Real Estate Blog - Do you "Force Registration" and "Capture" leads?

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Do you "Force Registration" and "Capture" leads?

Teresa Boardman wrote a thought provoking post on Inman News arguing that "Consumers Don't Want To be Captured". In her blog post she points out that requiring registration is no way to treat your potential customers.

Many agents subscribe to this view, while others insist that the only way to make sure you get a steady source of leads is to require registration.

Eric Blackwell had been firmly in the no forced registration camp.... until recently.

Eric explains in "Forced Registration or Not: My Decision" why he switched over. What are your thoughts?

Posted by Louis Cammarosano on 11/16/2008 11:04 AM

Comments (23)

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23 Comments on Do you "Force Registration" and "Capture" leads?

NOV

2008

I don't at all. My website allows for free searches as all should. Forcing registration will just cause someone to go to another website. However, I have do have a great laead capture portion of the site which is my free CMA sign up. People who want a free personal home value report have to enter personal info on the home and an email so they can receive their report and it is all voluntary...that works great.

Rebecca

Eric thought as you did that "Forcing registration will just cause someone to go to another website"

He found that while it did result in a 10% decrease in traffic, he received a 10X increase in the number of registrations..

http://blog.homegain.com/best-practices/to-force-registration-or-not-my-decision/

Hi Louis, I also thought that requiring registration meant losing potential customers. Perhaps someone out there would be able to shows us some reliable stats !

I do it both ways. I have a site where there is no registration and now have one where there is. I had always leaned towards no registration, but then started to think that if someone is serious they will have no problem registering and maybe we can then engage each other. I guess I decided that if someone wants to look for free there are many sites they can do that at too. I think the pros and cons are the same for both venues. I am turning to the "dark side" lol! Of course my company's IDX is a "non" register type site so not much I can do about that. I like the sites that allow for a few "freebies" and then ask for registration, that way a consumer can see if they like the format before giving their info.

Bill

HomeGain buyerlink traffic for our customers that reuiqre regsitration gets between 8-20% registration.

The registration rates depend upon whether the agent requires just a name and email or whether the agent requires a phone number ( i don't advise requiring the phone number but would have it as optional) or requests more information on the type and price of home the consumer wishes to search.

Mitch Ribak will tell you that the traffic he gets from HomeGain's buyerlink converts nearly 2X the traffic he buys from Google and Yahoo.

Feel free to contact me if you'd like further information

Louis@homgain dot com

My thoughts are this, I want targeted traffic that actually is interested in buying a house. By asking for registration I get closer to my goal. Why fill up the system with lookie lous? My website is designed to deliver a more qualified prospect. This way I don't wear myself out chasing after ghosts.

I can say when I forced registration on my websites I got very little results. Since I allowed free access my traffic has increased. Also what am I really doing for my clients and listings if I force visitors to register to view my listings?

Mike

"what am I really doing for my clients and listings if I force visitors to register to view my listings?"

That is a good question. If you proceed to spam them into oblivion, nothing. BUT if you take their information and send them updated listings that meet their requirements and treat them respectfully, you are providing a service which you can only provde if you have their contact information.

Did you check out Eric's results when he required registration? He got 10X more leads...

http://blog.homegain.com/best-practices/to-force-registration-or-not-my-decision/

Our websites are on middle ground, we REQUEST registration, you can bypass if you like. The registration only pops up when clients click for more details on a property. 4500 registrations in the last year...

Louise, you know I 100% agree with registering, if you have a good site. The way I feel is this, how many sites are there where you can search for free? A multitude.

The only way to contact a person is if they register. I'm not playing around with my PPC campaigns. If they don't want to register,then they can go look free. I make money off my site or I wouldn't do this.

Believe me I have four sites and the ones where folks give me there name, email and phone numbers make me the most money.

I keep encouraging folks to allow it, but if they chose not too, well you can't make them.

But, botttom line it works and I've got stat's to prove it.

Most people who are against registration base it on what they think consumers might do, those that favor registration, usually know what consumers do and have the comparisions to show why they require registration.

...and since when have Realtors known how consumers think? LOL

I think Homegain would not survive if not for forced registration. People do register for my site even though I don't force then to., I don't contact them. I know that is just wrong but it is how I chose to run y business.

Hi Teresa, I would not survive if I didn't not require it or my team to call them asap. In fact with a really crappy market in Michigan it has kept me in business and my team of 6. Obviously if you don't want to contact them it would be pointless to have them register.

C C wrote an offer today on couple from San Francisco 800K, close in Dec. They registered in the summer. We called, stayed in touch, sent them listings that fit what they wanted and now I am looking forward to Christmas.

No one in Michigan is moving up to bigger or better or down sizing, just out of Michigan.

I actually think it would be interesting to compare actual stats on this. @T- I was totally in your camp (trust me on that). I do think that HOW you ask them to register matters a LOT as well. If anyone wants to compare results, benchmark, and see if we can find some best practices for what makes potential customers happy AND builds our customer base full of happy clients, feel free to give me a ping.

I learn from everyone and am happy to share with anyone on this subject. It really did surprise me how significant the difference was. (and FTR, I don't think I am anywhere NEAR the optimal solution.)

I bet if we compared notes, we could find some pretty good solutions.

Thoughts?

Just noticed Frank and Jodi's comment above. That is EXACTLY how I have designed mine as well. I think that is crucial to getting good results. Well done, guys.

@Missy-does yours work that way as well?

Eric, they see the listing, the google map the satellite image and then then it asks them to register. So they see what they will see before they decide to continue on. http://SearchAnnArborHouses.com, if you want to see it and register. I won't send you an email or call....LOL

Louis, Folks do NOT have to register on my site but I'm getting ready to change that. As primarily a listing broker my goal in the past was to get my seller's property details in front of as many people as possible. I had no desire to capture buyer leads because I didn't work with buyers. So losing "eyeballs" because I required registration would be harmful to my sellers. My goal was to sell the property not use it for buyer bait.

BUT.....things change. My new focus is on listing and selling short sales. So now even though I still need to get my property details out there it is just as important to capture buyers. With short sales selling the property quickly is more important than getting a higher price. Therefore having a stable of qualified buyers who are ready to buy at bargain basement prices is very important. So I will be changing over to a registration system at the beginning of the year. Make sense?

People do register for my site even though I don't force then to., I don't contact them. I know that is just wrong but it is how I chose to run my business.

This is what we discussed at Unchained Orlando and we discussed it a lot. Should the primary purpose of a real estate brokerage be profit? If profit is the motive, forced registration is an empirically superior strategy than allowing full access without registration.

Teresa, if you know your advice to be wrong, why would you offer it to other agents?

If the company which forces registration is upfront about their motives then I am all for doing it. However, there are plenty of operations out there who are not honest with their "leads" about what they do with their contact information. I've seen it way too often and I think it is morally wrong to get contact info with misinformation--in other words, if you tell the 'lead': "by entering your contact info you acknowledge and accept that I will contact and hound you to buy or sell with me" and they still accept then by all means do it. If not then stop asking for personal info.

NOV

2008

Wow! Look at all the fun this comment is making. Here is the deal, any Agent should and can do whatever they would like. Personally the less people that make their visitors register the better for those of us who do. I would be glad to share some stats I just shared on a Homegain blog.

These stats are through the month of June:

Leads - 3989
Transactions - 161

This gives me a sale for every 24.78 leads. In reality, our numbers are stronger the 2nd half of this year but I won't total my numbers until after the Jan. 1st. (I believe we are right around 1 out of 22)

I have been using forced registrations since 2002. I originally didn't have anyone register, they just contacted me. Back then, I actually did ok with that. However, once I made the decision to test having forced registrations my sales went through the roof. This year we are going to have over 250 sales from our leads. I can almost guarantee you that if I didn't have forced registration on my sites, we would be about half that at best. If you are not using forced registration, you are leaving money on the table.

I have heard the arguement that you are going to upset your visitors to your site if you ask for them to register. I heard one last week from one of my members of The eHomes Realty Network that she got a sale this year because the person said she didn't have to register on her site. Her total amount of sales this year are 5 with 2 coming from her website.

My point is, your job is to prospect for business. This is what you have been taught from day one when getting into this business. Many Agents make 100 phone calls a day to get the amount of leads you get on your site when registering. Actually, the one person I know who does this get's 2 leads out of 100 calls. That is the number of leads I highly recommend giving Agents daily...not more if you can help it. Using the Internet to prospect for leads is a more efficient and successful means of prospecting than calling 100 people per day. I only have to call or email the consumers who have registered on my site. They would only register if they are looking to buy or sell a home in most cases.

A few more stats. My Agents are currently showing 8 different buyers per month right now from our lead system. However, they are only selling 1.5 sales per month per Agent. With that said, we are in the worst Real Estate market in the country in Brevard Florida. Once the market comes back, our sales will jump through the roof as we all know that a normal close rate is 4 or 5 sales out of 8 showings...if not more. We are very excited and are actually starting to see an increase in our lead flow when this time of year usually results in a decrease in leads. Very exciting!

Ok, I've said enough...you know how I can be when we start talking about lead capture and lead conversion...this is my life! If you need any help or would like to chat about how I can help you do this better than you are currently doing it, feel free to drop me a note!

NOV

2008

We do not require registration on our websites! I will not register on a website to look around, and don't expect others too. If they can't easily navigate through a website, they might move on to another website. We certainly don't want that now!

Amy Hahn Signature

Hi Amy! I love that picture! When I first started using the Internet in 2002 I didn't require registration either. However, I then tested using forced registration and my sales jumped through the roof. With that said, the leads you get from people contacting you are usually better than leads generated by forced registration. But, the numbers of leads are so much more that if you have a good conversion program, you will experience an incredible increase in your sales. Currently we are receiving 30-50 leads per day and support 18 Agents with leads who all make a living in Brevard County Florida...probably the worst Real Estate market in the country.

As far as losing people to another site, what is the difference between losing people to another site versus them not ever contacting you? We have never had any issues with people getting upset with us and we have over 45,000 people per month return to our sites. I believe because of our strong lead conversion system (100MPH Marketing Systetm) we are always bringing people back to our site with smiles on their faces!

If you would like to chat about it, feel free to contact me. I've spent a small fortune, ok a big fortune, figuring this stuff out. Our customers always say to us they are so happy that we contacted them. It's great stuff! You should give it a try some time!

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