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Horus reads your data and answers in plain language, with recommended shifts in budget, bids, caps, and geography. No more generic AI takes. Just your numbers, explained.
Sample output using illustrative data. Your Horus dashboard reflects your own vendor performance, ZIPs, subtypes, and pipeline.
Fund live transfers, cut EverQuote sharply, keep data leads modest, and reserve mid-month dollars in case live-transfer volume under-fills.
Your two main levers are daily transfer count cap and max bid. Raise the cap first if you're hitting it; only raise the bid in controlled steps and watch HAC.
Live transfers still convert, but at current cost they produce households at higher HAC than your best data-lead subtypes — mix control, not “buy more of everything,” is the buying story.
You spent ~$5,090 this month in ZIPs with zero closed households.Horus found the biggest waste pockets in Georgia and Florida ZIP codes where leads were purchased but no households closed.
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Close rate is trending up (12‑mo 6.8% → 90‑day 7.6% → 30‑day 8.4%) because data-lead subtypes are more disciplined and live transfers remain a stable anchor.
Two flags: EverQuote Pro deterioration (close rate dropped 6.3% → 1.9% over 30 days) and a live-transfer performance gap your allocation hasn't matched yet.
Direct recommendation: put the majority of next month's budget behind SmartFinancial Live Transfers and QuoteWizard live-transfer subtypes. They are closing at 4–5× the rate of your data-lead vendors. EverQuote Pro is failing on recent signal and should be cut sharply. QuoteWizard data leads are marginal; fund them lightly if at all.
Recommended allocation
| Source | Monthly Budget | Action | Confidence |
|---|
| SmartFinancial Live Transfers | $10K–$12K | Raise daily count cap; test bid ceiling around $55–$65 | Medium |
| QuoteWizard Live Transfers | $6K–$8K | Fund Wizard Premier Auto Calls + Multicar Auto Calls | Medium |
| QuoteWizard Data Leads | $3K–$4K | Modest volume only; do not grow | Low-Medium |
| MediaAlpha | $1K–$1.5K | Small hold; watch for recovery | Low |
| EverQuote Pro | $500 or pause | Monitoring only — do not grow | High |
| Reserve / Redirect | $4K–$5K | Redirect mid-month if live-transfer volume does not fill | — |
Live transfers are managed through daily count cap and max bid, not fixed lead orders. Actual fill depends on bid competitiveness, vendor supply, geography, time of day, and competing agents.
Why: SmartFinancial Live Transfers are your strongest performer: 21.3% close rate and $201 HAC over 30 days. QuoteWizard live-transfer subtypes are the second-best story: Wizard Premier Auto Calls are closing at 33.3% with a $201 HAC on 36 transfers.
EverQuote Pro is the urgent problem: 1.9% close rate on 259 leads with a $574 HAC. That is a large enough sample to act on. The 12-month record is better, but historical strength does not justify meaningful spend when the current 30-day signal is failing.
Bottom line: fund live transfers, keep QuoteWizard data leads modest, cut EverQuote sharply, hold MediaAlpha small, and preserve reserve dollars in case live-transfer volume under-fills.
Live transfers are your strongest performer — your two main levers are daily transfer count cap and max bid in each vendor portal.
The two levers you control
- Daily transfer count cap — how many transfers per day you'll accept. If you're not hitting your cap every day, raising it costs nothing until transfers actually arrive. Check this first.
- Max bid — the ceiling you're willing to pay per transfer. A higher bid may win more auctions, but it raises your average cost per transfer and therefore HAC unless close rate holds.
SmartFinancial Live Transfers — bid guidance
Your current average cost per transfer is ~$43 net of credits/refunds. At your observed 21.3% close rate:
| Average Cost / Bid Level | Estimated HAC |
|---|
| $43 current avg | ~$202 |
| $55 | ~$258 |
| $65 | ~$305 |
| $75 | ~$352 |
| $85 | ~$399 |
Pick the HAC level you're comfortable with, then use the corresponding cost level as your bid ceiling.
QuoteWizard Live Transfers — bid guidance
Wizard Premier Auto Calls: 36 transfers, 33.3% close rate, ~$201 HAC.
Multicar Auto Calls: 7 transfers, 42.9% close — promising, but too thin to set bid strategy from. One fewer bind drops the close rate to ~29%.
Using Wizard Premier Auto Calls as the reliable sample:
| Average Cost / Bid Level | Estimated HAC |
|---|
| $67 current avg | ~$201 |
| $75 | ~$225 |
| $85 | ~$255 |
| $95 | ~$285 |
| $105 | ~$315 |
FL Live Transfer — Broad: 8 transfers, 25% close, $232 HAC. Treat it as a secondary subtype and watch it separately if QuoteWizard allows subtype-level controls.
What to do right now
- Check your daily transfer count cap in both portals. If you're hitting the cap consistently, raise it — that is the first and cheapest lever.
- If you're not hitting the cap and volume is still low, the constraint may be bid, supply, geography, or time of day. A controlled bid increase, one step at a time, is the next test.
- Watch close rate as bid rises. If close rate degrades as you win more transfers, HAC will rise faster than the table suggests.
The current month is only 8 days in, so this month is too thin to judge. Last month is the most recent complete performance window.
Headline metrics — last month
- Total leads: 1,097
- Total spend: $23,936
- Blended close rate: 6.5%
- Blended HAC: $337.13
- Blended CPL: $21.82
Data leads are driving the improvement.
Last month's data leads produced 936 leads, 28 sold households, and $8,086 spend. The blended data-lead close rate is improving as spend shifts into the subtypes that are actually converting.
The strongest data-lead subtypes are QuoteWizard Premium Auto Search and Wizard Premier Auto, producing in the $192–$205 HAC range. Recent subtype controls are improving the mix: lower-performing subtypes have been demoted, while the productive subtypes are carrying more of the volume.
Live transfers are closing, but HAC is relatively high.
Live transfers still close at a higher raw rate, but cost pressure is weakening the buying case. Last month's live transfers produced 161 transfers, 43 sold households, and $15,850 spend, with a $368 HAC. This may be acceptable to you, but relative to the HAC of your data leads, it is underperforming. You can get the binds cheaper through data leads.
The issue is not that live transfers are bad. The issue is that they are more sensitive to bid level, subtype mix, geography, time of day, and refund/credit mix. If bid costs rise or lower-quality calls fill the extra volume, HAC can move against you quickly.
Geographic standout:
Lake County is the strongest longer-term signal: 29.4% close rate on 34 leads, with 10 sold households. Seminole is also strong at 27.5% close on 40 leads. If vendors allow geographic targeting, these are worth testing for incremental volume.
Broward remains the weak spot. ZIPs 33313, 33311, 33021, and 33060 are producing spend with weak close rates and should be capped or suppressed where possible.
Caveats:
This month MTD is too early to read. Some late-month leads may still mature, so last month's close rate may tick up slightly. Live-transfer samples can move quickly by subtype, especially where transfer count is low.
Bottom line: Last month's best buying story is not "buy more of everything." It is mix control. Data-lead performance is improving because weaker subtypes are being demoted and better subtypes are carrying more volume. Live transfers are still converting, but at the current cost level they are producing households at a higher HAC than your best data-lead subtypes. Keep tightening data-lead subtype allocation, hold live transfers accountable to HAC, and test more volume in the geographies already proving they can convert.
The biggest waste pockets this month are in Georgia ZIPs you're not closing, followed by several Florida ZIPs with zero binds.
Top waste pockets — dollars spent with no closed households
| ZIP | County | Leads | Sold | Spend | Close Rate |
|---|
| 30501 | Hall, GA | 11 | 0 | $791 | 0% |
| 30901 | Richmond, GA | 11 | 0 | $749 | 0% |
| 31201 | Bibb, GA | 11 | 0 | $707 | 0% |
| 30601 | Clarke, GA | 11 | 0 | $665 | 0% |
| 33301 | Broward, FL | 13 | 0 | $608 | 0% |
| 34102 | Collier, FL | 12 | 0 | $565 | 0% |
| 33602 | Hillsborough, FL | 13 | 0 | $550 | 0% |
| 33101 | Miami-Dade, FL | 11 | 0 | $455 | 0% |
Total in zero-close ZIPs: ~$5,090 with nothing to show for it.
Partial-waste ZIPs — leads coming in but closing at low rates
- 32935 (Brevard, FL) — 6 leads, 1 sold, $128 spend, 16.7% close — ~$107 wasted
- 32822 (Orange, FL) — 5 leads, 1 sold, $122 spend, 20% close — ~$98 wasted
What's driving this
The four Georgia ZIPs (Hall, Richmond, Bibb, Clarke) are all 11 leads / 0 sold — that's a consistent pattern, not random noise. Combined waste: ~$2,912. These look like a systematic coverage problem in those Georgia markets, not bad luck.
The Florida ZIPs (Broward, Collier, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade) are similarly clean zeros. Broward county as a whole is your highest-volume county this month at 33 leads with only 1 sold (3% close rate) — the waste is concentrated there.
Recommended action
Suppress or reduce lead purchasing in these ZIPs. The Georgia cluster in particular — four ZIPs with identical lead counts and zero closes — suggests these are being fed by a vendor campaign that isn't working in those markets. Check which vendor(s) are sourcing those GA ZIPs and pull back volume there first.
One caveat: Some leads from the last two weeks may not have fully matured yet, so a handful of those zeros could still flip. But at 11 leads per ZIP with no movement, the pattern is clear enough to act on now.
Here's the 30/90/12-month close rate picture.
Blended close rate trend
- Last 30 days: 8.4%
- Last 90 days: 7.6%
- Last 12 months: 6.8%
Your blended close rate is improving, and the lift is coming from a cleaner buying mix — especially better control over data-lead subtypes.
Data-lead performance is leading the trend.
Reallocating spend by lead subtype has improved the overall data-lead mix from 4.9% close / $192 HAC, to 5.7% close / $194 HAC, to 6.5% close / $185 HAC. Lower-performing subtypes have been demoted, which is driving up close rate and bind volume while keeping spend and HAC stable.
Live transfers remain stable and positive.
SmartFinancial Live Transfers are still a strong anchor: 18.7% close over 90 days and 21.3% over the last 30 days. That is not a runaway spike; it is a stable, high-performing source that continues to support the blended improvement.
The key change is mix discipline.
Instead of treating each vendor as one bucket, the account is shifting spend toward the subtypes that actually produce households and away from the segments dragging down HAC.
Bottom line: The trend is positive. Close rate is improving because data-lead buying is becoming more disciplined at the subtype level, while live transfers remain a stable high-converting anchor. The buying decision is to keep tightening subtype controls, protect live-transfer volume, and watch whether the 30-day improvement holds as spend scales.
Three things are worth your attention.
1. EverQuote Pro is deteriorating — and the signal is confirmed.
Close rate has dropped from 6.3% over 12 months, to 5.0% over 90 days, to 1.9% over the last 30 days. That is not noise — it is a consistent directional decline across all three windows on a 259-lead sample. At a $574 HAC over the last 30 days, you are spending roughly 3.3× your SmartFinancial live-transfer HAC to close the same household. The data supports reducing or pausing EverQuote Pro, not holding it at current spend.
2. Live transfers are doing the heavy lifting — and they may be underfunded relative to data leads.
Last month, live transfers closed at 28.3% versus 3.0% for data leads. Your best live-transfer subtypes — QuoteWizard Wizard Premier Auto Calls at 33.3% and SmartFinancial Unsub/unfiltered at 18.9% — are producing HACs well below your blended average. Meanwhile, data leads received nearly as much spend as live transfers: $12,086 versus $13,420. The allocation does not match the performance gap.
3. Broward County is a consistent waste pocket.
Four Broward ZIPs — 33313, 33311, 33021, and 33060 — show up in the 30-day waste list with a combined ~$1,655 in spend and weak-to-zero close rates. If your data-lead vendors allow ZIP-level exclusions, Broward is the first place to look. It will not move the needle dramatically, but it is low-hanging fruit.
Bottom line: If you are heading into next month's budget planning, the EverQuote Pro deterioration and the live-transfer performance gap are the two issues that should drive allocation. Cut or pause the deteriorating source, move more budget toward proven live-transfer subtypes, and clean up the obvious Broward waste pockets.