Amy Tennant
David Harbord
Phil Boyle
Karen Bryant
ActivePipe is a breath of fresh air! We no longer have to rely on our Reps to communicate regularly with their database. Once switched on, it is almost set and forget. ActivePipe automatically welcomes their new clients the moment they are entered into our CRM and then goes to work behind the scenes to gather their preferences and keep them up to date based on what they are interested in. Clients that engage or are active are categorised and highlighted on the Dashboard for our Reps to connect with. ActivePipe is one of the best real estate platforms I have seen in a long time. Very clever indeed. Thank you!
Jonathon Bowker
“The convenience of the ActivePipe monthly newsletter service, along with the relevant finance specific content, provides great value to our business and ensures a regular touch to our client base with minimal effort.”
“Possibly the most beneficial feature of the platform is that it provides us with the analytics to monitor who in our database has shown interest and maybe an opportunity for a conversation. We highly recommend ActivePipe to anyone in the SFG network”
Matt Punter
“We’re really pleased with the progress we’re making with our database nurturing and business development program to our existing client base and greater contact database.”
“The only tool we’re currently using for this exercise is Activepipe. We’re delighted that not only are we overperforming (by some 250%+) on the key metrics measured (open rate and interaction rate) for this type of communication, but more importantly, we’re also writing and settling more loans as a result and building a really strong pipeline of prospective deals. We believe this is simply due the ease of and the increase in frequency of us communicating with our list.”
“We expect to settle record volumes right through to xmas based on today’s pipeline, WIP and improved conversion rates as a result of this approach to business development. I’ve included some stats below to support our performance.”
“A big thanks to the Finsure team and Paul Smith and his team at Activepipe for being so responsive which is greatly assisting us to meet our revenue and growth targets for all businesses within our group.”
Zarko Jokic
Having the capability to deliver a relevant message to your database is paramount. This is where ActivePipe excels.
Lee Banh
Chris Brown
Mark Laaksonen
The one weakness I always felt existed was my lack of regular contact with my client base, but over the past year this has changed dramatically with the support of the team at ActivePipe, in particular with their personalised newsletters. This could not of come at a more important time with the impact of COVID-19 and the assistance I have been able to provide my client base during these challenging times, being proactive rather than reactive has proved invaluable.
Byron Hughey
Byron is the Director of Digital Media & Engagement for TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, Byron manages the firm’s digital marketing programs, platforms, and channel strategy, including: Email, Web, Social, CRM, Video, Search, and Digital Display Advertising.
‘From hands-on training and on-boarding sessions to its lightening-fast user experience, ActivePipe has exceeded all expectations. What’s best, since launching ActivePipe not even one month ago, it has joined Facebook and Google as one the top sources of traffic to our brokerage’s website. As a signal of user adoption and product satisfaction, it’s clear ActivePipe is delivering true business value for our agents and our brokerage.’
Jill Nicholson
Jill is the Marketing Project Manager at Robinson Sotheby’s International Realty, they’ve recently made the switch to ActivePipe. Here is what she had to say about their experience!
“Robinson Sotheby’s International Realty switched to ActivePipe at the beginning of 2020. What initially attracted me to ActivePipe was the user-friendliness and flexibility it offered. I thought this would be a wonderful tool for our agents to use very effectively with little or no assistance from our support staff, giving them much greater control and autonomy. What I wasn’t expecting was how much I would enjoy using it myself. As a member of our company’s marketing team, I was proficient and very comfortable using our old email marketing app, but ActivePipe has proven to be even easier and faster to use. It’s actually really fun!”
“It’s been great for our recruiting drip campaign. I’ve been able to build a wide variety of emails with lots of different content including videos and animated GIFs. Using the ActivePipe analytics, I can quickly determine which features our audience is engaging with the most.”
“Several of our agents have been using ActivePipe in impressed ways. It’s been really inspiring to see how they’ve been developing their own email campaigns. One of our agents, Billy Belshaw, has created his own newsletter called “Market Watch” and it looks amazing! He really likes the Smartfeed feature and uses it in his newsletter. He also created a set of his own customized and very professional templates for Open Houses, New Listings, and more.”
“Another one of our agents, Connie Greene, loves that the ActivePipe property feed includes all of the our agents’ listings — not just hers. She uses ActivePipe to create “new listings in your neighborhood” emails that include her listings in a particular neighborhood, plus our other agents’ listings in that same neighborhood. Connie said right after she sent out the first one of these emails, she heard back immediately from a few of her contacts who told her how much they appreciated knowing about the other homes available in their target neighborhood.”
“I’m really glad we made the switch to ActivePipe. Our marketing department no longer receives calls from frustrated agents struggling to find the right template or edit the right information in an email. But most of all, I have enjoyed seeing how much creativity our agents have now that they’re using the right tool!”
Jodie Burley
Buxton Ballarat ranked 1st out of REB’s Top 50 Sales Offices for 2021, Jodie is their Office Manager and is also in charge of their marketing.
Here’s some of what she had to say about how ActivePipe has impacted their business so far!
“I was working at Buxton when we brought in ActivePipe. One of the things we that wanted ActivePipe to do was to take over the weekly email blast. We wanted to make sure that it would integrate with our CRM, Box & Dice. Because of the great engagement we have with our clients in Ballarat, we wanted to make sure we were capturing that information from the email – who was opening it and looking at properties.”
“Prior to ActivePipe I was managing the marketing for agents when we were doing more letter box drops, doing sponsorships and engagements with local sports clubs. We still do that stuff but now with digital marketing taking off that’s been a big focus for us.”
“With the systems that we use, Box & Dice connected into ActivePipe, it’s amazing when it comes to prospect matching. So if you’ve got someone on the phone, they tell you how much they want to spend and what area they’re looking in, you can put that information in straight away and a property will pop up with what we’ve got for sale matching their criteria.
They then get an email every week with our properties that are in their area of interest and that are similar to the types of properties that they’re interested in – so it prompts them to contact us, as well as us contacting them. So that side of ActivePipe has been critical for our business when it comes to prospecting.”
Brook Browning
Brooke is the Operations Manager for Marketplace Sotheby’s International Realty.
How has your experience with ActivePipe been so far?
My company switched over to Activepipe as our new primary email marketing tool and our experience has been truly amazing from the Support Team, weekly conference calls with ActivePipe representatives and even live webinars for our agents. We have more flexibility within the system and it provides everything our agents need in order to do business.
We are very happy with our choice to move to Activepipe and would recommend this for any company that is looking to make the switch.
Liz Hotz-Gonzalez
This case study was originally written by Keith Loria and published in RISMedia.
Wish Properties Inc., a local Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based real estate office with global connections, first opened for business in 2012 as Wish Sotheby’s International Realty. Today, the firm is made up of four offices that span the San Fernando Valley—from Calabasas to Encino to Sherman Oaks to Toluca Lake—with 120-plus agents.
This past summer, the firm began using ActivePipe—an email marketing solution—in order to increase business and stay ahead of the competition.
“ActivePipe has by far been the best tool we have added to our business in a long time, and we are just getting started with it,” says Liz Hotz-Gonzalez, director of Operations for the firm. “The major pro for our agents is that it’s extremely user-friendly and very easy to use, which helps more agents stay interested.”
For clients, the appeasing part is that they get a beautiful email that’s interactive.
“So, if they like something they see, it automatically gives them the opportunity to click on the email and go directly to the website and see more,” says Hotz-Gonzalez, who would strongly recommend ActivePipe to others.
David Doblan, an agent with the firm who had utilized Mailchimp in the past, was excited to learn that the company partnered with ActivePipe.
“I am now able to keep in touch with my clients and see what they’re opening and clicking on so that I can send them a more personable email to follow up with my ActivePipe campaign,” says Doblan, who appreciates the clean, user-friendly interface. “My clients and potential clients appreciate being top-of-mind.”
Hotz-Gonzalez notes that implementation was easy, as the team at ActivePipe was very helpful and offered a ton of training and hand-holding to get everyone up and running. Answering everything he needed to know, Doblan remembers the initial webinar, which taught him about the system.
But the training doesn’t end there.
“One of our office gurus teaches a weekly class to provide the ones still learning new tips and tricks,” adds Hotz-Gonzalez.
“I would recommend others use ActivePipe to have one more tool in their pockets to ‘touch on’ their clients,” says Doblan. “It’s a great tool to use for drips, open houses, new listings and general email blasts.”
Hotz-Gonzalez says the whole team at ActivePipe has been “awesome to work with, from implementation to design, all the way up to general customer service and tech support. If there are any issues, the firm has a direct account liaison contact to email and/or call with any support issues.
“They have a very quick tech support team that responds right away via email to work on any issues,” says Hotz-Gonzalez. “I don’t think there has ever been a problem that was unable to be resolved within 24 hours. In my opinion, that is excellent service.”
Andy Jolls
This case study was originally written by Keith Loria and published in RISMedia.
When Andy Jolls, COO at Vista Sotheby’s International Realty, which has eight offices throughout California, first learned about ActivePipe, he was impressed that there was an email marketing solution for real estate professionals that provided the important customer insights that agents, REALTORS® and brokers were looking for.
“As a Sotheby’s affiliate, we were previously using a different supplier, their recommended email marketing platform at the time, but it had its limitations on how to develop email campaigns,” explains Jolls.
“We were also having trouble with the actual campaign falling into junk or spam filters, so we were on the lookout for a different product, and we were looking for a different CRM solution for our agents. The people we were talking to at the time recommended ActivePipe.”
The difference was noticed straight away, says Jolls. “ActivePipe has been really progressive about avoiding that type of situation. They look at why it happened, in addition to things they can change on both the domain and email level to prevent it from happening again.”
Within the first few minutes of the ActivePipe demonstration, Jolls notes that it was the best real estate marketing platform he had ever seen.
“From an administration standpoint, the ease of putting together an email that looked sharp and would get attention from the reader was a big factor,” says Jolls. “Some of the other solutions are a little more difficult in terms of putting an email together, and in real estate, it’s all about ease of use.”
Additionally, Jolls was impressed with ActivePipe’s ability to connect to the brokerage so that they could quickly and easily get announcements about listings or open houses out from the broker level.
“The reporting that ActivePipe provides on viewership and readership statistics was presented in an active format, which we weren’t getting before,” says Jolls. “There’s some sort of artificial intelligence where they rate the contact and whether they’re a likely consumer going forward.”
Vista Sotheby’s International Realty launched with ActivePipe in the beginning of August, and the company provided group and online-based training for the firm’s agents.
ActivePipe’s David Greenbaum has been the lead account manager, working closely with the firm to rectify any problems and help with training. Available whenever needed, this has created a very strong partnership that Jolls believes will continue well into the future.
“Not only are they helping us get going on the platform, but they’re very supportive on an ongoing basis in order to get the highest readership possible on all the emails going out,” adds Jolls.
In its first month with ActivePipe, the firm sent more than 1 million emails, and that number is expected to be similar in the months ahead.
One way the platform has already been used successfully? Any new listing acquired by the firm is sent out to a database of nearly 60,000 real estate agents in California. Previously, the firm was seeing a less than desirable readership rate, but by using ActivePipe, that number has improved by 400 percent.
“It’s a similar story with the open house emails we send out as a brokerage for anything scheduled for the upcoming weekend,” adds Jolls.
There’s also a monthly newsletter that Vista Sotheby’s International Realty provides for each agent’s client base, and those readership numbers are well above what they were before.
“We’re getting the most eyeballs as possible on these properties, which is helping everyone,” concludes Jolls.
Nick Thring
We recently caught up with Nick to ask him a few questions about how ActivePipe is helping his business and his future outlook for the year to come.
“With some great technology out there including the likes of ActivePipe it enables us to really concentrate on who our prospects are and then behind the scenes it discovers more people that we maybe didn’t know were going to be interacting with us, but are ready to do something.”
Check out the full video below:
Tom Flanagan
This case study was originally written by Zoe Eisenberg and published in RISMedia.
Tom Flanagan is the chief technology officer for Colorado-based brokerage The Group Inc., where he oversees marketing, technology and relocation. With over 15 years of experience in real estate innovation, Flanagan understands the vitality of smart email solutions.
“Email is a tried-and-true marketing tool, even for this day and age,” says Flanagan, noting that the majority of adults in the U.S. check their email at least once a day.
While there are many email automation services to choose from, Flanagan stresses that most of these platforms can be laborious for agents to manually load their property feeds and open houses into.
To combat this, Flanagan and his team began using ActivePipe, an email marketing solution built specifically for real estate, that focuses on easy, customizable automation, as well as access to the customer insights that agents and brokers can utilize to get ahead.
“ActivePipe marries email technology with property listings,” explains Flanagan. “They’re specialized; they’ve taken email automation to the next level.”
While Flanagan and his team began working with ActivePipe a year ago, they were immediately impressed with the user experience. “Everything is drag-and-drop, so it’s easy for any user to create these really beautiful, mobile-friendly email pieces that also come with sophisticated analytics, metrics and automation.”
Another area that impressed Flanagan? ActivePipe’s easy onboarding process.
“The company completely understands how important adoption is in real estate tech, and so onboarding was really easy,” he says. “Their team was quick to integrate the product into our tech stack, and they’re always willing to do different training sessions, both for our agents and our corporate services.”
In addition to live support, Flanagan and team also utilize ActivePipe’s training webinars, called ActivePipe Quick Starts, which allow users to access training info on-demand.
ActivePipe currently offers three product suites, all of which have property feed integration and can be integrated with a CRM. SEND allows users to easily build and send professional, mobile-responsive emails, while AUTO gives you the same functionality, but lets users build automated drip campaigns, send personalized reminders to contacts and receive intuitive data analytics to identify active buyers and sellers. Their largest suite, ENTERPRISE, automates the customer’s journey with triggered and scheduled recurring emails, while using sophisticated behavior-driven profiling to help predict the client’s next move.
Flanagan’s team is enjoying using the system and even contemplating upgrading to a higher tier. “I love the ability to easily create a rich, dynamic monthly newsletter, all drag-and-drop, that includes videos, open houses and listings.”
Another smart ActivePipe feature, according to Flanagan, is their location-based, geo-targeted technology. “Their system has the ability to cross-reference the locations of clients in an agent’s CRM, then deliver properties to them based on their location. That’s really intelligent.”
It’s this sort of intelligence that initially drew Flanagan into the world of real estate innovation. “What I love about real estate technology is that it’s so vast. Every day is different and exciting. If you’re a programmer at a tech company, you write code for 50 hours a week, and it’s nearly all the same. With real estate technology, I get to work in both art and science. It’s always fresh and new.”
Rishi Bakshi
This case study was originally written by Paige Tepping and published in RISMedia.
“Email marketing is important for any company,” says Intero Real Estate Services – East Bay Broker and General Manager Rishi Bakshi, who spent the past year creating a whole new set of technology for the firm’s technology stack from scratch.
“After changing our CRM, it was recommended that we take a look at ActivePipe’s email marketing system, as this was an area in which we were lacking,” explains Bakshi. “As soon as I saw the demo and understood just how clean, sleek and easy it was for an agent, admin or staff member to create any number of email marketing pieces, it was a no brainer,” he adds.
Built specifically for the real estate industry, one of the biggest benefits in working with ActivePipe is the fact that it’s connected to the MLS. Therefore, it already showcases each and every listing the firm has.
Better yet? There’s no cap on the number of emails that can be sent in any given month. Having sent upwards of 250,000 emails last month (at press time), Bakshi notes that this would translate to an exorbitant amount of money with any other vendor.
Simplifying the entire process, ActivePipe makes it easy to create great looking property alerts, open house announcements and newsletters. “You can create whatever you want on the spot by simply dragging and dropping listings, blog content, YouTube videos—or anything else—into any number of templates and then blast it out to a specific database,” says Bakshi.
“It simplifies everything,” adds Bakshi, who points to ActivePipe’s back-end as yet another key piece of the puzzle. While agents love the back-end because it provides a glimpse into how a particular email is performing, it goes much further than that.
In fact, in addition to open rates and interactions, the back-end also shows what part of the email the recipient is responding to. “Since most of the emails we’re sending are made up of a variety of components, we can see exactly how our customers are interacting with the content we’re sharing,” explains Bakshi. This further differentiates the firm’s agents, as they can candidly discuss the results of their email marking campaigns with buyers and sellers alike.
“If you’re looking for something that’s sleek and easy to use, consider ActivePipe,” concludes Bakshi, who has nothing but good things to say about their experience thus far.
Whether it’s basic onboarding to launch the partnership, webinars or one-on-one meetings to discuss problem areas, the team at ActivePipe consistently goes above and beyond. “David Greenbaum, ActivePipe’s director of operations, is constantly checking in and making sure we’re doing okay. The touches they make are incredible,” concludes Bakshi.
Vincent Socci
Vincent is the Chief Operating Officer of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty.
What are your thoughts on ActivePipe so far?
In a sea of marketing automation platforms, ActivePipe stands out above the rest not just simply by enabling our brokerage to create centralised, high quality content, but by easily allowing our agents to curate bespoke content.
We are committed to equipping our agents with the most innovative technologies so they can do business more intelligently.
Shelly Joy
Shelly is the executive manager at Carvill Sotheby’s International Realty
How has your experience with ActivePipe been so far?
From start to finish the ActivePipe Team did not disappoint. They were professional and knowledgable and one step ahead on every aspect of getting us started.
Their drive to always help and keep their clients happy really showed throughout the entire process. We have been looking for a product that is user friendly and high quality and we are excited that we finally found it.
Risa Auger
Risa is the marketing director at Vista Sotheby’s International Realty.
How has your experience with ActivePipe been so far?
Transitioning to ActivePipe as our email distribution platform has been made much easier thanks to all the time and patience from the ActivePipe team. We are not an easy bunch to train, but they did it with a laugh in their voice.
So far, we are loving the slick look and feel along with the many automated features that are already built-in—I know it will keep getting better and better as we move forward with it.
We look forward to seeing what surprises and features are ahead.
Tim Heavyside
“ActivePipe’s been really good for us, we’re able to identify buyers and sellers, we love the way the email communication works and it’s really easy.”
Whilst celebrating 100 years of Fletchers Harley Toyle (Property Consultant), Tim Heavyside (Director & Auctioneer) and Beth Oleyar (Communications Manager) were kind enough to share some of their thoughts on how ActivePipe has become a key instrument in their businesses success.
Stavros Ambatzidis
Stavros owns and operates three offices whilst also being a Corporate Director at O’brien Real Estate. ActivePipe has become an essential component of each of his offices day-to-day operations and has even been widely adopted by much of the brand.
How has ActivePipe changed your business?
ActivePipe has allowed our Sales team to engage with relevant targeted clients that are actively browsing, or interacting with content delivered via ActivePipe.
It has enabled the team to identify clients that we may not have had direct contact with for over 5 years, who are actively back in the marketplace, looking to downsize/upsize & more importantly sell their existing property to take on their next move.
What feedback are you receiving from your team?
Great feedback from the team so far. We have been selective in setting up a structured roll out of email campaigns to ensure that we are not just mass marketing for the sake of it.
What would you say to other business owners looking to invest in ActivePipe?
GO FOR IT! Take control of your client database and make it work for you, instead of putting your clients in “witness protection”.
ActivePipe provides automated & relevant client contact points.
In terms of ROI, where are you seeing the most value for money in the product?
At the moment, we are seeing value for money in increased buyer interaction & increased OFI attendance.
In particular, having a Feature Property at the top of the Weekly Listings email, creates an immediate increase in enquiry & OFI attendance.
We have just added in “Auctions this Weekend” as features at the top of our OFI list as well.
Real time OFI feedback from buyers is gaining traction & is valuable whenproviding vendors feedback.
Significantly, ActivePipe has resulted in a database cleanse program, allowing us to focus on clients that want to hear from us, instead of those that don’t.
In addition, the team are using “Up & Coming” contacts for targeted call sessions.
Are O’Brien agents using ActivePipe in their sales pitches to prospective vendors? If not, have you thought about introducing this as best practice across the network?
Agents are using case studies of some of our properties to demonstrate the reach, and interaction rates, to both prospective & current vendors for their own campaigns.
Ideally yes, this could easily be incorporated as best practice and a very handy listing tool.
How important is our intent data in giving agents a competitive edge?
Intent data is intuitive – it provides an advantage by prompting client contact before the client calls in a competitor.
From an efficiency point of view we know that AP saves time and improves team capacity. How much of an impact will AP have in reducing costs for your business?
ActivePipe allows the business to generate additional revenue by automatically extending our reach to past purchasers, prospective vendors & current buyers that we may not be in close contact with.
Instead of time being allocated to build email campaigns/manual property alerts, the task is automated for them. This then frees them up to concentrate on their core tasks of List, Sell, Negotiate which of course are income producing activities.
Margie Knaap
A Word from… The CRM Manager
Margie Knaap knows how to run a winning database. As the CRM Manager at Ray White Lower North Shore she’s at the forefront of keeping agents efficient and effective through the everyday “busy” of their business and for ensuring that they’re making the most of their ActivePipe account.
We caught up with Margie to get an insider perspective on what differentiates a “good” ActivePipe user from a “great” one.
Here’s what she had to say…
How would you describe ActivePipe to agents who haven’t used it before?
ActivePipe is a fantastic platform that compliments a CRM to help with the marketing of a property. It allows you to track and identify what listings your contacts are engaging and interacting with and gives you insight into a contact’s movements in and around the area they reside in. It also allows you to discover what types of properties they are looking for (number of bedrooms/cars/bathrooms) and whether they are investors, downsizers, upsizers or first home buyers!
What is it that makes an ActivePipe user successful?
Logging in for a daily perusal of ActivePipe is key.
It might sound simple but make sure you are using the information that you learn about the contact from the platform when giving them a call. There is so much to discover on the dashboard, don’t let it go to waste!
Also, make sure that whatever notes you make get put back into your CRM so that there is a good track record of intel for other salespeople to see.
Finally, always keep contact information updated.
What feedback do you hear from your team about ActivePipe?
Those who use it well, speak very highly of the system. They love all the info that they can see and gain from ActivePipe!
We need to keep reminding some of them that if they use it to its full capacity, they wouldn’t believe how much value they would gain.
Key Takeaways
Log in, log in, log in…
Use the data ActivePipe gives you when making a call so you can have conversations that sell
Keep your database as clean as possible
