If you don't hook the visitor on their first visit, that's no reason not to keep in touch. Perhaps they're just in the research phase. Perhaps they didn't find their dream home yet.

There are many reasons it takes people many weeks and months to settle on their home purchase decision. Conventional wisdom says you need to follow-up with prospects for six months or more to finally reel them in. Following up is worthwhile, too, as the cost of getting an initial visitor to your site is far greater than marketing to someone already in your database. So how should you be following up with past traffic? Here are a few effective ways:

Obtain your past traffic's information before they leave

Yes, this is obvious. But you'd be surprised how many sites just let you walk away without any call-to-action. 78% of home shoppers visit more than three sites before reaching out to a person (NAR and Google's "The Digital House Hunt" Study). Providing lead capture forms is a great way to obtain your traffic's contact information before they leave, enabling meaningful, effective follow-ups.

For example, offer highly demanded, localized content such as "South Beach, Miami's 2014 Home Shoppers Guide" to home shoppers who enter their name and email address. By doing so, you obtain their contact information as well as their area of interest.