I read a presentation from the Apartment Internet Marketing group that presented some very interesting facts.  The eye catching facts were:

• 20% of prospects will visit over Saturday and Sunday.
• 46% of leads will attempt to contact an apartment community after 5:oopm to and before 8:00am.

Combine this information with followup data and the question is more interesting.  Consider:

• Over 90% of internet contacts followed up within an hour move to the next step toward leasing and that over 80% fail in the 2nd hour.
• Also, consider that after the third follow up additional renting is negligible. 

Clearly, the old 9-5, Mon-Fri paradigm leaves much to be desired.  Essentially, this implies we fail to address about 66% of our potential opportunity to close prospects.  For our business, we plan to increase coverage over the next few months to capture this opportunity.  We can provide phone and Internet  coverage for every property from 8am to 9pm M-F and provide 15 hours of weekend coverage by adding a single staff member.  For 900 apartments at a cost of $2.50per month per unit, we can increase our potential lease opportunity by more than 60%.

What do you think?