Routing Methods
Every way Lead Distro AI decides which buyer gets a lead: Round Robin, Weighted, Weighted (Fair Share), Priority (Waterfall), and Best Price. Compare all five side by side and pick the right one for your campaign.
What a routing method decides
Every campaign has one routing method (the setting is called Distribution Method, under Campaign Settings > Routing). It answers exactly one question: of the buyers who could take this lead, who gets offered it first, and in what order after that.
That is a smaller job than it sounds, and knowing what it does not control is most of the battle. The routing method never decides who is allowed to receive a lead. Caps, filters, schedules, suppression lists, and wallet balances decide that, and they run first. The routing method only sorts the survivors.
In the app, buyers are labelled Destinations on the campaign page, because the same routing runs for calls and for leads. Buyer and destination mean the same thing throughout these docs.
The five methods at a glance
| Method | Picks the first buyer by | Then what | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round Robin | Whose turn it is (a rotating pointer) | Falls through to the next buyer in the rotation | Equal volume across similar buyers |
| Weighted | A random draw inside a priority tier, in proportion to each buyer's share | Falls through to the next tier's winner | Percentage splits at high volume |
| Weighted (Fair Share) | Whoever is furthest behind their daily target | Falls through to the next-emptiest buyer | Buyers who commit to a number of leads per day |
| Priority (Waterfall) | Rank order, lowest number first | Falls through to the next rank down | Feeding your best-paying buyer first |
| Best Price | The highest bid on this specific lead | The auction already picked one winner | Selling each lead for the most it can fetch |
All five keep trying. If the first buyer says no, the lead moves to the next candidate rather than dying there. The methods differ in who the next candidate is, not in whether there is one.
Which one should you use?
Read down the left column until a row describes your campaign. The first match is almost always the right answer.
| If this is true for you | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You just launched and have no performance data yet | Round Robin | Every buyer gets the same volume, so after a few weeks you can compare acceptance and conversion on even footing. |
| Your buyers all pay about the same and want about the same volume | Round Robin | There is no economic reason to favor anyone, and equal turns is the easiest thing to explain to a partner. |
| Your buyers asked for percentages (60/40, 50/30/20) | Weighted | Share is exactly the promise you made, and at real volume the split lands on the numbers you typed. |
| Your buyers asked for a number of leads per day | Weighted (Fair Share) | Weight becomes a daily target, and the campaign paces to it inside a single day instead of over hundreds of leads. |
| You run under about 50 leads a day and Weighted feels random | Weighted (Fair Share) | The lottery only converges over hundreds of draws. Fair Share converges every day. |
| One buyer pays much more than the rest and caps out | Priority (Waterfall) | The top buyer gets first refusal on every lead, and the rest of the ladder absorbs what they cannot take. |
| You want your top buyer first but the rest to split the overflow | Priority + Weighted tiers | Weighted uses priority tiers too. Put the top buyer alone on tier 1 and the overflow buyers together on tier 2 with shares. |
| Your buyers bid a different price on every lead | Best Price | Set the campaign to Ping-Post. Bids decide the winner, and rank is only a tiebreaker. |
Eligibility runs before routing, every time
Before any method sorts anything, Lead Distro AI walks every buyer on the campaign and removes the ones that cannot take this particular lead. Only the survivors are handed to the routing method. This is why a capped buyer never appears to be skipped: it was gone before ordering started.
| Check | A buyer is removed when | Where you set it |
|---|---|---|
| Status | The buyer is paused on the campaign, or the buyer record is archived | Campaign > Destinations |
| Availability hours | The lead arrived outside the buyer's weekly window | Edit destination > Availability |
| Lead caps | Its daily, weekly, monthly, or total cap is already met | Edit destination > Caps |
| Budget caps | Its daily, weekly, monthly, or total dollar cap is already met | Edit destination > Caps |
| State filter | The lead's state is not in the buyer's allowed list | Edit destination > Filters |
| Field filters | Any custom field rule fails (age, credit, insurance status, anything you map) | Edit destination > Filters |
| Suppression | The phone or email is on one of the buyer's suppression lists | Edit destination > Suppression |
| Delivery setup | The buyer has no working delivery method configured | Edit destination > Delivery |
| Wallet | The buyer pays from a wallet and the balance will not cover this lead | Buyer > Billing |
| Calendar | Calendar-aware routing is on and the buyer has no openings | Edit destination > Availability |
If a buyer is not receiving leads, check eligibility before you touch the routing method. Nine times out of ten it is a cap, a filter, or a paused status, and changing the method will not fix any of those.
The same 10 leads under every method
One campaign, three buyers, all on the same priority tier, all eligible for every lead. Shares and targets are set to 50 / 30 / 20.
| Buyer | Priority | Share or target | Pays | Daily cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acme Legal | 1 | 50 | $60 | 25 |
| Bright Path | 1 | 30 | $45 | 25 |
| Overflow Partners | 1 | 20 | $30 | 25 |
| Method | Where leads 1 through 10 land | Acme / Bright / Overflow |
|---|---|---|
| Round Robin | A, B, O, A, B, O, A, B, O, A | 4 / 3 / 3 |
| Weighted | A random draw each time, weighted 50/30/20 | Expect 5 / 3 / 2, but 7 / 2 / 1 in a single batch of 10 is normal |
| Weighted (Fair Share) | A, B, O, A, B, A, O, A, B, A | 5 / 3 / 2, on the nose |
| Priority (Waterfall) | All 10 to Acme, since nothing stopped it | 10 / 0 / 0 |
| Best Price | All 10 to whoever bid highest on each lead | Varies per lead |
That table is the whole argument in one place. Weighted and Weighted (Fair Share) aim at the same 50/30/20, but Weighted gets there over hundreds of leads and Fair Share gets there inside the day. Priority ignores the split on purpose. Round Robin ignores the numbers entirely.
What happens when nobody can take the lead
If every buyer is blocked, or every buyer is tried and declines, the lead lands on a final status with a reason attached. You can see the reason on the lead's detail page and filter for it in Leads.
| Status | Reason shown | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Error | Destination Cap(s) Reached | Every buyer was already at a cap when the lead arrived. |
| Error | Rejected by Filter(s) | Every buyer was filtered out by state, field rules, or suppression. |
| Error | No Destinations Configured | The campaign has no buyers attached, or none are active. |
| Error | All Destinations Rejected | Buyers were reached and every one of them declined the lead. |
| Error | Delivery Failed | A real transport problem: a bad URL, an HTTP error, or a timeout. |
| Error | Insufficient Wallet Balance | Wallet-billed buyers could not cover the lead price. |
| Queued | Outside Availability Hours | Every buyer was outside its hours. The lead is held and retried when the first window opens. |
| Duplicate | Destination Reported Duplicate | A buyer answered that it already has this person. |
There is no unmatched status. A lead that nobody took is an Error lead with a reason, which means you can build an automation on it: route Error leads to an uncapped overflow buyer, or send yourself a Slack alert the moment the reason is Destination Cap(s) Reached.
Selling one lead to more than one buyer
Routing methods assume the lead is exclusive: the first buyer to accept ends the run. If you sell shared leads, set Sells per lead on the source (Campaign > Sources > edit) to 2 or more. Distribution then keeps walking the same order and stops once that many buyers have accepted. Each one pays its own price, and the lead's revenue is the sum.
Changing the method on a live campaign
- Open the campaign, go to Settings > Routing, and pick the new method. The change applies to the very next lead that arrives.
- Nothing is rewritten retroactively. Yesterday's leads keep the buyer they were delivered to.
- Priority is used by both weighted methods, so a campaign moving from Waterfall to Weighted keeps the tiers you already built. Buyers sharing a rank become one tier that splits by share.
- Round Robin ignores share and priority completely, so those values sit unused until you switch back.
- Watch the Routing card on the campaign page after you switch. It shows a worked example of what your current buyers will do under the method you just picked.
Go deeper on each method
- Round Robin: the rotation pointer, what happens when a buyer is paused mid-rotation, and why turns are not the same as acceptances.
- Weighted: shares, priority tiers, why a 10-lead sample never looks like your percentages, and what to do when a tier does not add up to 100.
- Weighted (Fair Share): daily targets, the fill-ratio math, and the difference between a target and a cap.
- Priority (Waterfall): overflow ladders, why caps are what make a waterfall work, and multi-tier patterns.
- Best Price: how the ping auction picks a winner and prices the lead.
- Ping-Post Guide: the two-step protocol itself, which is a separate setting from the routing method.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between routing method and campaign type?
Which routing method makes the most money?
Can different campaigns use different routing methods?
Does the routing method affect how much a buyer pays?
Why did my buyer get two leads in a row?
When do daily caps reset?
Where do I see which buyer was picked and why?
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If you have any questions, send us an email at support@leaddistro.ai