The latest news and information from Brightfox about what's hot and what's not when it comes to I.T. in the property industry!
We are genuinely very excited about Windows 8. We think it is going to be a game changer in the business productivity space, and certainly will change the way out clients use software.
Here isĀ recent review on what is good and not so good in Windows 8 – http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33642_7-57445919-292/hits-and-misses-in-windows-8-so-far/
The 7.30 report on the ABC recently ran a segment on the pitfalls of purchasing property in the USA. You can view the segment here –
What is interesting is that they pointed out all of the pitfalls, but didn’t really tell you how to avoid them. There are of course a couple of very simple ways to avoid paying too much for a property in the USA or even purchasing in a bad suburb or city.
If you go to www.zillow.com you are able to search on the vast majority of properties in the USA, and in most cases get a price estimate and hopefully a price comparison with the market. This immediately gives you some rough idea of market value, and from what Zillow’s own research says, a figure that is pretty accurate. If you go here you can see how the Zestimate is calculated and how accurate it is for each city.
As a rough guide however Zillow say the following on estimate accuracy:
Here is an example of what Zillow can give you on a specific property for sale – http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3488301.htm
As you can see you get a very good overview on the property, its expected financial returns and comparative listings. A great start to ensuring you are paying at or close to market value.
Of course there is nothing like a local visit, so I would strongly recommend flying to the relevant City and doing a personal inspection and some general market research.
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.
After over 3 years of regularly blogging, we have finally gotten round to upgrading the look of our own blog. We would love your feedback, so if you like it (and even if you don’t) please drop us a line.
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…Ā Ā Ā 
“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”
The other day an interesting article came across our desks here at the Brightfox office courtesy of Real Estate BusinessĀ Online.
According to the article an ingenious, for want of a better word, Californian Listing Agent Ā 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.
. . . āWe 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,ā 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 . . .
Ā . . . āI 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 houseā¦to be more likeā¦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
Four 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
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.
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 thisĀ have includedĀ 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.
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 backgroundĀ and were designed to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.
QR Codes have seen wide usage across Japan, Europe and the U.S. with smartphone users able toĀ 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 alsoĀ effectively track these offline user interactions.
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 . . . ?
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 . . .
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.
Letās 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 aĀ 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.Ā 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 anĀ altĀ 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!
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 arenāt carrying a small image with a large file size in your email
The number one reason why emails donāt get delivered is because they are blocked by spam filters. Therefore itās 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 ā¦ bang ā¦ the door is slammed in its face.Ā 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 ā 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.
Youāve put together the greatest email known to man, following all the right guidelines and youāre sure that your recipients are going to find it both informative and useful; but youāre 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 doesnāt there are some free tools you can look at using:
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.
Brightfox - What's hot in I.T. for the Property Industry 
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