"Measuring Market Effectiveness" - Todd Katler (LevelOne) - 2009 AIM Conference

Measuring Marketing Effectiveness Todd Katler Level One

Topics For Today’s Presentation
Properly evaluating your leads
Where do you find the good leads (and how to avoid the not so good leads)
How to increase lead conversion

Todd’s Golden Rule
Conclusions are based on actual data, not anyone’s opinion.
(And you won’t always like the facts.)

How do we maintain the Golden Rule?
You must eliminate as much human bias as possible (say this with a thick, Austrian accent).
This message was not endorsed by Governor Schwarzenegger At least Todd Didn’t pick a photo from Kindergarten Cop.

Properly Evaluating Your Leads
Definitions
Acceptable Measures
Sample Periods
Essential Computations

Defining Leads Contactors Non-Contactors
Renters who find your ads and subsequently:
Phone
Email
Web Chat
Legitimate ‘Drive By’s’
Renters who find your ads but do not contact prior to visiting

Is my guest card data/PMS software correct? Across a selection of 10,000+ leases and 100,000+ guest cards, the source noted in the PMS was compared with the originating source of the guest card with the following results: Ad Source % Sourced Accurately % Under-Reported in PMS % of Total Leases Grand Total 29% -71% 100% CraigsList.org 62% -38% 10% Rent.com 59% -41% 12% Apartments.com 53% -47% 8% For Rent/.com 43% -57% 4% Apartment Guide/.com 38% -62% 6% Move.com 36% -64% 2% MyNewPlace.com 17% -83% 3% Company Website 11% -89% 56%

How much of my traffic am I actually counting? Email & Walk-in: 90% Email & Walk-in: 58% Phone: 10% Phone: 48% A national company evaluating using a contact center compared guest card traffic between their test and control properties with the following results: Control properties not using contact center Test properties using contact center

What Do We Do About Non-Contactors? Ask yourself… What would Arnold do? TERMINATED Non-Contactor

What Do We Do About Non-Contactors?
Remove Non-Contactors from your evaluation
Know that each ad source is producing more leases then can be accurately tracked; however, the same logic is used across all ad sources
Print sources are probably unfairly underweighted in this exercise due to the search nature of their customers

How do we measure contactors? Non-Prospects Prospects
Family
Friends
Vendors
Existing Residents
Wrong numbers
Automated marketing messages
People who start their sentence with “How much are your 2 bedrooms?” or anyone else looking to lease an apartment from you

What % of my ad source calls are non-prospects? This is the rawest form of data which includes 0-second calls, hang-up’s, duplicates and disconnects. In reality, the overall ratio is closer to 65-70% Ad Source GC:Call Ratio Ad Source GC:Call Ratio Grand Total 39% MyNewPlace.com 38% Yahoo local 10% Apartment Guide/.com 38% Apartment Marketer 19% Apartments.com 41% Move.com 20% Apartment Showcase/.com 44% For Rent/.com 22% Rent.com 49% Apartment Finder/.com 23% Banner 52% Google local 33% CraigsList.com 58% Property/Corporate Web Site 37%

How do I determine my Prospect:Call Ratio?
Easy but inaccurate
Multiply all your ad sources calls by 70% to get Prospect:Call ratio and your emails by 95%.
Multiply your web site calls by about 40% and emails by about 85%
Medium but not too painful
Listen to all your calls/read all your emails for a month or so and determine how many are prospect by ad source.
Evaluate at least 50 calls per source.
Easy but requires implementation
Use a contact center or some other method that can parse calls by intent.

How can I always monitor Prospect:Call ratio?

So far we have learned…
I can’t measure my walk-in traffic very well
The data in my expensive software stinks
I am not be able to easily tell how many of my leads are actually Aunt Sally calling her niece
Todd’s parents let him watch too many violent movies growing up (sorry, Mom)
Fear not – we can still answer some important questions! What’s worse? Todd’s sarcasm or my acting?

Why I like cost-per-lead
Depending on a source’s cost-per-lead, conversion becomes less important.
Cost Per Lead Conversion 1.5% 2.0% 2.5% 3.0% 4.0% 5.0% 6.0% $10 $667 $500 $400 $333 $250 $200 $167 $15 $1,000 $750 $600 $500 $375 $300 $250 $20 $1,333 $1,000 $800 $667 $500 $400 $333 $30 $2,000 $1,500 $1,200 $1,000 $750 $600 $500 $35 $2,333 $1,750 $1,400 $1,167 $875 $700 $583 $40 $2,667 $2,000 $1,600 $1,333 $1,000 $800 $667 $50 $3,333 $2,500 $2,000 $1,667 $1,250 $1,000 $833

Lease:Lead Conversion
If you have a reliable way to aggregate lead data, you can compare it to lease reports to obtain conversion data.
Phone data is often hard to aggregate because of the way calls are handled on site.
Do not just use email data as some sources have very low conversion from emails but high conversion from phone calls.

Where do the good leads come from and how do I convert them?
Current industry trends
Visit Set Ratio and ad sources
Phone vs. Email leads
Phone lead characteristics
Social Networking for lead origination

Conversion by ad source type

Using visit data as a predictor of lease performance Average was 4.7% conversion at 42% VSR High VSR and 4.5% + Conversion! Low VSR and Sub-3% Conversion

How they contact you matters! Phone leads convert to lease at over twice the rate of email leads.

Encourage Phone Contacts – Not Emails! Good Example Email is understated Phone is the key method displayed

Encourage Phone Contacts – Not Emails! Not So Good Example Phone is buried between the physical address and fax? Besides the form being dedicated to email, why offer the form and a direct email address?

Better Interactions = More Leases! Longer calls convert to a lease 92% more often Average leasing call is 1:44

Technology Solution to Call Duration Issues
Purchase a DIME device for each leasing agent:
D evice to I ncrease M easurable E ngagement

What Drives Search Behavior
90%+ of a prospective renter’s buying decision is based on 3 criterion:
Sub-Market or Neighborhood
Price
Pet Policy
This gives the renter typically between 5 and 15 properties that meet their requirements.
Within these parameters, the remaining 9 – 10% are influenced by their interaction with the community, external influences, amenities, etc.

How Does Social Media Fit In
There is no disputing that Social Media can be a great way to interact with customers if managed properly.
In my opinion, controlled properly, Social Media could be used effectively for resident retention/interactive with current residents.

Is Social Media Effective For Attracting Prospective Renters?
Level One Study:
The unique tracking numbers for every property were reviewed, extracting those assigned to Facebook, MySpace, You Tube and Twitter.
Guest cards originating from those sources were compared to the volume provided by all other sources for those same properties.

What did the study show?
In total, guest cards from Social Media sites accounted for the following percent of all activity:
.05% (yep, that’s .0005)
Assuming these leads convert at 2X the rate of all other sources, the quantity of leads from Social Media sites needs to grow by a factory of 40X before it has the same impact as your weakest ad source.

In case that last slide upset you…

What Do We Do About Non-Contactors?
Hire a greeter to measure a sample
Use guest card data
Is it correct?
Can you de-dupe it against your other contactors?
Use lead measuring tools

Define Cost Per Lead
Because of the difficulty in tracking leases, cost per lead is one of the most reliable and consistent methods for evaluating performance.
Make sure your definitions are consistent (Call:Prospect, Duplicates, etc.).
Convert Pay-Per-Lease to Pay-Per-Lead (total $ per lease/# of Leads = cost-per-lead).

Some assumptions about Contactors
All of you are using tracking numbers or a contact center to somehow measure activity from your ad sources
This process in some way reduces or filters non-prospect calls from prospect calls

Why can’t I use Cost-Per-Lease?
The lead data in your management software is highly flawed
It’s difficult to truly aggregate all leads. Duplicates are rampant whether you use tracking software or not.
It’s hard to match leases to leads without complex matching software that is hard to use and expensive
You can’t measure walk-in traffic which could account for 20% - 50% of the leases from an ad source
It’s very hard to produce this metric often and consistently

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"Measuring Market Effectiveness" - Todd Katler (LevelOne) - 2009 AIM Conference

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"Measuring Market Effectiveness" - Todd Katler (LevelOne) - 2009 AIM Conference — Presentation Transcript