If you or your team spend any time validating, scrubbing, filtering, ranking and contacting internet leads, in an attempt to turn these leads into closed real estate transactions, you need to read this blog post.
The Challenge:
Here at
Domaine Real Estate, we get approximately 400 new registered (VIP) leads per month and over 1600 returning registered (VIP) leads per month visiting our website. Although we are ecstatic about this volume of leads we are constantly put to the task to leverage this volume of opportunity into business revenue.
To manage this large volume of leads we use a variety of multiple sorting methods that hierarchically rank and weight data types such as
return visits,
saved properties &
saved searches. These sorting methods allow us to prioritize our contact efforts on those leads that offer us the greatest conversion potential. Several of our sorting methods have, to date, placed the greatest weight on
return visits; e.g.,
number of return visits and
timing of return visits. Leads with greater return visits get higher priority in our lead management efforts.
The Discovery:
Recently, I decided to take an in-depth look at the
return visits statistics for our registered leads within our IDX solution. What I found was very disturbing.
Within our IDX solution we have the capability to view individual
return visit statistics of our registered leads, including the date of return and the length of visit. When viewing this data I discovered that a large # of the recorded
return visits were either 0 seconds or 1 second in length. For example:
Return..............Length
Date.................of Visit
09/01/06..........03:07
09/02/06..........15:46
09/03/06..........00:00
09/05/06..........00:01
09/07/06..........00:00
09/08/06..........00:00
09/10/06..........00:01
09/12/06..........00:00
09/20/06..........03:50
09/21/06..........00:01
09/24/06..........00:00
After much discussion with our IDX provider it was determined that these supposed
return visits were not
return visits at all
but rather were views of
property watch e-mails. Apparently, when a VIP lead opens a
property watch e-mail to view the listing, a
return visits session is recorded. If the user does not click on the listing the
return visits is recorded as a 00:00 time. If the user clicks on the listing but does not choose to re-enter the site as a VIP member it records a 00:01
return visit.
I then took a snapshot of our previous months VIP leads and viewed the
return visits statistics for all VIP leads with more than 200
return visits records. In most cases, a majority of these
return visits were 00:00 and 00:01 records.
Conclusion:
This new information demonstrated that our previous prioritization of this statistic, in determining which returning registered leads to contact, was no longer valid. A refinement of the use of this statistic must scrub out all 00:00 and 00:01 records to arrive at a true understanding of a VIP’s behavior.
How Does This Relate to You?
Good question! It just so happens that during this discovery process I have been investigating alternative IDX solutions and have inquired as to the handling of this statistical dilemma. It turns out that other IDX providers have the same problem.
Apparently this is due to the inherent nature of the recording of a property view. It appears that inherent within the design of these IDX solutions is a tie between the viewing of property information and the apparent action of returning to the site; a mistaken assumption but an assumption none the less. Thus when a user views a property through a
property watch e-mail the IDX solution mistakenly records a
return visit.
If there are any programmers out there that can better explain this relationship please feel free to elaborate. For the rest of you I would highly recommend taking a deeper look at this data relationship to ensure that you are not mistakenly relying on faulty data. For myself, I plan on taking a deeper look at all of the registered lead data types
Best Regards,
Sean Taylor
Domaine Real Estate
(707) 494-6008
;)
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