What is a lead? It appears that there might be a bit of a disconnect between what a lead is, and what real estate agents think a lead is. So today we will break down that wall and discuss the realities of what an online real estate lead really is.

With sites like Zurple, Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com, consumers have more power over their home search. They can begin their online search one week, 2 months, or years before they’re ready to work with an agent. And this can have an adverse effect on your marketing budget. If you generate leads online, chances are you’ve captured leads that don’t plan on buying or selling months or even years from now. To focus on your transaction-ready leads, you’ll need to weed out those that will likely never return to your website. Continue reading to uncover what percentage of real estate leads are never likely to return to your website.

As the final part of the Discovery-Stage Buyers & Sellers Study we’ll be revealing how to push online home buyers and sellers from the Discovery-Stage into the Consideration-Stage. As a quick recap Discovery-Stage real estate leads are those that are in the beginning stages of buying or selling their home. They’ve just begun their home search and are not yet serious about their move. Consideration-Stage real estate leads are those that actively searching for a home and ready to work with an agent. The Zurple Products Team spent hours analyzing the messaging that ultimately pushed millions of buyers and sellers out of the Discovery-Stage and into Consideration. Continue reading to learn what marketing moves a prospect down the sales funnel, specifically from the Discovery-Stage and into the Consideration-Stage.

According to experts, the home buying journey takes anywhere between 11-27 months. This makes it more and more difficult for agents to weed out the transaction-ready buyers and sellers from the not-so-ready. In this study we’ll be revealing the peak activity window of leads in the "Discovery-Stage" or awareness-stage of their journey. Continue reading to find out how long discovery-stage real estate leads are actively searching on an agent’s website.

Do you know how much time real estate leads are spending on your website? Average dwell time and average session duration are important metrics for assessing the overall effectiveness of your real estate website. In this article we’ll be explaining what average dwell time and average session duration is, in addition to the average dwell time and session duration of real estate leads in the Discovery-Stage.

Note: Discovery-Stage Real Estate leads are those that are in the beginning stages of their home search and are not yet ready to commit to a move. For more information on what Discovery-Stage Leads are, visit our Discovery-Stage Buyers & Sellers Study introduction here.

In part II of the Discovery-Stage Buyers and Sellers Study, we’ll be uncovering how many site visits a discovery-stage real estate lead average early on in their home search average. Agents and marketers alike are befuddled when an online lead is captured on a site, but then ceases to return. Those leads that are still early in their buying or selling journey are less likely to return to an agent’s website. Continue reading to learn what the average total number of site visits discovery stage buyer and sellers average.

As part of the 2018 Lead Intelligence Series, the Discovery-Stage Buyers & Sellers Study was compiled by Zurple’s Product team and contains an in-depth examination of those online real estate leads that are in the early stages of buying or selling their home. In part one of this five-part series we’ll be sharing how we collected data on discovery-stage, online, real estate leads and what attributes classify a buyer or seller as within the “discovery-stage.”

Lead gates are essential to capturing new customers and prospects online. The information your lead capture form asks for directly impacts your lead conversion rate. Lead capture forms place value behind your website's content and marketing campaigns. Without a lead capture form, buyers and sellers can otherwise access your content for free. Digital marketers agree across all industries that the length of a lead form directly impact conversion rates.

The more information agents ask from real estate leads, the less likely leads will be to provide that information. Likewise, the more value leads place behind the gated content, the more likely they’ll be to leave their information. So, what if that required information is optional? Will real estate leads share personal information if they don't have too? Most importantly, will they share their phone number if it's not required?

In today's online world, consumers have grown accustomed to generic drip email campaigns. In fact, 86% of the world's email traffic is considered junk mail, according to Bloomberg Technology. With so much spam circulating the web, chances are real estate leads will accumulate a significant sum of spam when conducting their online home search. Real Estate agents will need intelligent, personalized emails to stand out in lead's inboxes. Zurple, the real estate industry's leading email automation platform, researched emails sent to buyer and seller leads in 2017.¹ Of those emails, those with high response rates shared four similarities. Below we’ve uncovered what those four similarities are. 

With so much information available online, buyers and sellers spend more time researching homes on their own. Leads can conduct the initial stages of their home buying or selling journey without having to communicate with an agent. However, certain email and text messages will encourage leads to reach out to agents. Zurple research has revealed the average time it takes for leads to respond after registering on a real estate agent's website. Additional research revealed five types of messages that speed up reply time. Statistics and message types listed below are taken from Zurple client back offices.¹