Zillow strives to remove the barriers that make the journey to a new home a hard one, for customers and for partners like you. That’s why Zillow Product Manager Abby Butler is obsessed with turning more rental inquiries into scheduled tours. Since she started at Zillow five years ago, Butler has consistently heard from multifamily partners that their on-site teams get lots of leads (from Zillow and others), but they don’t really have data on what practices work best to convert those leads to tours. “They’re operating blind a lot of the time,” she says. So, Butler organized a Zillow “Living Lab” to test various lead-conversion strategies. Among the study results:

• High-intent renters want to self-schedule.
• Renters expect quick responses from agents.
• Phone follow-up beats other response methods.

Living Lab methodology

The lab was set up as an off-site lead facilitation center that responded to renters with the goal of helping renters schedule tours. The lab worked with over 120,000 leads sent to participating multifamily properties of all classes (A, B and C) from across the country.

Researchers studied the behavior of responsive renters, defined as people who engaged and/or scheduled a tour after receiving a response to their request for information, and unresponsive renters, defined as those who didn’t take any action after receiving a response to their initial inquiry.

Leads came to the lab in two forms: phone leads and web leads, which are form submits on a Zillow, Trulia or HotPads listing received in a property’s CRM or email inbox. All web leads routed to our contact center received an automated response via SMS and email, with a call to action to schedule a tour or talk with an agent. Phone leads were routed to live representatives.

Study findings

Observations on the behavior of renters and their preferred method of response led to three major findings:

1. Renters prefer to self-serve. Most (90%) renters who scheduled a tour used the self-scheduler tool instead of working with a live representative. Additionally, 65% of those renters scheduled a tour without asking any questions.
2. Renters act fast. Many (65%-70%) renters who scheduled a tour did so within three hours of submitting a web lead, and 95% scheduled within 24 hours.
3. Phone is the most effective follow-up method. Among unresponsive renters, lead-to-tour conversion increased by 82% when agents proactively contacted them by phone within three hours — even if the renter initially reached out through email or text. When agents followed up with unresponsive renters via SMS instead of the phone, the lead-to-tour conversion increased by only 21%.

How to apply the findings

Set up a self-schedule tour option. The evidence for the value of self-service is overwhelming. Renters don’t need hand-holding through the search process — they want to move fast. And self-service alleviates a lot of work for property managers.

Listings today are so detailed and thorough that renters feel they have the information they need to move forward with scheduling a tour.

Respond to renters within three hours of submitting a lead. This is a tall order for property managers and on-site teams who are already very busy, but the Living Lab research proves that this effort can yield tremendous results. Before you encourage your on-site teams to prioritize this, consider creating your own three-hour-response test and measure the impact the shift has on your business.  

Follow up with unresponsive web leads over the phone. Standard sales etiquette is to respond to customers using the same form of communication they did. But if you’re not getting a response that way, why not try the phone?  

Even though younger generations prefer to text, and texting is more efficient for on-site teams, the Living Lab research revealed that following up over the phone was much more effective than following up over email or SMS. In fact, personalized text responses performed even lower than generic texts.

I took a million notes and can’t wait to share them with my teams. I’m going to use the insights she gave me to adjust my company’s entire sales process. Truly great content and research. A+!

Study response

The Living Lab research was first unveiled at Zillow Unlock 2019, the company’s annual conference for multifamily and other real estate professionals. Abby says throughout the conference partners kept asking her questions, some pushing back on her tactics and recommendations. “It really opened my eyes to the need for this kind of data in the industry,” Abby says. “It inspires me to keep trying to add value like this for our partners because there’s so much more to be done.”

Fill out the form at the top of the page to download the fact sheet on the study’s findings to share with your team.