Have you ever struggled to determine the true ROI of your online marketing initiatives? After all, it can be challenging to track exactly how a customer engaging in a transaction actually found your company. They may have seen a sign in a yard and called into your office, been referred to reach out to you by a former client, or been in an agent's CRM and nurtured by email marketing campaigns for a decade before finally reaching out. For brokerages that utilize transaction management programs like Skyslope or DotLoop in conjunction with a CRM platform like DeltaNET®, it is now possible to fully track a lead from initial engagement all the way to a closed transaction. 

For the last three years, I have spent the first week of January compiling an immense amount of data related to brokerages who work with Delta Media Group to power their online business. The amount of data I have to compile grows larger and larger each year. What started in 2021 with me evaluating how brokerages and agents used various email services like email blasts, drip campaigns, newsletters, or market watch reports eventually evolved into a full-scale agent adoption report. I could analyze hundreds of brokerages representing nearly 50,000 agents and track trends like which tools agents engaged with, what emails had the highest success rate to convert into traffic on an agent's website, and even what an actual "adopted" user should look like on our platform. With the addition of years worth of transaction records being ingested into our platform from various transaction programs, I was able to finally analyze some lead analytics and figure out which brokerages have truly figured out online lead generation and the process to convert those leads into transactions. 

One of our largest enterprise brokerage partners closed over 25,000 transactions in 2023. Over 800 of those started as an online web lead. Before I get into a detailed explanation of how this brokerage was able to close so many online transactions, I want to explain the validity of the data, as some of my findings in this analysis were shocking. When a brokerage is using our CRM platform, we can manage leads within it. Those leads/contacts will always have an "origination source" attached to the lead record. For many contacts in our platform, those origination sources would say something like "manually added by agent," "brokerage website" or "agent website" or even pulled in from third-party programs such as "Zillow lead" or "Synced from Google contacts." Whenever a contact has an origination source of "brokerage website" or "agent website," we know that the customer was first entered into our database from a lead form on the website. 

For some leads, we can even see specific sources. For example, if the contact record had a source of "Open House Connector," it means the contact was added to our CRM from visiting and signing into an open house run by one of the agents using our tools. If the source says "Automated Home Valuation," we know that the customer was added to our platform after wanting to know their home's value. 

The brokerage in this example that closed over 800 web leads in 2023 closed $240 million worth of volume generated exclusively by their brokerage website and agent websites hosted on our platform. Assuming 3% of that volume goes into agent commissions, that's nearly $7.5 million in commission for their agents. If each agent was on a 70/30 split with the brokerage, this company would have made $2.2 million from their website in 2023. 

One of the interesting data points with this company was that their website generated a total of 23,000 leads in 2023. With 800 closed transactions, that puts their conversion rate at 3.5%, which is more than double the industry standard of 1.5%. Something else that caught my eye was that of the 800 closed web leads last year, only 23 of those transactions started from the company website. More than 780 leads that became a closed transaction actually began directly from the agents' websites. 

What I discovered as I dug into this was that many of their agents were ignoring leads that were generated by the brokerage, as there had become a culture built around the fact that brokerage leads weren't worth spending time on unless the leads were sent directly to the agent from their own website. So, while this brokerage had an amazing year for closing leads from their website, they also have a huge coaching opportunity to use by leveraging this case study to reveal to their agents just how lucrative managing these leads can be for them. 

Another brokerage in this case study is what I would call your typical independent brokerage. They are in a midwestern market with about 450 agents. In 2023, their website generated just over 10,000 leads — with more than half of those leads directly resulting from organic traffic to their website (SEO). Unlike the first brokerage mentioned above, this company closed 377 out of 10,000 leads — an even better close rate of 3.7%. The major difference is that 281 out of the 377 leads originated from the company website, not the agents' websites. Here's a quick look at the data:  

As you can see from the data above, this brokerage also made over $1 million in actual company dollars from their online website business, with $84 million in volume coming directly from their company website. I saw this trend repeatedly from multiple brokerages that all participate in a "mastermind" group affiliated with the LeadingRE network. As I investigated further, I realized all the brokerages that were seeing such a strong ratio of company-converted web leads into transactions had multiple things in common:

First, they would distribute their company-generated web leads exclusively to agents who opted in to receive these leads, meaning the agents wanted to be a part of a sort of "e-leads" team and knew the value of the lead already. They weren't just sending IDX leads in some sort of "round-robin" format. All too often brokerages are afraid of appearing "unfair" to their agents, so they make lead routing a first come, first serve, or a round-robin-type format. All this really does is give leads to an agent that will never work with them, and now the company has lost out on the opportunity. My recommendation after seeing the data is to give the opportunity to work web leads exclusively to agents who actually want to work with them. 

Second, all the brokerages successfully closing these web leads leverage an automated lead follow-up program. What appears to work best is this method:

1. A customer visits your brokerage website, they fill out a form to become a lead, and typically, one of two things happens:

A: If the listing the customer is inquiring about belongs to one of your agents, it will automatically assign that lead to the agent who owns the listing.

or

B: If the listing is an IDX listing, it goes into a lead routing pool where agents have opted to work listings in specific zip codes/markets.

2. Once the lead is assigned to an agent, they have a limited amount of time to respond to that lead. All of the sales data in the world shows that if you have not gotten back in touch with someone within 5-10 minutes of them submitting a request on your website, then your opportunity to re-engage with them falls drastically. Usually, you won't ever get ahold of them. 

So, speed to lead is critical. From what I've found, usually, the brokerage will notify an agent of the lead opportunity via text message, and the agent has five to 10 minutes to respond to the lead. If they don't respond within 10 minutes, it will notify another agent of the lead. If they don't respond, it goes to a third agent. If nobody has picked up the lead within 30 minutes, it falls back to a "Lead Administrator" who is typically a staff member at the brokerage who will call and qualify the lead before referring out to an agent with a referral fee.

3. Another automated check-in system is engaged once the lead is assigned. So, at this point, the lead has been accepted by the agent, and we know that the agent has gotten in touch with the customer. Our Lead Accountability program now kicks in and starts asking the agent, via CRM app notifications or email, what the quality of that lead truly was. Did they schedule a meeting with the lead? Was it a real person? Are they listing a property? etc. If the agents aren't answering the lead accountability program, we stop giving any new leads. If they want the business, they need to be responding to the brokerage about the quality of the lead so they know what's working or not working. 

By either forcing the agents to be accountable for the leads or having a staff member initially working on qualifying the leads, many brokerages have really unlocked the potential of their websites and a MASSIVE revenue generator for the brokerage. As brokerages are looking for more and more ways to bring in cash as the economy falters, I think it should be a key priority for any brokerage to embrace online lead generation and really buckle down on how you're distributing these leads to your agents. 

There will be much more to come, with detailed webinars on how to work online leads and a formal case study leveraging all of this data. I want to end this article with a call to action for any brokerage trying to find ways to cut expenses and bring in more dollars in 2024. Don't look at making cuts to your online technology programs that are working. However, you may look at cutting a $2,000/month SEO program that inadvertently costs your company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost opportunities. Below are a handful of real-world examples of just a few of our clients and the amount of money they have been able to make through working the leads generated from their website: