Category: For Retirement Village Operators

Posts and information on developming and managing retirement / aged care villages.

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How to successfully use technology in the Retirement Village Sector

Below is an interview I had recently with the Sales & Marketing Director of publically listed retirement village operator Aevum Ltd in which we discussed how to use technology in the retirement village sector.

Cameron: Much is made of the need to use technology in a modern company to improve sales & marketing. In your experience what effect has technology actually had?

Karen: Having grown from an owner/operator of 4 villages to 21 villages in just over 2 years, part of our growth strategy had to encompass significant improvements to our internal technology. To summarise, the investment in technology has resulted in huge improvements in the integration and streamlining our sales systems and processes, the creation of efficient and relevant reporting, the creation of great direct marketing opportunities and significant improvements in the communications process, both internally and externally with all stakeholders.

 

Cameron: Technology such as the internet and email marketing are usually associated with today’s youth, and not people of retirement age. Are these technologies relevant to your business and if so, how are you using them effectively?

Karen: It has been clearly researched and reported that Ageing Australians are driving Internet Growth. In mid 2008 we revolutionized our website to ensure that we were in a position to capture the growing number of ‘web generated’ enquiries. We also realized that our target market have a lot of time available  to research their retirement options on-line, hence a key objective was to ensure that our web was rich with relevant information. Marketers who assume that a large percentage of our primary target audience is not ‘web savvy’ are missing out on huge opportunities. We also know from experience that the influencer (family or friends of our primary market) play a large role in the decision making process and are definitely predisposed to doing their research on-line in the first instance.

 

Cameron: I know you recently implemented a new CRM system. How important is building this client and prospect database to Aevum?

Karen: This is marketing 101 for Aevum! Today’s prospects are tomorrow’s purchasers in this industry. Our broad marketing strategy is underpinned by a very strong direct marketing focus that is targeted at maintaining a consistent dialogue with all the prospects on our database. Building upon our database strategy, we also take this one step further by focusing on building quality ‘Priority Waiting Lists’ for our villages where a prospect registers their interest in a specific style of unit for a refundable fee of $200. This strategy significantly reduces our reliance upon expensive above-the-line marketing when dwellings become available for sale.

  

Cameron: One of the difficulties in implementing a CRM system is ensuring that your staff use it. Given that the average age of salespeople in the industry is high, has computer skills been an issue in getting your staff to use CRM?

Karen: No matter what the age, we are all generally reluctant to adopt change in the first instance unless we can see the ‘perceived benefit’. The vast majority of our sales staff is up-to-speed with a basic windows environment and have reacted positively to the introduction of a new CRM system. The key to success I believe lies not only in the initial training, but re-investing in regular on-going training to maximize the functionality of the system for all users.

  

Cameron: Late last year you also launched the new Aevum website. What has been the effect of this on your sales and marketing?

Karen: This has made a huge improvement to our lead generation and subsequent sales conversion rates, not to mention the marketing cost efficiency. As I noted earlier, an integral part of our re-design strategy was to ensure that our site was rich with relevant information. The integration of a dedicated ‘For Sale’ section that allows the user to search for specific retirement accommodation options by location, village name or price has generated extremely positive feedback and more importantly, great results!

  

Cameron: How common is it to find personal PC’s in your resident’s units now? Do you see this becoming a more common trend?

Karen: This is a huge emerging trend. We proactively survey our residents on a regular basis to obtain feedback in relation to their social interests, internet usage, resident satisfaction levels, suggestions for improvements, etc. Not surprisingly, internet usage continues to increase year-on-year. In support of this growing trend, we have also introduced computers and internet access into some of our village community facilities for the use and benefit of all residents.

 

Cameron: It is now pretty common place in many business sectors to communicate with clients via email and even customer service websites?

Karen: I think it is far to say that the Aged Care Sector has been slow to adopt using technology in this way. Do you see technologies such as these playing a role in the future? I think the industry as a whole is becoming a lot savvier when it comes to the options available in relation to communication technology and its subsequent benefits. The evolution of websites in this sector over the past 12-18 months and the increasing integration of customized systems is evidence that the industry is adopting new technology and I am sure you will see a lot more of this in the near future as operators look to improve their levels of communication and customer service.

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Brightfox developed the Aevum Ltd websiteand also supplied to Aevum Ltd its leading software, foxEnterprise, that Aevum use as the company wide CRM, Sales Management and Property Management software.

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How to measure if your website is successful

This is an excerpt from one of our weekly emails sent FREE to subscribers of the 50 Bright Ideas email campaign. To read this article in full, and to get another 49 great tips and action lists on how to improve your property business, visit http://50ideas.brightfox.com.au and sign up – it is free. “Last week we talked about using Google to promote your business. We will talk more in coming weeks about how to optimise your website design to improve search engine results. But we digress this week to answer a question from one of our readers regarding last week’s email. Charlotte asks us:

“Thanks for the information on Google. I understand a little more on how I can use it to increase visitors to my site, but how do I know if it is working or not?”

This is a good question, thanks Charlotte, and the answer to your question is this week’s Bright Idea.

So you’ve built a website and spent money on Google Adwords, how do you know if your website is working? To get the best out of your online marketing you need to understand the basic metrics that are used to measure the performance of your web site.

Most web development firms would point you immediately at a weblog statistics package that will analyse the technical details of how many visitors came to your site, how long they stayed and so on. This is all important, and we discuss it below, but we believe in analysing the success of your site more deeply than this. We recommend that you use three forms of measurement. They are:

(a) Lead Tracking: There is nothing more important to your business than generating actual leads that convert into sellers, purchasers, tenants or landlords. The true and absolute measure of any advertising medium, including your website and online marketing, is the amount of business your website generates.

We would say that a website that brought 10 leads is better than one which brought a million page views but no new potential clients. I think this is pretty obvious to us all however, we have found that many clients fixate on the web traffic analyses and don’t track nor analyse the number and quality of leads generated from the site.

So the number 1 measure of success is simple: the number of leads and the % of those leads that convert. We recommend that you track both and report on them weekly.”

To read the rest of this article and to get a detailed action list of how to measure success on your website, subscribe for FREE to http://50ideas.brightfox.com.au.

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CRM software for Retirement Villages

A recent editorial piece on using technology in the Retirement Sector by myself was published in the April 09 edition of the Residential Developer Magazine. You can find the magazine in most Australian news agencies. I will be publishing a full version of the editorial and my interview with Karen Mattingley, Head of Sales and Marketing at Aevum Limited, at this blog in the next few days.

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How to create a world class website for world class property developments

Barr Al Jissah
Barr Al Jissah
I was revisiting some of our old newsletters and came across this content – which was emailed out in October 2007. I think it is as relevant today as it was then, particularly as so few websites for property developments include the functionality that this site does. I find it very surpising that property developers do not demand more when it comes to internet marketing. They spend hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in the main stream media and yet usually have token websites and almost non-existent online marketing. I think it is a real oversight and is affecting the sales performance of so many projects. Given the number of property purchasers who start looking on line now (up to 80% in some countries), this really is something that property developers need to have a serious think about addressing.

Here is the original copy from that newsletter. If you are a property developer or project marketer and you would like to discuss what more you could be doing with your website or in broader online marketing, give me a call or send me an email.
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Barr Al Jissah is an exclusive development in Oman, positioned on the shores of the Arabian Sea with awe inspiring views. To market this extraordinary development, the Zubair Corporation and marketing agents PRDnationwide Oman required the very best in technology and web services and turned to Brightfox to meet those requirements.

Brightfox developed the Barr Al Jissah website so that it was both informative and attractive to view. However, to turn the website into a true sales tool Brightfox added some extraordinary new features that are sure to be implemented in other property development sites in the future.

Many websites are efficient in providing attractive images and information, but are generally out of date and act as poor sales tools.The Barr Al Jissah websites redefines what is possible with property development sites through an array of new features all designed to engage visitors, making them stay at the site for longer periods, visit more often and ultimately – to purchase.

What makes the Barr Al Jissah website possible? Seamless integration with foxEnterprise, the world’s leading CRM, Sales, Marketing and Contract Administration software. By integrating foxEnterprise with their new website, the Barr Al Jissah sales team can upload and maintain their properties on the site without advanced technical know-how.

While the Barr Al Jissah website has many extraordinary features, we have outlined a few key elements that give the website a distinct competitive advantage. These innovative features are what transform the Barr Al Jissah website into an effective sales tool, and will become the ‘must have’ features for leading Projects around the world.

Interactive master plan map
Visitors to the master plan can view the master plan map, and ultimately which properties are still available for sale. Further information can be obtained by clicking on the available property. An informative window about the specific property pops up which contains pictures, floor plans, a photo gallery and price for the visitor to peruse. The visitor can also zoom in for a closer look at the properties
Photo Gallery & Slide Shows
Each individual property has its own photo gallery, which can be accessed via the Master Plan. Alternatively visitors to the Bar Al Jissah website can view individual images or a slide show about the area and the development.Client Portal
Every purchaser is able to logon via the website and get access to secure private information on their own contracts. With purchasers around the world, this makes providing project updates, contract adjustments and other important contractual information easy and fast. Just as internet banking has taken the world by storm, secure client portals such as this will soon become standard in the industry.
Google Movie
Using Google Earth and Google technology, Brightfox was able to create a short movie display that highlighted Barr Al Jissah’s location, properties, facilities and master plan.

While these features are attractive and engaging for the visitor, they also aim to interact with the prospective buyer to facilitate the sale. The Barr Al Jissah has ensured that its first-class development is reflected in its premium website design, and we should not be surprised if its properties aren’t available for long.

To view the new Barr Al Jissah website, visit www.barraljissah.com

To enquire about Brightfox web design you can visit us as www.brightfox.ae

 

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Insights into Baby Boomers – An interesting study on what Boomers are buying

Baby boomers represent a huge % of every ones target market, but in the retirement sector they are about to become the market! Baby boomers are generally classified as people born between 1946 to 1964.  Understanding what boomers are doing now and will be doing in the near future is fundamental to the success of everyone involved in the retirement or aged care sector as they are the future of the industry.

Focalyst, a market research consultancy that specialises on understanding Boomers and Matures, has recently published a study breaking Boomers down into 3 segments and analyising their purchasing behaviour. It is interesting reading and takes into account the impact of the ongoing Financial Crisis and the impact on Boomer behaviour. One outcome, which perhaps has a short term negative impact for the development and aged care sector, is that Boomers may have to delay retirement to make up for the losses arising from the crisis.

You can see the full report on the Focalyst site at www. focalyst.com

The company also has a interesting interview on NBC that provides a really good insight into mis-conceptions on Boomers.  It is well worth 6 minutes of any property developers time to watch this.

You can see the video here – http://video.aol.com/video-detail/today-show-top-10-baby-boomer-myths/736032725

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Interesting Report Showing Green Rated Buildings Rent for More

This is an interesting report that has just come out that is probably the first detailed analysis of the commercial benefits of a Green Rated building from a Developers or Owners perspective.

The report analysed 694 Green Rated buildings and compared them to around 8000 non- green rated buildings to determined the comparative difference in rental returns. The report finds that a Green Rated building on average will lease for 2% per sq.ft higher than non-green rated buildings, with the difference in effective rent being around 6% (by virtue of less incentives as well as tenants in Green Buildings paying higher outgoings).

The one issue not addressed is the difference in build cost, and therefore whether these increased rents are enough to compensate for the increased build costs.

A 2007 report by David Langdon in Australia reported that initial constructions costs on (above comparable none Green projects) was likely to be in the order of 3 – 5% for a 5 star solution, with an impact of a further 5% plus for a 6 star non iconic design solution.

So in my mind this poses the underlying problem as to why more building are not being built to the various Green Star ratings. The economics are not compelling at this time. They are however very close as we can now see and all we would need is strong shove in the right direction to make building Green buildings compelling.

Government subsidies can of course make all of the difference. Attractive tax benefits alone would make the decision to build Green buildings compelling.

This is of course only one side of the energy issue as far as it concerns construction. What we are looking at here is the level of emissions and overall sustainability of the building once constructed. The major emissions however occur in the construction stage, primarily by virtue of the material used. For example a house made from wood, involves cutting down trees, processing the timber and then the physical construction itself, all of which have a negative emissions effect.

For those interested in the amount of carbon embodied in the construction of a new building, here is a calculator that helps you arrive at a estimate: http://buildcarbonneutral.org/

Here is the link to the Doing Well by Doing Good paper – http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/EKQ_Green_Buildings_040808.pdf

Here is the link to the David Langdon report on “The cost and benefit of achieving green buildings” – https://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=2583

 

 

 

You can find the full report here – http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/EKQ_Green_Buildings_040808.pdf

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What is Viral Marketing and how to use it in property marketing?

Week two of our 50 Bright Ideas emails featured Viral Marketing. Here is a short excerpt:

“Last week, we talked about the importance of keeping in touch with your prospects and clients on a regular basis. We hope that you carried out the action list and sent at least 1 newsletter to your list. Thank you for all those who included us in your mailing list and sent us a copy of your emails. Well done to those who did the actions!
 
This week, we are covering Viral Marketing.
 
As you already know the Number 1 method of increasing your business, cost effectively and easily, is via referral.

So the question is, what are you currently using to cultivate referrals in your business?
 
In this email, we have created an interesting way to improve your opportunities to get more referrals from your satisfied buyers without even asking for it!
 
Saying that, it is important that you should always ask the following question, at every opportunity:

“Who do you know that is looking to buy a home or an investment property in the next 3 – 6 months?”
 
If you click on the link given below you will be taken to another download page where you can download 2 more templates that we have developed for you which will improve your referral pipeline via a method called “Viral Marketing”. …..

To read this article in full, sign up for the 50 Bright Ideas free weekly email. Each week we showcases some of the best ideas from around the world on property marketing, and we also give you the steps required to implement these ideas into your business. So what have you go to loose – register today.

http://50ideas.brightfox.com.au/

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Why does every property developer need to systemise their business?

Your project has just hit an important stage in its development.  Your organisation is frantically producing construction updates, contacting prospects, organising advertising campaigns and trying to find where all the pre-sales enquiries were filed.  At the end of the day, the job gets done.  But could it have been done better?

 Undoubtedly, the property development and project marketing industries are founded on sales.  Usually, the sales and marketing process differs little from project to project.  However, in our industry experience we have found that sales and marketing are the least systemized processes of the whole enterprise!

Many property development and project marketing companies rely on the methods of each of their sales people to produce results.  The result is usually mayhem.  The company no longer presents a uniform, professional image to their clients and increases the risk of breakdown in the sales and administrative chain.  If you want to produce consistent and ultimately more profitable results, a system is essential to close the gap between the varying skills of your people and the skills your business needs to be the very best. 

Those developers and marketers that employ a systemized sales and marketing process equip themselves with the tools to produce results in the most efficient and profitable manner.  By utilising systemization, developers are better able to manage their resources to accomplish a project within a given time and cost restraint.  Furthermore, they optimize the use of those resources such as time, capital and manpower over the course of a project.

With technology changing the way developments are sold, most companies now cannot function without some degree of technological systemization or risk being left behind.  However, this topic does cause some concern for some developers due to the early industry producing technology that hindered rather than improved business processes.  By working in conjunction with the property industry, there is now systemized software that is designed to better align technology with the property development methodology.  Ensure that whatever software you choose to help with your systemization strategy, it must be able to customize your particular organization’s business processes.

If you want to reduce human error and make business tasks simpler and easier, it is software that can automate certain business activities.  We shall look into some of the ways that technological systemization can be employed in your business:

 

Contact Management, Lead Generation, Client Service

Applying a centralized system to the care and management of clients can have a dramatic and measurable impact on the developers and project marketer’s ability to grow.  In our experience, we have found that many developers and project marketers use systems such as spreadsheets with the names of clients, their contact information and any particular notes and activities pertaining to them.  However, as they grow and demands increase, spreadsheets can end up limiting the organisation’s potential. Spreadsheets are a way to capture information but do not enable you to analyse the information in a meaningful way.  They also do not allow to you create diarized activities and tasks relating to that information.

It is beneficial to use a software system that can combine customer relationship management (CRM) software and sales automation for your client database.  The best way to manage a prospect is to create an activity plan that is automatically generated for a contact.  For example:

 

Prospect

 Activities

 Time
Hot Prospect Subscribe to monthly newsletterSend information pack

Follow up call

Send email

Follow up call

 Default system settings

1 day

2 days from initial contact

5 days from initial contact

1 week from initial contact

Warm Prospect

Subscribe to monthly newsletter

Send information pack

Follow up call

Send email

Follow up call

Default system settings

1 week

1 week from initial contact

2 weeks from initial contact

1 month from initial contact
Cold Prospect

 Subscribe to monthly newsletter

Follow up call

Send email

Follow up call

 Default system settings

2 weeks from initial contact

1 month from initial contact

Every 6 months

The software should be able to prompt your salespeople through these processes, and in some cases conduct some of these tasks automatically on behalf of the salesperson, such as sending ‘thank you’ emails. 

The system should ensure consistency in the capture and storing of client information as well as your company’s response to them.  This is relevant both for sales optimization, business reporting, as well as tracking the activities of your sales team and their relative success or otherwise.  Through the information captured, you can further identify and respond to the evolving needs and wants of your clients by using the information to constantly review your processes, and thereby making your organization increasingly effective. 

Technological systemization can assist in creating a consistent brand image that you present to your clients.  Setup professional html email templates and mail merge templates for your staff to use.  Having high-quality email and mail merge templates enables you to automate your communication, for example your software can send out automatic ‘thank you emails’ on behalf of a salesperson.

Have diarised tasks with automated prompts to ensure you send out weekly or monthly email newsletters regarding your company and/or specific project.  Integrate a response tracking system to help you automatically measure the results of your campaign. 

 

Marketing and Advertising

At the beginning of each project, a property developer or project marketing organisation should set out clear goals and methods of analysis for their sales and marketing process.  Without these methods, they subject themselves to ‘reactive marketing’ – it’s like travelling without a map.  In our work with property developers and real estate agents, we tend to find the same major problems arise again and again. 

  • The first issue: is your marketing working successfully?

Many developers and agents tend to use the old adage “Half of my marketing works; I just don’t know which half!”

How do you confront this?  An effective CRM system can enable you to track the cost of your lead generation and cost of sale.  The systematic capture of contact data and tracking of marketing campaigns enable you to review the success or failure of your marketing.  For example: if you receive 20 enquiries from your newspaper advertisement but none result in a sale, and only 5 enquiries from the internet but 4 result in a purchase – where are you going to concentrate?

  • The second issue: mismanagement of the advertising placement process. 

Many organisations encounter difficulties when trying to keep to their media schedule.  Using software to systemize this process can be a valuable tool when keeping to your media schedule.  Some systems can prompt your staff through a step by step process for advertising strategies – such as approval requests and updates.  The more automatic your system is designed to produce a marketing result, the more effective your sales will be. 

 

Stock control

Having a centralized system for your stock control is essential when selling a project.  This enables you to track each property and gives your sales staff access to live stock availability.  We find that out of date systems or spreadsheets are flawed in this regard, resulting not only in reduced customer service but can also create legal ramifications. 

While systemizing your marketing processes ensures a consistent professional image, it can also reduce sales and administrative error.  Sending out the wrong brochure can be a nuisance but if a salesperson does not have the updated price list it can leave you open to litigation.  You should not only keep your important documents in a centralised system that your staff can access, but you can also systemize your communication with your staff such as sending out automated emails when a price changes on a property or a construction update occurs.

 

Contract Administration

In property development and real estate offices around Australia, there are thousands of people involved in the day to day activities related to contract administration.  Most of them manage the same process – what letters need to go out, which people to notify when finance is due or settlement due.  However while this is one of the most important areas of the business, it is also the one that is most fraught with error.  If you are looking into systemizing your business processes, contract administration should be a primary focus.

For example, we find that a common problem is when a property is on hold for seven days, and then forgotten to be released back into the stock list for sale and agents are not advised.  A software program that can systemize your contract administration can automatically prompt your staff through the specific processes, such as emailing the salesperson and contract administrator to remind them when finance is due.  This reduces the risk of mismanagement, contract fallovers and missed sales opportunities. 

 

The way of the future

Ideally, through technological systemization, you should integrate all these elements required to make your business work.  Not only will you create a more efficient and successful enterprise, but it will also change your organization from one that is reliant on key staff skills, to one that can run smoothly throughout the years and subsequent staff turnover.  I’d like to quote Michael Gerber, the author of ‘The E-Myth’ – a bestselling book that focuses on the importance of business systemization: “Most businesses fail to fully achieve their potential. That’s because the person who owns the business doesn’t truly know how to build a company that works without him or her—which is the key.”

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How to run effective email marketing campaigns?

Email marketing can be such an effective marketing medium, but all to often customers emails end up as SPAM. So what do you need to do to make sure you next email is one of the effective ones, and not one of those marked as SPAM! Below we have a few simple but essential tips on how to make your next email campaign a success.

First of all lets talk about SPAM. There are some pretty scary statistics about the level of SPAM email in the world today. In fact in a report published in mid 2008 by one of the world’s largest anti-spam firms (Sophos) they reported that only 1 in 28 emails are legitimate (the rest are Spam). Given the rate at which email and spam is increasing, we can assume it is even worse by now. Interestingly the worst two countries for spam origination were the US and Russia. Australia, New Zealand and all GCC countries were not in the top ten.

So what are the steps to ensuring your next campaign is not marked as SPAM.

Rule 1. Ensure you email to a targeted list of recipients only.

There are two ways your email can be marked as SPAM. The first occurs automatically. Ant-spam software scans your email and if it thinks it is SPAM, it will either delete it completely or at least mark it as SPAM. The second is that someones receives your email and then reports you and your email to an ISP or Anti-Spam firm, which can also result in not only the single email campaign, but also all email from you domain name being marked as SPAM.

So the first rule is only send your bulk emails to people who have requested it. If you send bulk emails to unsolicited lists, you email will be marked as SPAM and you may even get Blacklisted (all email from your domain name will be marked as SPAM automatically). 

Rule 2. Personalise your email.

If you reach the recipients Inbox, the next key is to ensure that they read it. The best way to do this is to personalise the content of the email. Now you may immediately think that this means addressing the email to them personally. Yes this is valuable, but the single most important thing is to ensure that the content they receive is relevant to them. A personalised email promoting a new car will not be relevant nor appreciated by someone who contact you enquiring about property for sale.

In terms of property, this means sending relevant property content. If someone has enquired on 2 bedroom apartments for investment, don’t send them luxury waterfront villa’s. No matter how you address the email, this is bad for business. It won’t get you enquiries, but it will get you unsubscribes.

Emailing non-relevant content and offers to your database can be one of the fastest ways to kill your valuable database.

We recommend recording prospects buyer matching criteria and sending only relevant information to each prospect. Our two CRM products, foxEnterprise and foxAdvantage, can do both with ease so this shouldn’t be too hard to implement.

Rule 3. Always use a relevant but still catchy Subject Line.

In my view this can be the hardest rule to follow. As we all know, we scan our email often quickly, scanning the subject line and making a decision then and there as to whether to read or delete. That split second is often the determining factor in a successful campaign or otherwise.

The hard part is making your Subject Line cut through all of the other emails your recipients get, but not going over the top so that your email gets marked or is viewed as SPAM.

Here is a small sample of words you should NOT use in your subject line:

  • Free
  • Discount
  • Opportunity
  • Click here
  • Call Now
  • Amazing
  • Make Money
  • Eliminate Debt
  • Winning
  • Credit
  • Loans
  • Order Now
  • Special Offer
  • Cash Offer
  • Going fast
  • etc

Pretty much any derivatives of the above are going to also be highly dubious. Also don’t add in explanation marks, question marks and any punctuation, as this will also affect your SPAM rating.

So what is a good subject line?

As with the email itself, it needs to be relevant. So ideally your subject line will immediately identify to the recipient why your email is relevant to them, and hence why they should open it.

So in the example above where we have a prospect wanting a 2 bedroom apartment for investment. The ideal subject line may be: – New 2 bed apartment ideal for investors.

This hits all of the hot points the prospect needs, namely ‘new’ (something they have not seen and also creates the opportunity to get in first), ‘2 bed apartment’ (the right product – so they are not wasting time looking at non-relevant properties) and ‘investment’ (once again relevant product).

So if your prospect got this email, and providing the email itself was sent to a targeted and relevant list, I would think that you would get a high % of opens (the emails are read).

This is an easy example but unfortunately writing subject lines is pretty hard work. So the best idea if you have time to to run trial campaigns. Come up with 2 or 3 different subject lines and use them to different sample groups and measure their effectiveness. There is no metric better than the number of email responses or phone calls that you get from each one to tel you what is working and what isn’t.

Rule 4. Update your CRM software religiously.

Once your mailing lists are out of date, then your emails will start loosing relevancy and their effectiveness will drop rapidly. If you are serious about email marketing you need to ensure your house in always in order – which in this case means your CRM is always up to date.

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World’s Largest Real Estate Agency Ditches TV for Online!

Century 21’s CEO, Tom Kunz, announced in an online video interview (Watch the Video – link below) that in 2009 they have decided to pull their advertising budget from TV to focus more on Online marketing.

As Tom Kunz explains they have found that their Return on Investment was much better from their Online endeavours rather than TV or any other traditional media.

In 2008, Century 21 spent only 10% of their massive advertising budget online. However, recent research and testing has shown that their online expenditure was far more productive and efficient than the TV advertising.

We have seen quite a few Independent Agents embracing the internet very actively, however, this is probably the first time that a major Agency has taken any serious steps in this direction, publicly.

With Millions of Dollars being re-routed from the traditional advertising media to Online – it will be interesting times ahead.

What are your Online Strategies and how do you intend to implement them?