5 Lead Tracking Trends to Watch in 2011

This is a guest post contributed by Doug Chasick, CPM®, CAPS, CAS, Adv. RAM, CLP, SLE, CDEI.

In today’s competitive leasing climate, to maximize profits you must maximize marketing. For instance, do you know how many authentic leasing opportunities your marketing efforts really delivers? Giving unprecedented insight into the true source of leads, lead tracking technology gives you the ability to precisely measure which marketing sources perform the best allowing you to make adjustments accordingly. But lead tracking technology is much more than just unique tracking numbers ... in fact, here are five things to consider for your lead tracking program in 2011:

• Call Tracking – Reveals the true cost, effectiveness, and ROI of a company’s marketing. It captures every caller’s phone number and, often, name and address for follow-up. It identifies calling patterns and possible scheduling issues.

• Lead Scoring – Provides an analysis of calls to remove non-leasing calls from the calculation of conversion ratios and to stop abuse of tracking numbers by residents, employees, or vendors.

• Telephone Performance Analysis – Grades and monitors call-handlers to indicate when further training or support is needed. Leasing performance and training effectiveness generally improve with the ability to review your call-handlers recorded calls with prospects.

• Dynamic Number Insertion – Employs advanced call tracking technology that allows you to identify the source of each lead sent to your website in real-time. Prospects visit your website and specialized software identifies where and how that lead originated. Based on this information, the telephone number normally displayed on your web page is dynamically replaced with a tracking number.

• Owner’s Analytics – Reviews portfolio and regional data and compares management performance with that of other operators in the same market and sub-market. This can demonstrate to owners that moving assets to another management company may not always improve results.

You can’t truly manage what you don’t measure. Today’s lead tracking technology not only measures your marketing effectiveness, it also provides you with the data needed to make informed decisions on where to focus your marketing efforts to achieve maximum results.

In future posts, we're going to take a closer look at each of these items and how you can use them to improve your marketing programs for 2011. Do you have a specific question you'd like us to address, or a story to share about your own experience with lead tracking technology? How are you currently tracking the success of your marketing efforts? How do you think each of the items mentioned above will evolve in the year ahead? Tell us in the comments ... we'd love to hear from you.

Doug Chasick is Senior Vice President of Multifamily Professional Services for CallSource. Contact him at: (888) 222-1214 or: DChasick@CallSource.com.