids came in during initial routing. Maybe you’ve got aging inventory you’d rather sell at a discount than let expire. Either way, the marketplace lets your customers browse available leads and buy them on demand, or place orders to snag them automatically when the price drops. Think of it as a clearance rack, but for leads. And instead of prices going up over time like a regular auction, they go down. Customers can wait for a better deal or buy now before someone else does.

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Turning on the marketplace

There’s no account-wide switch. A lead lands on the marketplace when two things are true.

1. Its lead type has the marketplace enabled, with auction pricing configured (see below).
2. It reaches a Marketplace stage in your distribution stages. Add one from Distribution Stages in the sidebar if you don’t have one yet. You can move or pause it like any other stage.

If the lead type doesn’t have the marketplace enabled, the Marketplace stage passes and the lead moves on to the next stage. To see which leads are on the marketplace right now, open Leads and pick the Marketplace status tab.

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Public marketplace

Want to let potential customers browse your marketplace before they sign up? Turn on Enable public marketplace under Settings → Account → Domains & Links (in the Public Marketplace section). It creates a publicly accessible version of your marketplace at /marketplace. When it’s enabled, here’s what changes.

• Visitors can view available leads without logging in
• Lead information is displayed the same as the regular marketplace (location, lead type, pricing, and so on)
• Purchase buttons are replaced with a Sign up to purchase prompt that directs visitors to registration

This is useful for showcasing your inventory to prospective customers. They can see what’s available and how your reverse auction pricing works before committing to an account. The same settings page also lets you choose what unauthenticated visitors see when they follow a customer-facing link, either the public marketplace or the sign-in page. See Domains.

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Configuring lead types for the marketplace

Each lead type that should sell on the marketplace needs its own auction settings.

1. Open Lead Types under Ingest in the sidebar and click a lead type
2. Click the Marketplace tab
3. Turn on Enable marketplace and fill in the pricing

As you adjust these settings, a plain-English summary shows what your auction will look like. For example, “Your auction will start at $75.00 and end at $15.00. The price will drop by $5.00 every 120 minutes. The auction will last for a total of 1560 minutes.”

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How reverse auctions work

When a lead enters the marketplace, a countdown begins. The lead starts at your first price and drops by the increment every interval until it either sells or hits the last price. This creates urgency without requiring customers to actively bid against each other. They have two options.

• Buy now at the current price
• Wait and hope the price drops before someone else grabs it

The tension between “get a deal” and “lose the lead” is what makes it work.

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How the floor moves with buy orders

The floor is the lowest price the auction will reach, but it isn’t fixed. If nobody has placed a buy order, the floor equals your configured last price. As soon as a customer places a buy order, their bid becomes the effective floor (assuming it’s higher than the last price), and the auction will stop dropping once it reaches that amount. A higher buy order raises the floor further. This also affects when the auction ends. The visible countdown reflects the number of price drops remaining before the current floor is reached, not the full schedule down to the last price. Place a buy order high in the range and the auction wraps up sooner. Cancel it and the auction resumes dropping until it either sells or hits another floor.

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Auction lifecycle

A reverse auction is in one of three states at any given time.

• Active auctions are still counting down and accepting purchases
• Sold means a buy now, buy order, or floor-triggered sale completed
• Unsold means the auction reached its floor without selling

When an auction ends unsold, the lead picks up where it left off in your distribution stages, so a later stage (a Club stage or a partner, for example) still gets a crack at it. Sold and unsold auctions are kept for 90 days and then pruned automatically.

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What customers see

The marketplace intentionally shows limited information about each lead, just enough to make a purchasing decision without enabling cherry-picking.

• Location is the county and state where the lead originated
• Lead type is what kind of lead it is
• Received is when the lead came in
• Ends in is when the auction ends
• Current price is what they’d pay if they buy right now
• Next drop is when the price drops next, and to what
• Floor is the lowest the price will go

There are no contact details and no personal information, just location and lead type. Customers can filter by location and lead type, buy one lead or several at once, and pay from their wallet balance. See the customer-side walkthrough in Marketplace.

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Buy orders

Sometimes customers don’t want to babysit the marketplace waiting for a good price. Buy orders let them set it and forget it. A buy order says, “I’ll pay up to $X for this lead. If the price drops to my number, buy it automatically.” Here’s how it works.

1. Customer places a buy order at their target price
2. The buy order amount is withdrawn from their wallet immediately
3. If the auction price reaches their buy order and theirs is the leading order, they win the lead
4. If they don’t win, the amount is refunded to their wallet when the auction ends, or as soon as they cancel

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Competing buy orders

When a customer places a buy order, it effectively raises the floor for that lead. A new buy order has to be higher than the current leading one. The floor badge color tells customers exactly where they stand. If another customer places a higher buy order, the original customer gets notified (notifications are enabled by default but can be disabled in contact preferences). They then have two choices.

1. Increase their buy order to stay competitive
2. Cancel and get their funds back right away

Buy orders can be cancelled at any time before the lead sells, and the amount returns to the customer’s wallet immediately.

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Wallet integration

All marketplace purchases, whether instant buys or buy orders, draw from the customer’s wallet. No wallet balance, no purchasing. This keeps things simple and ensures customers can only buy what they can actually pay for. A buy order’s amount leaves the wallet the moment the order is placed, so it can’t be spent twice. It shows in the customer’s transactions as Placed Buy Order. Later, the amount comes back as either Canceled Buy Order (the customer cancelled) or Released Buy Order (the auction ended, or the order won). When an order wins, the lead’s purchase is then recorded as a regular lead charge at the buy order price.

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