Multifamily Lead Nurturing: 0th-Hour — The “Miracle Hour”
Summary
In multifamily lead nurturing, the emails sent in the 0th-Hour get the highest number of tours scheduled. But, more than the content of the email, their success relies on the time in which they are sent.
This article from the Multifamily Lead Nurturing series talks about the 0th-Hour — The “Miracle Hour” — of sending the email.
This post answers the following questions:
- What is the 0th-Hour?
- Why is the 0th-Hour the Miracle Hour in Multifamily Lead Nurturing?
- What is the Fogg Behavior Model?
- How it Relates to the 0th-Hour Email’s Success?
What does the series include?
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing: An Introduction to Multifamily Marketers
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing: The Nurturing Sequence
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing: 0th-Hour: The “Miracle Hour” <current article>
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing: Anatomy of an Email
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing: Best Practices for Effective CTAs
0th-Hour — The “Miracle Hour”— of Multifamily Lead Nurturing
What’s the secret to effective lead nurturing? It is reaching out to your prospects in the 0th-Hour.
Then what about the winning sequence and the best practices? Well, those matter too, but how quickly you respond to the prospects matters the most.
Did you know that up to 35-50% of the sales go to the vendor that responds first?
Similarly, a customer schedules a tour with the property that sends emails immediately after contact creation.
It isn’t surprising then that in multifamily lead nurturing, the emails sent in the 0th-Hour are the most successful.
Let us see how.
What is the 0th-Hour?
The 0th-Hour refers to the hour in which the prospect fills the guest card.
Thus, the 0th-Hour lead nurturing email is sent during the initial hour of contact creation. It is sent right after the prospect fills out the guest card on the property website. It is also known as the welcome email or the first response email.
Why is the 0th-Hour the Miracle Hour of lead nurturing?
The Hyly.AI Data Science Team discovered that emails sent in the 0th-Hour perform miraculously well against those sent in the 4th hour.
The emails sent in the 0th-Hour had only a 14% higher open rate and a 50% more click rate. Yet, the number of tours scheduled was 83% more as compared to the 4th hour.
How does behavior psychology support the 0th-Hour performance? The 0th-Hour email performs well because you nudge the prospects at their peak interest! This is explained next in the Fogg Behavior Model.
What is the Fogg Behavior Model?
Dr. BJ Fogg, the founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, gave a model to study general human behavior. Let’s have a look at the Fogg Behavior Model to learn how behavior psychology supports the 0th-Hour.
The Fogg Behavior Model shows behavior as a product of three components:
- Motivation: Motivators that drive action
- Ability: The ease or simplicity of doing a task
- Prompts: A trigger or nudge to take action
Behavior = Motivation * Ability * Prompts
When three of them converge simultaneously, they cause a behavior.
A person with high motivation and ability falls above the behavior activation threshold (the action line). A prompt here makes them take action.
A person with either low ability or low motivation will fall below this threshold where the prompts fail.
How does Fogg Behavior Model relate to the 0th-Hour email’s success?
To understand how Fogg Behavior Model influences the 0th-Hour success, let’s see what conspires during this hour:
- The prospect visits a property website and fills in a guest card.
- They receive the 0th-Hour email with a prompt to Schedule a Tour.
- The prospect schedules a tour based on the prompt.
In the 0th-Hour, all three components of the Fogg Behavior Model play together.
- Motivation: The prospect has a high motivation to lease an apartment.
- Ability: The prospect can easily schedule a tour.
- Prompt: They get an email from the property with a Schedule a Tour CTA.
The high motivation and ability make the prospects fall above the behavior activation threshold. When prospects get the prompt at this perfect hour, their chances of scheduling a tour skyrocket.
0th-Hour Sample Emails
The 0th-Hour email proves that more than the email content, the time when you send the email makes the difference.
However, this is the first lead nurturing email, and first impressions always matter. There can be no excuse for bad email including sloppy copywriting, formatting issues, etc.
Below are the examples for the 0th-Hour email, with and without images. Due to brilliant copy, they both perform well.
Read our previous article to know what makes multifamily lead nurturing emails good or bad.
Conclusion
Sending the 0th-Hour email is a smart move for multifamily lead nurturing. But that’s not all. It is also what the prospects need: a nudge and guidance for the next step. Prospects have the highest motivation during the 0th-Hour. Hence, during this hour, we see the highest number of tours scheduled.
To be effective, multifamily lead nurturing emails need to be perfect. They should have the perfect copy, the best sending time, the right drip sequence, and the ideal email structure.
So that is what we discuss in our next article: The email anatomy for multifamily lead nurturing.
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