Single Source Lead Attribution-Good, Bad or Ugly

I heard this topic was discussed more than any other at NAA this year.

Has today’s renter buying behaviors moved beyond the capabilities of existing lead tracking technology solutions? Specifically, does single source lead attribution discount the other sources used when renting an apartment home.

With a plethora of data sources available to the active prospect, the renter typically goes to multiple listing sources for different reasons. For example, early in the process renters may use one or more of the big box ILS sites as a research tool to narrow their search (price match, sub-market location and property and neighborhood amenities). Later in the renting process, they may go to review based sites to do a “digital door knock” –what will my experience likely be if I choose to live at any given property.

All these data sources add value to the renter’s decision on who they tour and where they rent, yet we typically have room, technology speaking, for a single marketing source, and that source is usually “first in”.

We then use that “single source, first in” model to evaluate return on investment relative to marketing spend, and also use those results to realign forward looking spend. As an industry are we qualifying our sources to know how and when prospects are influenced? Is this being measured throughout the process or only at the end or beginning? Have buying behaviors advanced beyond our ability to effectively track?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic.

Thanks, Patrick

Patrick,

I was discussing this earlier today with my leasing manager.

We know that folks go to several sites before they contact us. The one they contact us through gets the credit but you are right that there is value in the other sites but how do we measure it? Do you know of any solutions out there?

Of course it's hard enough even to get reliable data, linked to a lease, from our current sources! It would be great to have a product that could link all of our listings they viewed to their record but perhaps that's too much to ask for!

Good post Patrick!

Peter

Peter I expect we have some experts on this site who can suggest a more comprehensive solution. We'll see. Thanks for the post. Patrick

Great article Patrick - it's a hot topic now from a vendor perspective as well as management. While "upstream leads" are good for research it's the decision making process that it what prompts a prospect to actually pull the trigger and lease at a particular community.

I did hear more conversations and questions on this topic this year.

I definitely think that lead tracking tools (especially the ones specific to multifamily) are having a tough time keeping up with current buying behaviors, particularly when you factor in the same shopper using multiple devices across their search.

Most companies I've worked with and interviewed typically subscribe to a First Contact (Last Touch) method of attribution. Very few are using First Touch or any kind of weighted attribution model.

We tend to attribute the lead to the place where the prospect filled out the contact form ... which means we overweight the sources further down the funnel, when prospects are warmed up and ready to contact us. If you've heard "our website is our top online lead source", then you've witnessed this in action. The website might be the most common point where the lead is captured, but it's *not* the lead source.

In our lead tracking services, this typically gets tracked as a website lead, and all the data before it gets lost. So we don't have visibility into whether that person saw us on an ILS, on social media, on a ratings site, etc. To your question about ROI, it gives us a false perception that our websites are outperforming, and it limits our ability to truly understand which sources are driving the best traffic.

In almost every case, I have more data through the website, analytics and lead nurturing data than I'm able to push into the lead management system. This is especially the case for prospects that might be looking at several different local properties in the same portfolio. That particular prospect is treated as two or three separate leads, rather than one prospect looking in a specific neighborhood.

I think we need to take a look at what is available outside the industry, both in terms of lead tracking tools and in advertising data analysis. The way Facebook handles view-through attribution is a model that I'd love to see adopted by the ILSs.

There's no perfect solution out there, for sure. But I do think we need to be asking better questions of our data to get a more complete picture of how our marketing is reaching and influencing our prospects.