Real-Time Delivery
Lead delivery within seconds of form submission — the operational foundation for winning speed-to-contact.
Full Definition
Real-time delivery is the practice of transmitting a lead to the buying agent within seconds of the consumer submitting the form. Technical implementations include API posting, webhooks, SMS alerts, and email. Real-time delivery is essential because contact rate roughly halves every 5 minutes post-submission. "Real-time" commonly means sub-10-second delivery; "near-real-time" can stretch to 1–5 minutes and materially underperforms on contact rate. Agencies should verify real-time claims by comparing the form-submission timestamp in the TrustedForm certificate to the CRM intake timestamp — delays over 30 seconds indicate vendor-side queuing or buyer-side endpoint lag that should be diagnosed.
Example
An agency measures delivery latency across three vendors: Vendor A median 2.4s (real-time), Vendor B median 47s (near-real-time, likely a batch queue), Vendor C median 11 minutes (labeled "real-time" but actually a minute-level poll). They drop Vendor C and renegotiate Vendor B.
Related Terms
- Speed-to-Contact — The elapsed time between lead delivery and the first outbound contact attempt — the dominant variable in web-lead conversion.
- Webhook — An HTTP callback where one system notifies another of an event by POSTing data to a pre-registered URL.
- API Posting — Real-time lead delivery from vendor to buyer over HTTPS — typically POST requests to the buyer's receiving endpoint.
- Real-Time Web Lead — A consumer inquiry submitted through an online form and delivered to the buying agent within seconds of form submission.