Case Study

    23% Outbound Conversion with Hot Leads

    A PE-backed HVAC contractor in a major Midwest metro used Arch's Hot Leads to route engaged email recipients to CSRs in real time. Six months in: a 47x ROI, a ~23% call-to-invoice conversion, and a 12.4pp drop in churn.

    Hot Leads Engagement Funnel
    From email send to booked invoice. 6-month campaign.
    Live signal
    Emails Sent
    Reactivation campaign
    All recipients
    Hot Leads
    624
    Step 1
    Outbound Calls
    ~9% coverage
    57
    Step 2
    Invoices
    ~23% call-to-invoice
    13
    Step 3
    Coverage
    ~9%
    57 of 624 called
    Call Conversion
    ~23%
    vs. 1–2% benchmark
    47.3x
    ROI
    ~23%
    Call-to-Invoice Conversion
    $25
    Cost per Lead

    The Problem: Engagement Without Action

    The contractor's reactivation campaigns were already working. Direct mail drops reactivated lapsed customers. Follow-up emails kept the brand visible. Homeowners opened, clicked, and engaged. But there was no operational bridge between email engagement and outbound calling. The marketing team tracked opens and clicks in dashboards. The CSR team dialed from lists sorted by last service date. The two workflows didn't talk to each other.

    Engagement Without Action

    Reactivation emails were generating opens, clicks, and repeat interactions. But none of that signal made it to the CSR team in time to act.

    Two Workflows, No Bridge

    Marketing tracked engagement in dashboards. CSRs dialed from lists sorted by last service date. Homeowners who clicked Tuesday were calling competitors by Thursday.

    What Changed: Hot Leads Surfaced the Signal

    Arch's Hot Leads feature monitors email engagement in real time. When a homeowner crosses an engagement threshold — multiple opens, a click-through, repeat interactions across campaigns — the system flags them as a hot lead and routes them to the CSR team.

    1

    Email Drops on a Regular Cadence

    Arch manages the campaign end-to-end: audience selection, creative, and delivery. The contractor's customer list runs through Arch's AI models to segment by propensity and lapse status.

    2

    Engagement Tracked Automatically

    Opens, clicks, and repeat interactions are monitored in real time. No manual report pulls. No dashboard checking.

    3

    Hot Leads Flagged and Routed

    When a homeowner crosses the engagement threshold and has been lapsed for three or more months, the CSR team is notified with full context: which email they engaged with, what offer it referenced, and their service history.

    4

    CSR Calls Within the Engagement Window

    Not with a cold script. With a specific reason. The homeowner picks up a call from a company they were literally just thinking about. It feels like attentive service, not a sales pitch.

    The Results

    Six months of campaign data from a major Midwest HVAC contractor.

    Total Engaged Leads (Hot Leads)
    624
    Follow-up Calls Made
    57
    Outbound Coverage Rate
    ~9%
    Invoices from Follow-up Calls
    13
    Call-to-Invoice Conversion Rate
    ~23%
    Engaged Leads with No Follow-up
    567
    624
    Total Hot Leads
    9%
    Coverage
    ~23%
    Call Conversion

    The Coverage Gap Is the Opportunity

    The 23% conversion rate is strong. But 9% coverage means the team is only reaching a fraction of the available opportunity. Of 624 engaged leads, 567 received no outbound follow-up. If coverage expanded from 9% to 50%, reaching 312 leads at the observed conversion rate could produce roughly 72 invoices instead of 13 — from the same campaign investment, with zero incremental marketing spend.

    Learnings

    1

    Conversion of 23% Is More Than 10x the Industry Benchmark

    Industry benchmarks for outbound CSR conversion in home services hover around 1-2%. Hot lead calls converted at roughly 23% — not because the CSRs are superhuman, but because the email engagement signal pre-qualifies the lead. Recency, relevance, and trust compound at once.

    2

    Coverage Is the Constraint, Not Conversion

    Of 624 engaged leads, 567 received no outbound follow-up. If coverage expanded from 9% to even 50%, the math shifts dramatically. At the observed conversion rate, reaching 312 engaged leads instead of 57 could produce roughly 72 invoices instead of 13 — from the same campaign investment, with zero incremental marketing spend.

    3

    Churn Drops When You Reach Out Before They Defect

    HVAC customer churn fell from 55% to 42.6% since launch. That puts the contractor well below the 75th-percentile industry benchmark of 58% and approaching the 50th-percentile mark of 36%. A 12.4 percentage point reduction in churn means more customers stay active, book recurring maintenance, and generate lifetime revenue.

    4

    You Already Have the Data

    If you're sending marketing emails, your customers are telling you who's interested by opening and clicking. That signal is sitting in your email platform right now. The gap is operational: building a repeatable process that routes those signals to CSRs in real time, every day, without someone remembering to pull a report.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    How many engaged leads went unfollowed this week?

    See how Arch Hot Leads routes engaged email recipients to your CSR team in real time — before the window closes.