Active vs. Passive Lead Capture: Pros and Cons

If you run a business, you need customers, and depending on your business model, those customers often start out as leads — the people you'd like to 'capture' and, hopefully, turn into consumers of your product or service. There are a couple of ways to do this. At Zillow, for example, we practice passive lead capture, as opposed to active lead capture.

Huh?

Passive and active capture

Passive in this case refers to when and how we require a site visitor to register on the site. On Zillow, no one ever has to register to see homes for sale. A visitor to our site can search our database of homes for as long as they like — days, months or years. They get full information, whether they are a 'registered user' or an 'anonymous user.'

Contrast that with a real estate site that practices active lead capture. In this scenario, a site user will, at some point, be required to register in order to continue searching for homes.

Ever heard the term 'forced registration'? That would be active lead capture. Depending on how a site practicing active lead capture is set up, a user may be required to register before seeing any homes, or they may be able to see limited information without registering. Many active capture sites will allow a user full access to view a set number of listings (for example, five listings) before being required to register.

Why do I care?

You care about how people register or make contact with an agent because that's how you get a 'lead' from a site.

You may be asking yourself, 'But if you don't require registration in a passive capture set-up, why would anyone ever bother to do so?'

Great question, and therein lies the major benefit of using passive lead capture: A user initiates contact with an agent when they want to contact an agent, not when you decide they should contact an agent.

Often, those contacts are more likely to develop into a client relationship because the consumer is reaching out to say, 'Hey, I need some help, please contact me.'

'But someone may search forever and never initiate contact — so I'll never get that lead.'

True statement. Let's think about it though. If the site user doesn't want to talk to you, forcing them to do so by requiring registration isn't likely to lead to a client-agent relationship anyway. You can't make someone talk to you if they don't want to.

Passive capture sites tend to result in fewer overall contacts, but those contacts are generally more serious about talking with an agent. After all, the users themselves are asking for help.

Active capture sites tend to get more contacts because users will register just so they can continue using the site. But because many of those users don't want (or aren't ready) to talk to an agent, the lead quality is typically lower.

In short, passive capture results in lower quantity but higher quality contacts while active capture results in higher quantity but lower quality contacts.

Which is better?

The answer to that question is, 'It depends.' It depends on your site, your business objectives, and your processes and systems for converting contacts to clients.

Zillow has the luxury of having a very high volume of traffic. That high number of users helps to offset the lower number of contacts typically generated with passive capture sites.

Your personal real estate site likely has significantly less traffic than Zillow, so you have far fewer opportunities for users to make contact regardless of how your site is set up. In that case, a more active capture method may be required for you to get any contacts.

Fortunately for agent sites, most of the available home-search products allow you to have a hybrid setup that is part active, part passive capture. This is normally achieved by allowing a site user to see a few homes before asking for registration, which is a good compromise for lower-traffic sites.

On high-traffic sites like Zillow, however, passive lead capture means you get a contact when that consumer wants to be contacted. By filling out a form, they're basically inviting you to talk — so pick up the phone, and give them what they want!