HVAC Lead Trends: Day of the Week Performance Analysis
Bonus newsletter!
👋 Hey, Jon here, again, for the second time today (I know, I know).
I couldn’t help myself and wanted to write a second article to help answer a question that’s been on my mind for some time now:
What day are people most likely to contact your business?
I’ve said over and over that leads and clicks don’t tell the full story of the revenue flow for your business, but for the purpose of this article I am going to look at leads to see what days are the busiest in terms of lead volume.
Note: ~11,000 Google and Bing PPC leads from October 1st - December 12th were used in this sample.
Mondays Are the Busiest Days for Lead Submissions
Across all conversion tools (phone, form fills, chats, online scheduling) 22% of PPC leads were submitted on Monday in this sample.
So, if there were any day of the week that you’d want your team to be at their best (maybe treat breakfast or bring in donuts?) it’s going to be Monday.
If you feel “light” on Monday in terms of lead volume, it might be a good trigger to reach out to your marketing vendor, mystery shop your website to ensure everything is working properly, or follow-up on unsold estimates.
Remember, this is a sample and the trends may be different for your business, especially if weather changes sharply throughout the week, but this is something we’ve seen consistently from many HVAC companies across the US.
But why is Monday the busiest day for lead volume?
Perhaps it’s because customers spent more time at their homes over the weekend running their systems and noticed issues. Perhaps Mondays are when people want to start their week off right and take care of their appointments.
Whatever the reasons may be (we didn’t do any surveys, the above is just some fun speculation), Mondays are the busiest!
This finding was also consistent with new customers: of the total leads submitted that ended up being new customers to the business, 23% converted on a Monday!
And interestingly enough, Tuesdays were the second busiest lead volume days with 17% of leads submitted.
That makes 39% of total leads (from PPC) submitted on Monday and Tuesday.
Bonus Insight, SEO: I analyzed some organic lead data as well, and found very similar trends for the busiest lead volume days of the week: 23% of organic leads converted on a Monday, 21% on Tuesday, 17% on Wednesday, 15% on Thursday, 16% on Friday 5% on Saturday and 4% on Sunday.
Lead Submissions Gradually Decline As The Week Goes On With the Fewest Number of Leads Submitted on Sunday
Saturday and Sunday accounted for just 16% of lead volume (10% on Saturday, 6% on Sunday), which makes sense as most HVAC businesses are closed or have limited hours and unless it is an emergency, it can wait until the week starts.
15% of leads were submitted Wednesday, 14% were submitted Thursday, and there was a slight up-tick on Friday with 15% of the total leads submitted.
Let’s also have a look at the busiest days for leads that came in from new customers to the business:
23% of new customer leads converted on a Monday
19% of new customer leads converted on a Tuesday
15% of new customer leads converted on a Wednesday
13% of new customer leads converted on a Thursday
14% of new customertal leads converted on a Friday
9% of new customer leads converted on a Saturday
6% of new customer leads converted on a Sunday
Also, in chart form:
Day of the Week Performance Analysis: Do Conversion Tools Affect When a Customer Converts?
Originally, I’d planned to break out lead volume by day for each conversion tool, but I didn’t want you to go cross-eyed.
Phone calls, form submissions, and chat leads all had nearly identical lead submission distribution by day (most leads were submitted Monday, followed by Tuesday, with declines Wednesday and Thursday, a slight up-tick Friday, and then a bigger drop on the weekend).
However.
I did notice something with online scheduling tools.
21% of leads submitted via scheduling an appointment online did so on a Monday, but…
13% of leads submitted through online scheduling happened on a Sunday!
That’s more than twice as much as the other conversion tools (which averaged about 5.5% of their lead volume on Sundays).
And for the contractors in this sample who offer online scheduling, 16% of their total Sunday leads came from that tool.
Typically, 7% of PPC leads convert via online scheduling on websites that offer it, but it’s no surprise to see that number double on a Sunday when a customer likely assumes no one is around to answer the phone or respond to a chat/form.
One final interesting nugget of data was that 15% of leads submitted on a Sunday (across all conversion tools) ended up becoming an install job.
Closing Thoughts
If this data does one thing, it helps us better understand our customers so we can make informed decisions that improve business outcomes.
It’s fascinating that the data is so consistent in that Monday and Tuesday are the busiest days for lead volume across both organic and PPC and samples of HVAC contractors in different areas of the US.
Again, it could be different for your business, but low lead volume on Monday is a lagging indicator that probably should prompt you to take some action to prepare for a week of lower demand (unless you see a weather change coming).
I’d also be interested to see if more aggressive messaging on home pages during Mondays and Tuesdays (limited time offers even going as far as 24-hour or 48-hour offers) knowing that those are the days customers are shopping around and contacting HVAC businesses would help you ensure that you are converting as many of those shoppers as possible.
I’ll be back with more data grouped by day of the week (e.g. do customers who submit leads on Mondays turn into sold jobs more often than other days of the week) but until then, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week!
Until next time…
-Jon