Turns out not everyone got the "ease into January" memo.
While most folks are still trying to remember their passwords after the break, property managers and e-commerce teams are out here locking in demos like it's Black Friday. The data from week one is giving us serious FOMO - let's see who's crushing it while the rest of us are still finding our desks.
1. E-commerce teams aren't taking a post-holiday break
Time off is like a 404 page when it comes to demand for ecommerce software. Because it’s always buy’o clock somewhere. It’s no wonder that the category dominating inbound volume in the first week of the year happens to be retail and ecommerce software:
- 1,466 sessions (highest across all tracked categories)
- 383 meetings booked
What's driving this? January is when e-commerce teams seem to be feeling their holiday pain points most acutely. Every bottleneck, every manual process, every missed opportunity during peak season is still fresh in their minds. They're not just looking for solutions - they're looking to never have those problems again and they’re on a shopping spree themselves.
2. It’s all about conversion, conversion, conversion. The new theme in real estate (tech).
While e-commerce is winning the volume game, Real Estate & Property Management software teams are showing us what pipeline efficiency looks like:
- 533 sessions (about 1/3rd of e-commerce volume)
- 76.55% conversion rate
Why now? Property managers and real estate teams seem to be primed to set up their technology stack for the year. With budgets refreshed and last year's inefficiencies still in mind, they're not just browsing - looks like they're ready to buy.
3. Is January too late or too early for your OKR/GDPR planning?
HR software is one of the surprising heavy hitters amongst all categories, in the first week of the year. Not only do HR teams seem to be actively on the lookout, the first week of January!, they also seem to be pretty intentional about it. (With a 40% conversion from meeting requests to booked meeting in the category)
- 686 inbound sessions
- 276 meetings booked
- Consistent, predictable pipeline
Meanwhile, Legal and Compliance Software shows similar efficiency (38.64%) but at a much smaller scale:
- 44 inbound sessions
- 17 meetings booked
- Higher stakes per conversion
The ~40% conversion, while lesser than the typical numbers (see the new benchmarks set by these rockstar teams), might just be a combination of fewer team members taking meetings during this period, and availabilities showing up a week down the line and buyers wanting to talk sooner.
What this means for your Q1 strategy
- For E-commerce software teams: Your buyers are still actively thinking about their buyers(1,466 sessions!). Tricky to fix, a treat if done well.
- For Real Estate software teams: Your 76.55% conversion rate shows you've cracked the qualification code. Time to carefully scale that top-of-funnel while maintaining quality.
- For everyone else: Both these categories prove that "slow January" is a myth - it's all about alignment with your buyers' planning and pain cycles.
Looking ahead
The teams winning right now aren't waiting for the market to "warm up" - they're catching buyers exactly when they're most motivated to solve last year's problems. To extend the SaaS famous Jason Lemkin piece. The greatest revenue teams seem to be killing it on the first week of January too.
Key Metrics at a Glance
- Total Inbound Sessions: 8,036
- Total Meetings Booked: 3,269
- E-commerce Sessions: 1,466 (highest volume)
- Real Estate Conversion Rate: 76.55% (highest conversion)
- Overall Average Conversion: 40.67% (The slump is real)
