Before we get into the data, we want to give you a quick breakdown of the sources of traffic, the tracking methods, and the conversion points. It’s also worth mentioning that Ascent is a new property in its first year of lease-up based in Westminster, CO which is a Northwest suburb of Denver. The population is just above 112,000.
Ascent is using three of our products, incentive management, website management, and digital ads. They also advertise with the big 3 ILS’ including Costar, RentPath, and Zillow. In addition to those, they pay for a few smaller ILS’ and maintain profiles at many others.
First let’s talk about the website.
The sources of traffic to the website come in three flavors: organic search results (ie Google, Bing, Yahoo), direct traffic, and pay per click advertising.
Once a visitor lands on the website from one of those three methods, we’ll try to convert them into a lead. We use our incentive management software as one method. We’ll track any interactions with the incentives to start understanding the desires of this visitor. We’ve also integrated pricing and availability with their Property Management Software (PMS), in this case that data is coming from RealPage. This keeps the visitor on the site longer and builds more trust in a way that hiding pricing and availability won’t. Trust is a major factor in converting leads and we also build it with faster loading times, better usability, higher quality images and video, and consistent, accurate data.
At this point we’re waiting for a conversion, either in the form of an email or a call. Emails and calls automatically flow into Ascent’s customer relationship management (CRM) tool along with any tour request and/or incentive data. We use a unique and trackable phone number to make sure calls are being attributed correctly.
Finally tours are scheduled and leases are signed.
Each ILS has a similar flow: search for an apartment, schedule a tour, sign a lease.
