Growing Harcourts Mandurah

Harcourts Mandurah, the #1 Harcourts Office in Western Australia for 11 consecutive years, has been helping its clients buy and sell homes since 2010. After a decade of great success, the leadership team was ready to reach the next level. In 2020, they decided to implement and launch ActivePipe’s automated email marketing software across their teams. Since then, they have grown their market share by implementing automation that makes their agents' lives easier and more productive.

Challenges

• A highly manual approach to nurturing their database.
• Time consuming effort needed to ensure agents were consistently nurturing client relationships with marketing materials sent via email to remain top of mind.
• Stagnant market share.

While Harcourts Mandurah had been finding success for its first decade in business, one of its biggest challenges was one many brokerages face: ensuring its reps consistently sent marketing materials via email to stay in touch with their clients and nurture them to stay top of mind. “Our reps were good on the phone, great with home opens, but staying in touch with consistent email was a challenge,” said Ben Hatch, Director, Harcourts Mandurah.

When Ben and his team started looking for a technology solution to help with this area of their agents’ business, they knew they wanted something that would be easy to use. They also wanted a product that would allow their reps to continue doing what they do best: building relationships and meeting and greeting their clients without getting bogged down in technology.

Prior to ActivePipe, Harcourts Mandurah’s nurture tools required significant administrative support. Getting one email out was a huge lift, so it was time to bring on better technology to make everyone’s life easier. The team initially heard about ActivePipe through word of mouth, as many Eastern States companies were already using it. “Once we reached out and got the ins and outs of the product and got the team engaged, it was a no-brainer,” said Hatch.

Approach

• Harcourts Mandurah was proactive about its technology rollout, letting contacts know they were being added to new email marketing campaigns.
• Stood by their promise of sending only quality content.
• Stay ahead of the pack by using ActivePipe data to detect when a potential client is gearing up for a move.

The Harcourts team took a strategic approach to the product rollout. They knew that to succeed, they needed to sell the product to the team while ensuring they had some skin in the game.

“The rollout was quite easy,” said Hatch. A marketing team member rolled it out to everyone, setting it up for the main office and each agent. Said Hatch, “Take this the right way – we were able to set it and forget it for about a year.” Being intentional and proactive, they didn’t just sell it to their agents but helped sell it to their clients. When the tool was launched, an email was sent to the contact database to get each client’s approval before adding them to their email campaigns. Harcourts Mandurah explained the benefits and what contacts would receive, such as being the first to know about new listings and upcoming open houses in their area of interest and recently sold listings. Ben credits this approach for the low number of unsubscribers from email campaigns – less than 1% on average.

Diving Deeper

After the first year of letting ActivePipe do the heavy lifting for them, Hatch and his team have been diving deeper to take advantage of the additional benefits ActivePipe offers.
“Real estate is a long-term game,” said Hatch. “So even if we miss out on a buyer who goes with another agency, that’s fine. We know how to stay top of mind with them for their next sale or purchase, and that’s what ActivePipe helps us do by emailing them personalized updates and nurturing them for the long term.”

• Sold properties once a week
• New listings once a week
• Latest to sell in a contact’s specific area

One additional benefit of ActivePipe is that it alerts agents when their clients are starting to look at listings in their area, even before they reach out to an agent. While there aren’t as many listings in the current market, Harcourts Mandurah used this data to take a more proactive approach. They noticed that while there weren’t many listings, there were buyers who weren’t being nurtured. So, they started buyer campaigns in ActivePipe to make sure their buyers were getting the inside scoop on new properties coming to market ahead of the pack.

“The rollout was quite easy,” said Hatch. A marketing team member rolled it out to everyone, setting it up for the main office and each agent. Said Hatch, “Take this the right way – we were able to set it and forget it for about a year.” Being intentional and proactive, they didn’t just sell it to their agents but helped sell it to their clients. When the tool was launched, an email was sent to the contact database to get each client’s approval before adding them to their email campaigns. Harcourts Mandurah explained the benefits and what contacts would receive, such as being the first to know about new listings and upcoming open houses in their area of interest and recently sold listings. Ben credits this approach for the low number of unsubscribers from email campaigns – less than 1% on average.

Turning a negative into a positive

Harcourts Mandurah keeps a keen eye on the activity in its contact database to maintain a clean database and a low unsubscribe count. When someone unsubscribes, they use that as an opportunity for a human touchpoint. A rep will reach out by phone to check if the contact wants to unsubscribe entirely or if they want to adjust their settings. “These conversations are essential and give the rep another touch point and an opportunity to build a relationship with their clients,” said Hatch.

Results

“It's all about market share, and that's how we track everything. ActivePipe has definitely been one of the products we've used that has certainly increased our market share,” said Hatch.

That market share expansion has helped Harcourts Mandurah office grow its database by 153% from 30,000 contacts to over 75,800 and counting in the last three years.

Hatch and his team have seen a dramatic increase in website traffic that they can directly attribute to ActivePipe campaigns. “We notice when an email goes out to clients, say on a Tuesday, you can watch the website traffic go through the roof.” Being so in tune with their data and analytics in their technology has led Harcourts Mandurah to excel past their competitors.