We receive a lot of positive feedback from Realtors about this particular feature which is to be expected; it allows people to market a home on behalf of the listing agent so it’s a win-win. But does it actually generate results? We have some fascinating data that highlights not only how listing data is being shared, but also what online services actually result in a clickback.
Interestingly the number one share method is email, Facebook is second with the two services combining for just over half the total shares:
But Facebook is more than twice as effective when you look at how many times people actually act when they receive a share notification. More importantly, when combined, email and Facebook account for an amazing 95% of traffic back to the single property Website:
We can make some interesting observations here:
1. tweeting seems to be a shout in the dark – with 13% of single property Websites shared via twitter hardly anyone (0.4%) responds.
2. the email data doesn’t include Gmail, AOLmail or Yahoo mail. If you combine all email services, clickbacks total 30.1%. Now add Facebook again and the two services account for 98.17% of all sharing. Does any other service matter? It would seem not.
3. Of 298 possible share services people only use 16.
4. LinkedIn, the so called ‘real business’ social network, has a valueless clickback rate of 0.12%.
5. Each share generated an average of two clickbacks. This encompasses 100% of shares, including those that didn’t generate a clickback. I don’t know of a single marketing method that is anywhere near that effective.
6. Only 5% of the shares came from outside of North America (US and Canada)
7. Some single property Websites generated significantly more shares. There seems to be several reasons why this might have occurred, examples include:
- Website that leverage social media extensively
- luxury property
- Websites with video and a lot more information than traditional single property Websites
If the data is indicative of future sharing behavior (and early signs are that it is; the numbers are pretty much the same no matter what period we look at) Realtors who predominantly market using a combination of single property Websites, email and Facebook will save time, money and energy. They do this by leveraging the collective and inherently viral marketing power of these collective services.
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