A recent article on Inman News attempted to distinguish between "contacts" and "leads". With the proliferation of "lead generation" services for Realtors, I thought I'd give my perspective on this. My company eNeighborhoods has been deeply involved for years in creating the tools that hundreds of thousands of Realtors use to convert contacts/leads into customers.
Historically, eNeighborhoods has not been deeply involved on the direct-to-consumer lead generation business. However, we have worked closely with major organizations to power the technology behind this process. Earlier this year, we worked with RE/MAX International to launch their new web initiative, which includes the revamped remax.com, as well LeadStreet,"?their sophisticated back-end intranet lead management system. Most in the industry don't realize that this site is driven by eNeighborhoods technology, that eNeighborhoods handles the MLS IDX data aggregation for the RE/MAX network of brokers and that eNeighborhoods hosts this network of websites. This system is generating, distributing"?and managing thousands of leads each day to RE/MAX associates.
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So, are these 'leads' or are they 'contacts'? That's a great question that we don't even attempt to"?answer. Instead, we use science to score these consumers, based upon their behavior as they navigate"?the website. For example, if they are searching haphazardly, they get a low score. If they are focused in their search (e.g., specific neighborhood, specific price range, specific housing characteristics)"?they get a higher score, making them a "hotter lead". The system is also built around"?automated tools to"?do everything in our power to drive the consumer to increasing their score and becoming a hotter lead over time. So we don't distinguish between 'contacts' and 'leads'. To us, they are ALL leads, just some are warmer and some are colder than others.
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My background is in statistics and database marketing. I guess that's why eNeighborhoods became "The Neighborhood Info Experts" without visiting every neighborhood in America! We've learned quite a bit over the years about how to manipulate databases, whether those be about schools, neighborhood demographics, crime rates, MLS listings or leads. With our experience, we've been recently questioning the obsession with using the internet to create leads. We hear all the statistics about how 70%+ of consumers are using the internet during their home buying process, and we also hear the mixed success with using internet generated leads. Just because a consumer"?submitted their contact info to get the value of their home or to get access to MLS listings doesn't mean that they are in the market to work with a Realtor.
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We"?recently launched"?the eNeighborhoods InstaLead Marketing System, which"?uses the science we've learned over the years to create an entirely new way to generate non-internet leads for Realtors and to convert those leads into customers. We are very excited to see our concept proven out over the next few months, as we quickly fill thousands of Realtor pipelines with our new InstaLeads. So are they 'leads' or are they 'contacts'? We'll let our customers decide!
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