What is in store for the World Economy & Property in 2012?

by Property Market Commentary •

The World Bank released its report recently on their forecasts for the World economy in 2012. You can see the executive summary here which is definitely worth reading – http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPROSPECTS/Resources/334934-1322593305595/8287139-1326374900917/ExecutiveSummary_GEPJan2012_Eng.pdf

We need to keep in mind that the World Bank is often wrong of course. Pretty much most economists have been terrible at forecasting since 2007. After all in 2007 all forecasts pretty much were for continue strong growth throughout the economy.

So what does this herald for the Australian property market in 2012? No doubt 2012 is not going top be a great year. Notwithstanding what happens in the real economy, consumer confidence in general is so pessimistic that I can not see a turn around of any great significance happening this year. Consumers are going through a sustained cycle of fiscal consolidation – they are focused on saving and not spending.

I read an interesting article on LCD screens recently. Apparently there is not one single manufacturer of LCD screens that is currently profitable in the World. For me this was an interesting point, as we all know just how hard our retailers have been pushing LCD TV’s etc over the past year or so. So one one hand we have manufacturers not making money and on the other we have retailers also who generally are either not making money or who are operating on increasingly slim margins. So I think we need to ask ourselves what would happen if the World did enter GFC 2? What could these manufacturers and retailers do to try and stiumulate demand from consumers to combat the economic slowdown and the further reduction in consumer confidence that results? Not a lot I would say.

I think in general this is the true underlying risk of a second GFC. Everyone, whether it is developing countries like China, developed countries such as the EU and US, and even at a micro-economic level individual manufacturers and retailers, have less wiggle room. They have less reserves, they have less margin, they have pretty much less of everything that they could use to combat the economic slowdown.

What does this actually mean? It means a high posibility of sustained slowdown with a slow recovery.

Look who is going Places in Project Marketing (our recent newsletter)

by Company Information & Annoucements, For Developers, For Property Owners & Managers, For Real Estate Agents, Property Software, Websites •

This month Brightfox is proud to introduce Brisbane based project marketer, Place Projects.
In the last few months Place Projects have not only adopted foxEnterprise to manage the sales, marketing and reporting functions for their project sales but have also released a brand new website with a custom design by Brightfox utilising the power of the Umbraco Content Management System.

The Place brand launched onto the Queensland residential real estate scene in late 2002 and since then has grown significantly in both recognition and in market position.

Real Estate power houses – Bruce Goddard, Syd Walker, Damian Hackett and Lachlan
Walker partnered with this growing name, to open the Place Projects office. Understanding that their project marketing needs were going to be immensely more complex than a residential sales office, they approached Brightfox looking for a high quality CRM system and a website that could keep up with the times.

The Place Property group had an existing in-house CRM software application in use
throughout their offices. But to suit their specific project marketing needs
Place Projects spent a considerable amount of time investigating the various
options available on the market before deciding on foxEnterprise and according
to Kathy Cuthbert of Place Projects.

“. . . We never found a system before that catered for
projects. . . and the system is amazing and so user friendly”

and 3 months down the track…

“Since using foxEnterprise we get help with anything
we ask for and if it can’t be fixed straight away or the
person we speak to can’t help us, any issues
arenormally resolved within 24hrs.”

Place Projects is a business involved in launching and marketing
new ‘off the plan’ Projects, so it was essential that the website presented the
Company and the Projects it was marketing professionally. The website needed to
be user friendly and be easily updated, with both new Project content but also
up to date research from Place Projects own internal research division.

The Place Projects website has been built from the ground up to work
seamlessly with foxEnterprise, ensuring that all prospects are imediately
captured and profiled for each Project within the foxEnterprise CRM. The
Brightfox CMS (Content Management System) ensures that Place Projects is 100% in
control of the content on their website, updating as they need to, thereby
ensuring it’s up to date and encouraging repeat visitors to the site.

and the results…   

“We had our projects website designed and operational within a couple of months, the training for it was great and even now, when there is a question it’s answeredin no time at all. It’s so user friendly we can make 99% of the change ourselves”

Real Estate Open Homes, Botox & Luxury Car Test Drives – A Winning Sales Combination . . . . ?

by For Real Estate Agents, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

The other day an interesting article came across our desks here at the Brightfox office courtesy of Real Estate Business Online.

Free botox, test drives to lure agents to listing

According to the article an ingenious, for want of a better word, Californian Listing Agent  has teamed up with his local Audi dealer to provide prospective sales agents the opportunity to test drive the latest range while attending open houses for the agent’s multi-million dollar listings.

Traditionally a nice spread of good food was enough to seal the deal, but with competition growing he wanted to push beyond this approach.

. . . “We look at ourselves not just as agents, but as promoters, and want agents from Malibu to Palos Verdes either attending this event or at least talking about it,” he said of the US$8.495 million Beverly Hills-based property.

The offer includes $300 worth of free botox and a test drive of an Audi, and comes as the US property market continues to flatline . . .

 . . . “I attended a few gifting suites last year for the Emmys and Oscars and saw companies giving away great stuff to [celebrities]. I started thinking about how I could pair businesses with agents and wanted my open house…to be more like…those gifting suites . . .

If this sounds like the winning edge you’ve been needing, give it a go and let us know if it works out for you!

To read this article in its entirety please visit Real Estate Business Online

Adobe and Flash give up the mobile fight!

by Websites • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Adobe Flash ImageFour years after the release of the iPhone and Steve Jobs’ controversial decision to not support flash on apple’s mobile devices, Adobe has given up the fight. According to ZDNet, after many teething and speed problems getting flash to work on android and other mobile devices, Adobe have announced they will halt development of future mobile versions of flash.

Adobe will now focus on developing tools that will allow flash developers to create mobile apps running on Adobe’s Air platform.

What does this mean for the general population? Not much. But if you’re a website owner and have flash based content, you might want to start looking at upgrading your site and utilising the ever growing power and simplicity of HTML5!

To read more about Adobe’s decision follow the ZDNet link above or visit news.com.au

Changes to Google Search Algorithm – will it affect real estate

by Property Portals, Web 2.0, Websites •

Google have just announced a major change to the way they their search works. Basically the changes are designed to ensure more current information is given priority in search results.

Sounds like a good idea, particularly if they can deliver updates (as they suggest in their article) within minutes of publication on the web.

So what relevance would this have for real estate online?

I immediately thought of Auctions. I wonder is this is smart enough to grab upcoming Auctions only and display the relevant page data.

So I went and did some simply searches a few minutes ago. Below you can see the results from a search on keywords ‘property for auction in bulimba’.

As you can see the first line item is a realestate.com.au link with a heading refering to Sat, 8 October. Not a good start. The link itself works fine. The REA site is smart enough to link me to Auctions coming this Saturday, but that is not the point here. The point is is that the Google Algorithm change was not smart enough to figure out that the data in their data (the heading and summary) was less relevant by date them other data.

Going further down the results we get bettter results though. See the www.domain.com.au record for the auctiopn due on 24th November.

Further down the results though you can see another entry for 18th June.

So all in all what has changed? Hard to say as I did not run this search yesterday before they ran the upgrade but certainly from an Auction search results perspective not great results.

Raine & Horne + QR Codes – An Evolution or A Revolution . . .

by Email Marketing, For Developers, For Property Owners & Managers, For Real Estate Agents, Web 2.0, Websites • Tags: , , , , ,

Some years ago on this very Blog we talked about QR codes and their possible use in real estate. Here in Australia they are finally starting to get a little traction (and I mean a little – the vast majority of Australian’s still don’t know what a QR Code is let along know how to use them).

Raine & Horne, a large real estate franchise group, have recently gone through a complete brand revamp, and as part of this have included the overhaul of all of Raine & Horne’s digital media platforms. An interesting inclusion in their new media platforms is the use of Quick Response (QR) Codes across their entire media.

What are QR Codes?

QR Codes were originally developed in Japan by Toyota to track vehicles through the manufacturing process. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background and were designed to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

Ver. 3 QR Code

QR Codes have seen wide usage across Japan, Europe and the U.S. with smartphone users able to take a photo of the barcode which is placed onto traditional static media such as flyers and billboards. Users are then typically directed to further interactive content such as a plain-text message, website url, video url, enquiry registration form or email address. Though not as popular in Australia at this time, many local media agencies are beginning to see the potential for the use of QR codes to not only interactively communicate from what was a traditionally static channel but to also effectively track these offline user interactions.

Where is the potential for the broader real estate industry?

The primary potential for this technology in the real estate industry is to provide prospects with the ability to interact online with property listings after reading a traditional mail-out, sign-board or window card. In this way multiple images or interactive tours can be viewed after seeing coming across a simple static advertising piece.

The typical usage scenario involves a potential purchaser driving through a suburb investigating different streets and neighbourhoods. After seeing a ‘For Sale’ or ‘For Rent’ sign the purchaser would normally have to remember the address (along with 10 others); visit an agency website and search for the listing from their phone (very time consuming); or call the agent for more information (which can be daunting). With a QR code printed onto or attached to the sign, the purchaser can simply take a photo of the barcode and be redirected directly to the property listing online or to an online enquiry form to submit their details or to ask more questions.

An underlying advantage to QR codes is in tracking consumer interactions with your static media. By utilising unique URL’s for the various static media types (eg. Flyers – estate.com/flyer; Window Cards – estate.com/wc) redirecting to the appropriate content, entry points can be tracked back to the offline media that directed the traffic. A much more accurate way of tracking user interaction compared to the classis, Where did you find out about us . . . ?

QR Codes; the next big thing?

Will QR codes be the next big thing in real estate? Probably not. But is there a fantastic potential for tracking offline marketing and greater consumer interaction – Definitely! Only time will tell . . .

Tips for sending a successful Email campaign

by Email Marketing • Tags: , , , , , ,

Email Client Logos
Emails are a critical tool for every online publisher. They should be used both in the sales process and to build loyalty. Therefore if you are finding that a lot of your emails are not being opened or delivered you need to take the time to understand why.

Tips when Designing your Email:

Let’s first look at the design element behind your HTML email. A well designed, easy to read email will always win hands down when compared to a cluttered maze of images, links and content. But what other design elements can you employ to ensure that your recipients are seeing and reading the same high quality email that you are?

Email Creative Size
Your email content and creative should be kept to a maximum of 600px wide. This is so that you can be sure that your email will display well in the myriad of different email applications your recipients may be using ie. Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook 2003/2007/2010. We also encourage you to maximise the content ‘above the fold’ and recommend limiting the length of the email to 800px.

Alt Tags
Ensure that all your images have an alt property that will provide descriptive and meaningful content even when images are not being displayed. With the advent of mobile and tablet email, many recipient are choosing not to download external content and you don’t want them to only see a series of broken images!

Broken Image Example

Declaring Image Heights and Widths
Always specify the width and height of images contained in the email to keep formatting consistent in case images do not load.

Background Images
Support for background images in email is very poor, notably in Outlook 2007. Try to design your email creatives without relying on background images and compensate by specifying a background colour which will appear if the images do not render.

Default Link
The Default link is the main link that you would like the list subscriber to click on when they receive your email. You can have as many links within your email as you like, but the Default link is the most important one so make sure you emphasise it!

Clean & Simple Layout
CSS positioning elements are not supported in most web-based email clients. For this reason we always recommend that you use tables to format your emails.

Inline Styles
Inline Styles are preferable to other style definitions as many email clients strip out all information not contained within the body of the email. Keep styles as simple as possible – many advanced CSS properties are unsupported by email clients.

Image File Sizes
Images should be kept to the lowest file size possible to improve email loading time. Make sure you resize your images before inserting them into your email so that you can be sure you have the smallest file size and aren’t carrying a small image with a large file size in your email


Tips to Avoiding SPAM filters:

The number one reason why emails don’t get delivered is because they are blocked by spam filters. Therefore it’s important that you know why this is and how you can reduce the chance that it happens.

Spam filters are like bingo cards. They have a checklist and if an email ticks enough boxes on the scorecard … bang … the door is slammed in its face.  Unfortunately every spam filter is slightly different.

However if you follow these guidelines your newsletter should slip past the gatekeeper every time.

Image to text ratio
The greater the text to image ratio the better chance you have of avoiding spam filters. i.e. use more text and less images. Most spam has a file size of less than 20k. Therefore newsletters with quite a lot of text are more likely to get through. The ideal file size is 20k – 50k.

Minimise the use of BCC:
If you put dozens of names in your BCC (blind copy) field in your email programme the newsletter could be marked as spam.

Subject
Spam filters look for certain words, phrases, layouts and email characteristics.

Length should be less than 50 characters. Ideally your subject should be between 4 – 8 words written in sentence case and refrain from exclamation marks. The best subject lines are descriptive of the content and capture the viewers interest.

The number one cause for spam filters blocking an email is the use of words that commonly appear in spam. Some are obvious like free, Viagra, and get rich, while some are not so obvious like opportunity, amazing and compare. Also make sure to avoid the following words (especially in ALL CAPS): free, offer, 50% off, click here, subscribe, earn, bonus, guaranteed, act now, while supplies last, why pay more, visit our web site, time limited, plus all the obvious pharmaceutical and sexual words.

Body text
Apply the same logic and guidelines to your body text as we have suggested for the Subject. Emphasis on using sentence cases and avoiding ALL CAPS.

Avoid using large font sizes and stick with only one or two different fonts and/or sizes. If you do use color text or color backgrounds in your newsletter be aware that some spam filters will wag their fingers and look for other questionable characteristics and reasons to block you.

Recommend Against:
Please do not use any of the following in your email campaigns:

Java, Javascript, VBScript, form elements, frames, ActiveX, animated GIFs, Flash, or embedded video.

As many email applications do not support these elements.


So You’re Ready To Send, What Next?

You’ve put together the greatest email known to man, following all the right guidelines and you’re sure that your recipients are going to find it both informative and useful; but you’re still worried about it not making it through the spam filters. What else can you do to help your chances?

Spam Checker Tools:
A spam checker tool is a piece of software that will put your email copy through a spam filter and create a report about how it was viewed. This will instantly tell you if you have a problem. Most good commercial email services have a spam filter built in. If yours doesn’t there are some free tools you can look at using:

  • Lyris Content Checker
  • Programmer’s Heaven Spam Checker

A Quick Brightfox Plug
For a professional bulk email and CRM solution, why not take a look at foxMessenger. As one of the most cost effective bulk email clients available, foxMessenger could be exactly what you need to execute your most important bulk email needs. With built in reporting and online support, you can analyse the results of your send and implement ways to improve your receiver response every time you send.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Impeccable Customer Service!

by For Developers, For Real Estate Agents, For Retirement Village Operators, Property Software, Sales Management • Tags: , , , , , ,

Not long ago we talked about the importance of implementing CRM systems. As a winner in your industry, I hope you critically analysed your own processes and the available products out there and took immediate action.

This week we will be following up on the topic and adding to it, just like a builder will add the walls on top of a solid foundation for a multi-storey building.

 Let’s take two stories as an example:

1. Buying a Luxury Car – When you go to test drive a luxury car, let’s say a Jaguar or something similar, a good salesperson will be asking questions to get to know you; to get an understanding of who you are, what you like and more importantly what you don’t like, so that he / she can utilise this knowledge to persuade you to buy that expensive but lovely car. One sales agent I know of asks the question: What kind of music / artists do you like? When you do purchase the vehicle and return to the dealership to pick-up your new car, a stack of cd’s with all your favorite music is waiting for you!

2. Le Meridien Hotels – one of the well known, luxury hotel chains, has a unique service to ensure their clients always return to their hotels, anywhere they go in the world. So how do they get their clients to be so loyal? When you first go to one of their hotels they ask you a bunch of questions, silly things like what kind of pillows do you and your partner like (feather, downe, etc), how you like your eggs, do you like orange juice or apple juice, how do you take your coffee, etc. Silly questions right? Well, should you choose to stay with Le Meridien again, no matter where in the world you stay, when you walk into your room you will have your favourite pillow on the bed and when you wake up, your breakfast in bed will consist of your eggs prepared the way you like them, alongside your preferred morning drink, etc.!

Now the simple question you may ask, as a fellow salesperson, is how in the world did they know all this information and remember it? I can’t even remember a person’s name, let alone his / her partners name or where they work, let alone their kids’ names!

Well let me tell you that this is where the best salesperson leaves the rest trailing behind.

Just imagine, you maintain as much information about your prospective buyer or seller and even if they don’t do business with you now, you keep in touch with them (via email marketing as discussed in one of our earlier blogs) and when they do come to discuss their options with you in a year or two, you’re able to say:

“Hi Paul & Wendy! How is [insert kids names here]? Are they still at [Name of school]? Etc. And did you get my [Birthday Card /Anniversary of Purchase Letter]? . . .”

If I talked to you like that, would you feel a rapport between us? Would you like to do business with me? I hope you say yes!

How do you achieve this in your business?

Step 1: Build a strong foundation for your business with a good real estate specific CRM system.

Step 2: Capture the Data! You will need a process where you are able to capture the required information while you are on the move. This can be achieved by a paper based form which you fill out as soon as you have spoken to a prospect (buyer or seller). This information can be entered into the CRM by yourself or by your PA so as to maintain the accuracy of your CRM system.

Step 3: Implement the process. Time and again we have seen many agencies implement a fancy CRM program and even design a very good system but do not follow through. This is where your CRM supplier has to play an integral part to coach / consult with you to ensure the implementation is successfully carried out over the first 90 days. As soon as the Agency has been using the system continuously for over 90 days, it becomes second nature and the chances of falling back to the old ways of doing business will be reduced.

A Quick Brightfox Plug!

Brightfox is one of the world’s leading providers of CRM software and online marketing solutions for the property industry. We have a suite of software applications to suit individual agents, small, medium and large agencies, multi-office agencies, property developers, investment networks and retirement village developers and managers. We would welcome the opportunity to show you how we can help your busines, so please do not hesitate to contact us.

Action Plan:

• If you have not finalised a CRM system as yet, please do so. And when you are talking to your supplier, please enquire on whether they provide a consulting / coaching system to ensure successful transformation of your business processes.

• Decide on what kind of information that you would like to obtain from your prospects (buyers / sellers) and put it in a form / CRM • Start collecting information today!

• Put a plan in action for sending cards to your prospects / clients for birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

As always, please let us know your feedback on this or any other idea, as your feedback helps us to continuously improve these strategies. And don’t forget to pass these insights on to your friends / colleagues and help share the success!

Understand your clients and communicate better!

by Email Marketing, For Developers, For Real Estate Agents, Property Software •

In previous blogs we have talked about how you can keep track of all your past customers and the people you meet every day.

In this blog we will look at trying to understand what they want!

There’s no point in you having boxes and boxes of business cards from as far back as 1989 if you have no clue where you met the people they belong to, what you discussed with them and what they were looking for.

I hope after reading and taking action on our last few posts, you will no longer have boxes of business cards, or excel spreadsheets filled with people’s names and contact details. I am sure you will have pulled the plug and done some research and implemented a specific CRM system for your business.

Now let’s look at segmenting these people into manageable sections.

  • Some of these people might have talked to you about buying their first home.
  • Some of them may have said that they can only afford to buy for less than $450K.
  • Some of them might have said that they already have 3 properties and may be looking at buying some more or may even be selling 1 or 2, if the price is right.
  • Some of them might just be local business leaders you met at the Chamber of Commerce and they may even consider referring new business your way, etc.

Can you see where I am going with this? When you add a new person into your CRM system, you will need to have thought through which category or categories that person will fit into. This is going to be extremely effective when you send out targeted marketing materials.

Now why do you need to send out targeted emails as opposed to just sending the same emails to everyone?

Well, as the saying goes, even if you get the highest quality Grade A steak lovingly cooked by a world renowned chef, when you put it in front of a vegetarian he or she is still not going to eat it. Are they?

The same applies to your prospects as well.  If you keep sending email messages that are not targeted to what they want, they are going to see you and your marketing material to be more of a nuisance/spam rather than a helpful service provided for their benefit.

This simple point is extremely vital for your success (online or otherwise) and that’s why we take great care and spend hours working with our clients to see how they want to segregate/categorize their customers/prospects/etc, to effectively market and get more business.

For example, one of our client’s categorised their prospect list as follows:

  • Buyers under $350K.
  • Buyers between $350 – 500K, etc.
  • Buyers for apartments with ocean views.
  • Buyers for apartments close to ocean views, etc.

What we have seen and learnt from the best agent’s is that they have a system that they follow without fail, especially when it comes to adding new prospects to their database, segmenting them and marketing to them on a regular basis.

All we are recommending is for you to refine your system or create a new system that will help you convert this routine task into a habit, just like you have converted the activity of driving a car into a habit.

One of the additional benefits of categorising your database is that it will be a fantastic marketing tool for you to get more listings.

Imagine this, you get a call from a prospective vendor and they say, “I am looking to list a property with ocean views”. Now, even before you start talking about anything else, all you need to do is jump into your categories and check the number of people who are in your database specifically looking for this kind of property. And you tell the vendor, I have just over 175 people looking for your property.

Will that make them want to list with you or walk down to your competitor who says, “we have a database, but we don’t really know exactly how many are looking at something similar to your property”?

When the vendor lists with you (which invariably happens to quite a few of our customers, as they have the right data at their finger tips) the first thing, even before advertising or putting it on realestate.com.au, is to select everyone in this category and send out hundreds or even a thousand emails to your database of buyer’s who are looking for that exact property. Just imagine how fast the property will be sold!

Action Plan:

  • Go through your last 12 month’s sales and see what kind of categories/segments you can create
  • Implement these into your CRM and go through the list of people in your CRM and categorise them. If you don’t know which category a prospect/client falls into, then it’s a good time for you to give them a call to chat and understand what they are looking for. If the number of calls you need to make is huge, get your assistant or hire temporary staff to call and update this information as this will be extremely valuable in the current market.
  • Develop a Customer Registration Form and carry them in your folders and give them to your entire team so that they can get as much information they can from a prospective buyers anytime.

If you haven’t looked at our CRM systems as yet, I urge you to contact us for an obligation free online demo.

As always, please let us know your feedback on this or any other idea, as your feedback helps us to continuously improve these strategies.

 

Brightfox Plug!
Did you know that Brightfox not only develops some of the leading CRM solutions for the property industry, but also has their own award winning web design team that can help you market yourself and your business more effectively online.