The art of email campaigns

Sending the correct emails to your database is important. In fact, it’s more than important – for many, it’s the lifeblood of their business. Unfortunately, sometimes managing all of those emails can be quite difficult, especially when you take into consideration the pure amount of details property transaction emails can require.

This is where our Campaigns module on BrightfoxCRM steps in.

We’ve made it easier than ever to reach out to, and manage, your databases. In fact, it’s so easy that we use it for our own emails – read on to find out how.

Campaigns

Here’s a basic breakdown of our Campaigns module, as it currently stands: bulk email anyone you have in your database, with just the touch of a button. You can select as many (or as few) as you’d like, and you simply have to select the ‘Email’ button to get into contact.

From there, the world is your oyster: type out a simple email, or use the many merge tags so you barely have to type at all, or paste in a gorgeously designed email from your marketing team. When you’re done, hit send – it’s that simple.

Campaigns isn’t designed to replace your MailChimp or Vision6 email editors. While you certainly can use it for that feature (we do!), it is primarily intended to help you track your correspondence with your database. All emails sent through BrightfoxCRM are automatically logged as an activity and tracked against the relevant contact and/or contract, so you know who you’ve been talking to, and when it happened.

How to use campaigns

Streamlined and simple to use, we know you’ll find sending emails (and tracking their successes) via BrightfoxCRM and the Campaigns module easy to understand.

After selecting the people you wish to contact, open the ‘Email’ screen. From here, you can begin to put your email together. As in the examples below, you might choose to simply send off a brief message to whoever you may be contacting (in the example below, regarding a display suite visit). You might also choose to send an email off to quite a few people, using merge tags to create a personalised look and feel. You might also choose to send off a marketing-approved email template on certain holidays or to announce new projects coming to market.

From here, all you have to do is test (using the helpful ‘Test’ button), or simply send off the email.

If you are bulk emailing a number of people, the system will give you the option to track these emails through the Campaigns module. If you choose this option, you will now be able to track whether your recipients received their email, and when exactly they opened it. This can be particularly useful when contacting buyers or their solicitors regarding contract changes and updates, but it’s also helpful in the day-to-day, giving your salespeople the ability to recognize who is genuinely interested and engaging in your content – and who isn’t even bothering to open your emails.

If you chose to bulk email through Campaigns, you simply have to open the module to see all the relevant information.

Track that email you sent, from start to finish

Clicking on a campaign will allow you to track the basics the emails you sent out. You can see the exact email that person received (especially helpful when you’ve been using merge tags), along with information about when they got the email, when they opened it, and what they clicked on.

See what they got, when they got it, and when they opened it, with just one click

We’re sure that you have existing email marketing software in your business, however, do they integrate with your CRM the way BrightfoxCRM does? What we love about this feature is that your sales staff can manage everything from one platform – no clicking around, or losing things, or forgetting send that email, since the infrastructure is integrated into the CRM they use every day.

BrightfoxCRM is also a lifesaver (and timesaver) for the management team. Your management team don’t have to worry that the sales team are sending the incorrect emails out, as they can create default emails for everyone company-wide to use when responding to particular actions. With seamless, live integration, we give your team the tools they need to succeed in their everyday – no matter where they are or what they’re doing.

If you would like to have a free 20 minute demo of BrightfoxCRM and the campaigns module, please get in contact with us today. The future of proptech is here, and you don’t want your business to miss out.

Insights: The better way to view your data

insights

As we continue to roll out our new BrightfoxCRM and our B-Suite modules, a vast array of new and exciting features are becoming available. One of the most exciting is the new ‘Insights’ module, which will completely change the way you access and view project data.

What is Insights?

Insights is the better way to understand what is happening in your business. It is often called business intelligence, we call it Insights.

Insights is a live dashboard reporting tool that takes the data in your BrightfoxCRM and transforms this into data insights that provide your entire team with a deeper understanding of how well your business, and each project, is performing.

In fact, you might say we’re giving you some insight into the success of your projects and business.

Easily monitor your progress or check in on team members by setting up a dashboard for your project. Arrange the dashboard to your liking, changing graph styles and sizes until you’ve got exactly what you want to see.

The limits of what you can track comes down to the information you’ve entered into your BrightfoxCRM application suite. Your dashboards will also be updated in real time, providing the ultimate real time understanding of what is happening in your business.

What sort of information can I view?

With a clean interface, setting up and using Insights is easy as 1, 2, 3. Once you’re logged in, you can get up-to-the-minute data on projects from many different blocks, including the Purchaser Locations block, the Prospects by Source block, and the Availability by Type block.

Want to know where your purchasers are located? Use the Purchaser Locations mapping block. It’s the easiest way to see where your actual buyers are physically located, unlocking data that you’ve always had through the BrighfoxCRM for you to analyse and use for sales and marketing campaigns.

Purchaser Location block

Prospects by Source is the best block for up-to-the-minute data overview on prospects. Don’t wait until the end of the week (or even month) to see where prospects are coming from – pull the information up on your tablet or phone as you walk into a sales meeting so you’re always up to date.

Prospects by Source block

Availability by Type is a quick and easy way to view complex project data. Track sale status live, with values updating in front of your eyes when properties are sold. Keep an eye on how different property types are selling – and have the ability to see when they’re not selling so well so you can adjust your marketing and sales tactics as needed.

Availability by Type block

Tracking purchasers and their timelines is a matter of dropping the right block onto your dashboard – the Project Purchases Timeline block! Know when prospects plan to buy so you can plan your marketing campaigns and get your sales agents back into contact with them at the perfect moment.

Project Purchasers Timeline block

There are many more blocks available on Insights for you to use – the limit is what data you want to track!

Check out Insights today by getting into contact with us at info@brightfox.com.au or by giving us a call on (07) 3177 0505.

Another Touchscreen Solution

The PropertyMash Brightfox team are industry leaders in building interactive touchscreen solutions for the property industry.

Our touchscreen and iPad App’s are used around the world inside and outside display suits.

Here is one of our latest – the Brisbane Quarter touchscreen. Providing advertising for tenants and a way-finder, it is a powerful way to further activate an amazing site.

Thanks to leading advertising agency Toto who worked with us on this project.

Is your CRM just too hard to use?

If you said yes, unfortunately you are not in the minority. Most CRM software used in the property industry today is simply not fit for purpose, making it just too hard to use.

What do we mean fit for purpose?

Most of CRM implementations we come across which fail can be grouped into two types:

  • huge USA based CRM providers
  • off the shelf real estate specific CRM’s made for real estate agents

We all know about the big USA based CRM providers. Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle and so on are well known household names that CEO’s and CFO’s around the world feel very comfortable implementing. After all if some of the biggest companies in the world use these systems surely they must be fantastic!

Of course they can be. There is no doubting just how powerful they can be. But more than 50% of these implementations fail. Why is that?

The main reason is the complexity of these solutions. They really are a ‘one size fits all’ approach, so when you implement a CRM like Salesforce you simply must commit yourself to a huge implementation and customisation exercise AND significant ongoing management and further customisation.

In fact we recently had a customer who moved over to our Brightfox CRM who has spent $500,000 implementing and customising Salesforce. At the end of 18 months and inordinate costs (the $500,000 does not include all of the internal costs in time and disruption so the true cost was vastly higher) they could not complete simple but essential tasks, such as producing a daily sales activity report, providing a whole of company snapshot of all sales, marketing and contract activity. For that matter they didn’t even have their website lead forms integrated. Why was this such a failure?

The reason is Salesforce (in this instance) has to be extensively customised to meet their (your) needs. And in this simple sentence we have 2 huge reasons on why these implementations fail. “Your needs” and “customisation”.

Our customers are successful property developers and project marketers. They know how to run a successful property business, not how to build software. Of course with Salesforce you need to use software developers, but they in turn must be briefed by your team. And this is a time consuming and difficult process. All of us that have worked and built CRM’s now over many years know this well.

Additionally customising a huge piece of software like Salesforce is just plain complex. All those features that they put in for the big banks, mining companies, FMC’s and so on all make customising it for a property company complex, and hence costly and risky.

With a Brightfox CRM implementation you get a proven product that is built from the ground up to meet the specific needs of a property developer and project marketer. Out of the box it will be working for you and delivering value. Of course you can still customise key aspects to meet the needs of your business, but the essential and complex components are already done. Contract administration, listings, commissions, financial analysis and more, all ready to go and industry proven. This is why Brightfox CRM implementations work. It works, is proven to work, and the demo we will give you is of a live working system, the same system you can implement in weeks, not in months or even years.

Simply lower risk, lower costs and greater rewards.

The implementation of an off-the-shelf software solution built for real estate agents are another common CRM failure we come across. There are a multitude of software solutions created specifically to meet the needs of traditional real estate agencies. They work very very well for these traditional real estate agencies, which is why you almost never find a Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics implemented in these businesses. They do not work for property developers or project marketers though as they are built for the traditional real estate model – list a home, market that home, sell that home, start again. Project marketing simply does not follow this model. The many nuances that differentiate project marketing to traditional real estate sales are too great to mention here, but rest assured they are many, and fundamental.

If you are interested in a powerful but still easy to use CRM suite that offers powerful integration across all your sales and marketing activity, then the Brightfox CRM should be on your shopping list.

Contact us today for a personal demonstration on the Brightfox CRM.

Yes, there is a complete CRM solution made specifically for property developers and project marketers that you can implement today!

Business Intelligence – Get real time insights into the sales, contracts and marketing activity on your projects

Our new business intelligence tool, Insights, provides uses of the Brightfox CRM suite real time data on the success (or otherwise) of their projects.

Real time analysis on key data is absolutely essential to running a successful property development or project marketing business, and our Insights BI software gives you this.

Insights will provide you with real time graphs or tables on essential information that traditionally takes days to put together, or perhaps you may never have even been aware off.

Of course standard analytics such as breaking down prospects by source, by age group, by reason for purchase are standard, but also breaking this data down by prospect post code, status and time to purchase all add far deeper insights that give you amazing levels of understanding on what your prospects, and ultimately buyers, look like, how they are finding you, and why they are choosing you.

Insights are not limited to prospect data of course. Analysis sales rates by your internal and/or external agents, looking at how many properties they sell in a project, perhaps what type of properties they are selling and even how much discounting they are doing.

Need the current gross realisation on your project at anytime? Insights will give you this and again much more.

Need to understand why contracts are falling over? Or perhaps which agents are having the highest fall over rates?

All of this data is available in real time, in graphs or tables, accessible to your entire management team via our exciting Insights BI software.

Insights is another module in the rapidly expanding B-Suite solution, a selection of online software that collectively makes up the Brightfox CRM suite. Brightfox CRM is a fully integrated CRM solution that provides real time information, analytics and sales tools for leading property developers and project marketers around the world.

For a personal demonstration on the Brightfox CRM please contact us.

The Ultimate Display Suite Presentation Tool

 

Take your display suite with you!

Buyers can’t visit your display suite?

Take your display suite to them!

brightfox-a-propertymash-company

Sell more property faster with our Apps!

  • Take the power of your display suite audio visual presentation and give your prospects the ultimate sales presentation in their home with a PropertyMash.com Interactive App. Developed specifically for new property, our apps give you sales team the best tool to do an online presentation and close the deal, no matter where they have to do the business!

    Can’t get your glossy brochure to your prospects? Go a step further and let them download a fully interactive app that lets them explore your project from home. Our Apps are the ideal solution to your sales troubles with Covid-19 lockdown.

     

    iPhone
  • iPhone

    Explore your building with 360 augumented technology providing even real time availability if you wish. Fully integrated features enable your agents and buyers to search and inspect every apartment, even comparing colour scheme, fit out options and real views. Everything your buyers need to be able to purchase in your project.

  • Our Apps ensure that your sales team have the ultimate sales tool at their fingertips when and where they need it, enabling them to give the ultimate sales presentation every time. Live prices, availability and reservations means that they can then close the deal. Get all of this and more with your very own interactive tablet app.

Don’t let the Mascot Towers cracks affect your sales

Mascot Towers

Buyer Validation. It is just so important into today’s market. We know that over 86% of people read online reviews before they buy.

Reviews permeate every industry and represent a fundamental part of the buyer journey. Would you buy a new car or phone without checking out a review first?

And yet in the property industry most still implement marketing campaigns without any form of 3rd party validation. This leaves a gaping hole in the campaign and will lead to lost sales – whether at the discover/search phase where you just won’t even get onto the list, or even worse, at the validation phase, when all the hard work has been done but the buyer walks away due to fear.

I created PropertyMash.com to fill this void. We provide buyers with the information they need, in a way they want it! Authentic and indepth information that makes them comfortable to purchase.

As one of our clients said:

“Buyers only go online digging around for information on a project or a developer when they are looking for a reason not to buy. You guys do a great job for making them feel comfortable to move forward.”

Yes – we do help close deals. And we also generate leads – lots of them.

Check out my post today about helping buyers gain the confidence to move forward – even with all the negativity in the market about new property at the moment.

https://propertymash.com/news/how-to-ensure-the-mascot-towers-cracks-dont-appear-in-your-new-apartment-buy/

If you are ready to explore the most exciting evolution in project marketing to happen in Australia for a long time, I would love to have a chat!

Property and the unstoppable VR Headset Hype

Once considered the realm of Sci-fi movies, and although still very much in its infancy, property developers are now looking for ways to capitalise on a technology that is sure to have a huge impact on the way we purchase off-the-plan and new property. So what’s all the recent hype about?

There are some high-quality immersive virtual reality headsets hitting the consumer market for the first time. These devices could end up having a societal impact as substantial as the introduction of smartphones.

The biggest challenges working with such new technologies in the Real Estate industry is getting the consumer experience just right.

The questions we must first ask, does Virtual Reality add or improve the sales process?

This is the fundamental question when looking at any technology. If you can realize an ROI – it’s worthwhile. If it’s just for a gimmick, the money may be better spent elsewhere. Of course that gimmick might be the reason the prospect walked into your display suite, and met with your sales agents rather than a competitors display suite, but the question is will it help make the sale!

Will a prospect still feel the property is a spacious 67sqm two bedroom apartment after they’ve seen the living room packed with furniture in a render that looks a little too crowded?
LumaOculus_Unit-e1425588061948-620x353
We use VR technology extensively in our touchscreen and App solutions, with Augmented 3D buildings and virtual walk through of apartments being very powerful sales tools.

We believe the best use of VR headset technology at the moment lies within visualisation of large masterplanned communities. It is a very effective means of ‘virtually’ standing on the front lawn of a future home, taking a peak at what afuture neighbours house will look like or for going for a stroll through the community facilities. This is now perhaps the best way to explore / visualise these masterplanned communities, but do require extensive 3D rendering of course so it is still costly.

So in conclusion what do we think about VR? We love it and already use it extensively in our Apps and touchscreens. Watch out however for the gimmicky VR Headsets and new technologies that are launched as the overall technology evolves. Most of the VR Headsets that we are seeing now will be gone relatively soon as the technology rapidly evolves. Like most new technology we can expect a rapid period of technologcal explosion followed by a period of consolidation as it matures. It is at this stage that readily available and commercially viable VR Headsets will become commonplace.

Check out Microsoft’s Hololense – this is really exciting new take on VR Headset technology and we think going to be a big hit!

How will Google’s Latest Search Changes Affect You?

SO WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING?

As of April 21st 2015 Google changed its search algorithms to favour websites that are ‘mobile friendly’. This means that mobile optimised websites will begin to rank better in searches than those that are not.

WHY IS IT CHANGING?

This change by Google is a response to the changing way in which users are increasingly searching for content via smartphones and tablets. It is a move to improve the user experience and ensure users are directed to mobile-friendly sites as a preference when searching for content on Google.

WHAT ABOUT MY WEBSITE?

If your website doesn’t have a responsive design or mobile specific site it is likely that your search rankings will suffer. This can send your website tumbling down Google’s search results and potentially cost you deals.

BRIGHTFOX IS HERE TO HELP…

Although this change has already taken effect there is still time for businesses to act. Google can recognise newly optimised sites quickly and will revise your search ranking accordingly. Contact Brightfox now and ensure your website is ‘mobile friendly’ and you’re not losing sales as a result!

Australia’s No 1 Project Marketing Software Just Upgraded to V2

We are pleased to announced that SalesCRM has now been upgraded to Version 2. Packed with heaps of new features, SalesCRM extends the functionality released at our Tech Conferance last year.

SalesCRM is revolutionsing CRM in the property industry. Our industry leading foxEnterprise CRM is the most powerful and fully featured CRM available for Property Developers, Project Marketers and Retirement Villages Operators. No product available has the industry specific functionality that comes close to what foxEnterprise can offer. However we recognised some time ago that as all CRM’s inevitably become more powerful, they also become more complex. And unfortunately, as they become more complex, they become harder to use. So as we look around at the CRM landscape here in Australia and also around the World, we see less and less salespeople genuinely using the company CRM, which of course is the very  purpose for which CRM was intended – managing prospects and customers to increase sales and improve customer service.

So how do you address this? SalesCRM….built for Salespeople. Not CEO’s, CFO’s, Contract Administrators, Marketing Managers, Customer Service Departments and so on (foxEnterprise gives these users everything and more that they need). We have built a 2nd CRM exclusively to meet the needs of salespeople.

That’s right – a 2nd CRM. One that works hand in hand with foxEnterprise but that is made exclusively for salespeople only. It is easy to use, its beautiful, you can use it with just your thumb and it is course available on every device – PC, Tablet or Phone.

SalesCRM + foxEnterprise really does delivery on the very promise of CRM that we have been searching for for the last 20 years. Powerful and extensive functionality for the business (foxEnterprise) + simple, fast and user friendly for our salespeople (SalesCRM).

Give us a call for a demo. We think (in fact we know) you will love it!