The Future of Real Estate Marketing

In this panel, Joe Manning, Chief Marketing Technology Officer at BHHS Drysdale and Aaron Lincoff, Director of Business Development at ActivePipe, discuss the future of real estate marketing and how you and your brokerage can navigate a post-pandemic world. You definitely don’t want to miss out!

2021 starts now with Josh Phegan

With less than 50 days left in the year, now is the time to create your plan of attack for 2021.

Join us for an exclusive training session with Real Estate coach Josh Phegan to master your 2021! 

In this 45 min training session, Josh will cover: 

  • How to list now for 2021 and overcome the delay tactics.
  • What to do to sell your existing stock.
  • Branding, marketing and positioning you to win more business.
  • How to master marketing in the experience and prediction economy.

Creating more listings. Unstick the homeowner

In uncertain times, many homeowners feel stuck, unsure of when or how to sell their home. Lane Hornung, CEO of zavvie and 8z, will discuss how agents can use the buying to start homeowners down the Seller’s journey and create new Seller leads.

Insights from New Zealand with Gower Buchanan

Data from New Zealand, the UK, and the UAE have shown that post lockdown, banked up listings hit the market, and activity skyrocketed. In this webinar, we’ll be chatting with Gower to gain insight into how New Zealand’s market rebounded and how he’s preparing for Spring.

Make the Most of Entry-Level Leads

Amidst an inventory shortage, how can you make the most of entry-level leads?

Marta Loachamin, Realtor®, and candidate for Boulder County Commissioner, and Sam Cardenas of RE/MAX Northwest will discuss strategies that include building a team, getting your offers considered, and creating local referral networks that will help you build your business while giving clients the service they deserve.

Creating more listings. Unstick the homeowner

In uncertain times, many homeowners feel stuck, unsure of when or how to sell their home. Lane Hornung, CEO of zavvie and 8z Real Estate, will discuss how agents can use ibuying to start homeowners down the Seller’s journey and create new Seller leads.

When: Tuesday September 1st, 1pm ET

Save Your Seat

Maximizing Prop-Tech Adoption

Join Kevin Van Eck, EVP of Innovation & Education of @properties and our own Mike Feller, ActivePipe CRO, as they discuss everything brokerages need to know to maximize prop-tech adoption from choosing tech that solves a problem, planning and comms, to the launch and more.

What’s Covered:

  1. Why adoption is important
  2. Key to adoption: Choosing tech that solves a problem
  3. Planning and Comms
  4. The launch
  5. Continued comm plan driving adoption

Register for our next Industry Insider here.

Win More Real Estate Clients with Content Marketing

Kylie Davis is ready to take you from understanding the basics of email marketing, to being a complete pro. Getting started with email marketing is easy when you break the steps down and approach each of them systematically. In this webinar, we’ll be looking at a winning formula to get you started and creating great email campaigns from day one.

What data tells us we’re doing wrong in Real Estate Marketing

What Data Tells Us We’re Doing Wrong in Real Estate Marketing

Zane Burnett, CDO of Willis Allen and Managing Director of OkapiCo, joins ActivePipe’s Aaron Lincoff, to uncover misconceptions buried in the heaps of data created by the digital revolution. They took a look at flawed common practices and what data tells us we are doing wrong in Real Estate marketing during the digital era. 

What data teaches us about Real Estate Branding. 

Looking at the past, the first mention of a real estate agent in print was in 1854 – Harper’s story about a swindler agent. Many past portrayals in movies, print, and TV have played on negative stereotypes. Up to 2004 RE agents were the gatekeepers of data, but when data went online and became available online for everyone the industry started to shift to personal services – to help people. Recently the trend has grown into more positive portrayals of agents on TV and in movies. Why does this matter to Real Estate branding?

Zane took a look at data from Twitter mentions, and in general, the older and more dated the brand the more negative sentiments people showed. The aesthetic of new brands created in the online age is more in line with what modern consumers want. It’s easier for a new brand because they start fresh with new agents, and don’t have to convince established agents of the value of investing in new branding.

Successful modern brands have and enforce strict marketing standards.

  • Modern photos of agents
  • High quality, but unaltered, property photos
  • Beautiful and simple design

What action you can take? Engage professionals to help you create strong brand guidelines and do not be afraid to hold everyone accountable to those brand standards. If you do not, you risk diluting your brand and erode trust with the public. Educate your established agents about what data has taught us about branding.

Social Media Insights for Real Estate

What is the best social media outlet for real estate? That depends on your brand strategy. Use hard data to form your opinion. There is not one “best” platform for your brand though so far there is some data overall.

Carousel consistently outperforms text or single-image posts. 41.6% of posts have a question in the caption, but in Zane’s studies, 0% of the time did it raise engagement. Look at your own callouts with questions. If no one is answering them, stop asking them or ask better questions people actually answer. Zane also noted no measurable result in TikTok. There is not “a” best platform, there is only “the” best platform for your brand.

Websites

When considering how your homepage looks you need to understand where your traffic is coming from and how they behave on your website. Are you getting traffic from paid ads? Significant traffic from organic online property searches? Where are they landing?

You have 50 milliseconds to create an impression for your brand. Cater your content to match the data. If you’re investing in pay per click and driving leads to your homepage, a centrally featured property search makes sense. If you’re using long-tail searches, they likely aren’t landing on your homepage, but people looking to learn more about you are.

According to Zane’s research, on average, 66% of organic traffic to a real estate website was brand-related, not property-related. Only 14% of organic traffic landed on the homepage and of that less than .5% of homepage visitors executed a property search on the website. This means they typed in a search related to the brand specifically looking for more information on you. This is your chance to differentiate yourself from the competition and elicit an emotional reaction through your values, branding, lifestyle, exclusivity, and beautiful design. Your homepage is where they formulate an opinion about you and your brand. Zane mentions some brands that do this well in his Industry Insider’s Panel.

If website visitors are coming to learn about you, why do most websites have a huge hero image and property search bar? Back in 2007, that strategy worked. As times change, keep up with your data and change with it.

A homepage should reflect your mission statement and brand values. Build for your client’s needs, that’s what makes large portals like Zillow so popular. Most organic traffic doesn’t even land on the homepage. They land on blogs. If your blogs are about the best movie theaters, is that likely to turn into a deal?

Before creating content ask, what is the content there for? Lead Generation? Serve the community? Ask yourself why people are going to your website and challenge yourself to meet that why. Also, ask your website providers to help you answer some of these questions and make sure they provide designs that fit your needs.

The bottom line is to innovate your design using data. This strategy will always make sure your website stays fresh, up with the latest trends, and puts your client’s need first, creating a relationship that turns into business. 

Download the slideshow to learn more about Zane Burnett’s data insights.

4 Simple Ways to Get More Listings Now


Special guest Michael Phelan, Beverly-Hanks, REALTORS® VP of Marketing, and Mike Feller, CRO of ActivePipe uncover four simple ways to increase your listings now.

Michael covers:

  • Real Estate reviews for past clients
  • Identifying points of pain due to COVID
  • Reviewing past business sources
  • Behavior emails on segmented topics

Transform Your Leadership

Real Estate brokers, managers, and leaders have been bogged down by operations.

Recruiting and retaining great talent is all about redefining one’s value proposition beyond deal doctoring, technology, leads, or even culture. It’s about leadership and improving one’s coaching skillset.

In this conversation, Howard Chung, Vice President of John L. Scott Real Estate Affiliates and CEO of GreenOceanTV.com and ActivePipe’s Aaron Lincoff discuss strategies and tactics that real estate brokers and managers can implement to thrive in a new era of real estate leadership.

Transform from a successful agent to a successful leader:

  • Recruit to your leadership skills and coaching
  • Define your leadership strategy by asking, “What am I the best at?”
  • Establish your value as transforming the individual by not just giving answers, but help them work through the question
  • Be an active leader – semi-annual reviews, frequent individual check-ins for feedback and recognition
  • Use a project management system to clearly see your progress and keep an eye on objectives and key results
  • Pick one or two topics to be a leader on and the leadership thinking will develop
  • Define when you’re training, and you’re coaching. They are separate. There is a need for both.
  • Self-assessment – Measure how many coaching conversations you have in a week, even short ones. What worked? Outcome? Improvement?

Make BLM Part of Your Brand

You want to support black lives matter but don’t know what to say or are afraid to say the wrong thing. Don’t SAY anything…DO. Learn what you can do to make black lives matter part of your brand. Special guest Tamia Scott, Director of Marketing, Dilbeck Real Estate, and host Gabrielle Fuqua, Director of Marketing, ActivePipe discuss successful branding and what you can do to make BLM part of your brand.

In real estate, you are your brand. Your brand represents you as an individual, your core values, and beliefs. Real Estate agents aren’t just agents, they are businesses and successful branding means creating a clear public identity related to you. When it comes to BLM you can decide to have a soft touch or go all in, it’s really what makes you comfortable. It’s ok to make mistakes. If you do, apologize and move forward applying what you learn.

A few things you can do to support Black Lives Matter:

  1. Be authentic – meaningful and consistent actions
  2. Create and follow a set of core values
  3. Education and awareness – NAR’s Sensitivity Course: “At Home with Diversity”, books, movies, follow advocates on social media
  4. Build Relationships with Black People
  5. Connect with your community – get involved
  6. Include black businesses on your preferred vendor list and share it
  7. Make space for black businesses on your marketing materials
  8. Let an activist do a take over of your social media pages

Customer Experience In The New World

In this free session with Josh, we’ll dive deep into:

  • The simple activities and conversations that convert
  • How to track and sort buyers based on their digital intent
  • The role custom journeys play in serving more customers more often
  • How your online actions determine even better off world transactions

Q&A

How is the database at ActivePipe populated? Can you integrate with other CRM’s?

Is there an instructional video for how to include the Request An Inspection button in email campaigns ?

Is there a way to send an email directly from ActivePipe to a seller that lives on a particular street? – can ActivePipe read that data?

  • Yes, there is a number of ways to send to a contact with a particular street address – so long as the address data exists within your CRM.
  • You could then use Quick Send and select that contact directly, or if you want to send to multiple contacts who live on that particular street you can create an audience with the street as a field. For more information on how to create an audience, please visit: https://support.activepipe.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000879296-How-do-I-create-an-Audience-

3 Misconceptions about Brokerage Level Luxury Marketing Everyone Should Know

Mike Feller, CRO of ActivePipe, hosts special guest Stephanie Anton, President of Luxury Portfolio International® where she is responsible for overseeing the strategic direction of the high-end marketing division of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, a network of locally branded real estate brokerages in 70+ countries.

There are important lessons from Luxury Marketing every agent and broker serious about growing their brand and looking to win more listings needs to know. It’s not just about luxury anymore. Stephanie breaks down these misconceptions and discusses tips and tools brokers and agents can start using today to grow their influence and win listings.

Brokers: Turn Dead Leads Into Dollars

This week we’re hosting Craig McClelland, Vice President & COO – Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Metro Brokers.

Craig discusses helping your agents down a qualifying lead path that has real ROI. All of your agents’ contacts – cold leads, online leads, open house leads, and sphere of influence will benefit from these strategies.

Recruit More Agents Right Now

In the coming months, success will be based on bridging social distance and building a strategy that’s right for you. Learn what you can put into place with top-producers from across the nation.

In this session, we’re joined by Brian Boero. Brian is the former president of Inman and current CEO of 1000watt, a creative agency focused on the real estate industry. Brian has extensive knowledge about delivering the right recruiting message with the right technology to attract the best agents for your brokerage.

Streamline Your Private Inspections

Public open homes may or may not be restricted where you’re based, either way, the numbers at open homes will be down (or non-existent). Private inspections will remain a critical tool for every agent.

In this webinar we’ll be joined by Courtney Hill from InspectRealEstate (IRE), we’ll show you how you can use our new feature to start booking more private inspections directly from your ActivePipe emails!

Together with our integration partners IRE, we’ll walk you through the new private inspection booking feature in your account and take you through the experience from your customer’s perspective.

To set up an account with IRE, simply click the button below to get in touch with their team!


Sign Up Now

Q&A

Can you link in a request inspection button for off market properties?

  • Yes you can, if there is not yet a page ready on IRE the contact will be redirected to a relevant page.

How do we have access to Activepipe?

  • If you are an IRE user without an ActivePipe account, you will need to set up an ActivePipe account to utilise this integration. Get in touch with success@activepipe.com to find out how. 

Do we need an IRE account to view inspection bookings?

  • You need an IRE account to direct your contacts to the IRE booking page. If you insert the Private Inspections link into your email and you don’t have an IRE account the contact will land on the default ActivePipe bookings page, any inspections booked via ActivePipe will be emailed to the agent and be visible in the ActivePipe dashboard.

How do we connect ActivePipe to IRE?

When will the ‘request an inspection’ integration be available?

  • The ‘Request an Inspection’ feature is live now!

Can you add these features to an existing template?

  • Yes, you can add the ‘Request an Inspection’ link into an existing email.

Are sms applicable to NZ?

  • Yes, IRE’s SMS functionality is compatible with New Zealand phone numbers.

Are the contacts being pulled from IRE?

  • Yes, ActivePipe has an integration with IRE to pull the contact data through into your ActivePipe account. To enable this please contact success@activepipe.com

Does this work with PM and Sales?

  • Yes, this integration works for both property management and sales.

Can clients who have registered their details for an inspection be automatically fed back into other CRMs like Agent Box?

Get Ready For The Rebound

Will you be a leader once the market rebounds?

In this 30 minute power session with Josh Phegan, he discusses the revolution that’s currently taking place in real estate, how to bring your pipeline forward and the steps to take to ensure you’re set up for success post
C-19.

Check out Josh’s upcoming events

Be sure to check out Josh’s upcoming live events and learn from the best.


SEE MORE Events

Q&A

When you say off market, do you mean show buyers the property before listing it?

  • With off-market you might list a property on your website but not on the property portals. So these are exclusive properties that can only be found by people visiting your site or when you send these listings to your contacts. Read our article on it here.


How many buyers should an agent be working with at one time?

  • On any campaign you might have 2-3 buyers that would want to make an offer or bid. But you may have 10-30 who might enquire. The ones that have enquired but not made any offline activity are the ones who will need extra service and calls over and above what you are sending them.


Lots of vendors don’t want to pay for marketing, what tools can be used to encourage them and get the fear out of the vendors? 

  • You need to get photographs, you need to make sure the property is positioned correctly on your website, and you need to have the tools available. So you can then go on to upsell the marketing with large, medium and small options.


What’s the best way to encourage the buyer to proceed without seeing the property when a tenant refuses access?

  • If the buyer wants to touch and feel the property, there’s not much you can do, so you will have to wait until an appropriate time. However, the tenant may be open to live streaming a walk through of the property.


Active Pipe question – can we see if someone forwards our emails?

  • We are working on expanding this functionality, however at the moment the only way to get an indication of this is the number of opens for a specific person.


As I have not really used ActivePipe actively, are you able to do some sessions on the very basics please?

  • Yes, we have a webinar on this topic next week on Wednesday at 11am. Register here.


Can we get some help creating templates?


The Content Your Clients Need Right Now

Providing your clients with relevant content is now more important than ever!

Special thanks to Kylie for making it to the webinar, after having her power cut off and having to drive in to town and stream the webinar from her car!

In this webinar Kylie Davis from HomePrezzo and Real Content along with ActivePipe CEO Ash, discuss how a strong content strategy can help you right now, as well why a long-term content strategy is critical to generating revenue.

Henry Osborne, ActivePipe’s Head of Customer Success will also walk you through how to implement those strategies using ActivePipe.

Power up your content strategy

Kylie and the team at Real Content have to put together a special offer exclusive to ActivePipe customers!

Target your ActivePipe personas with an on-demand stream of articles, designed specifically to nurture your contacts! Each article is written by a qualified property journalist that links back to a landing page in your branding, or can be copy and pasted to use as you please.

Your audience will love the useful tips and advice on buying, selling, renting, renovating and property market updates.


SEE OFFER

Q&A

For FAQ specifically for RealContent, visit this page.

How do I find out what subscription we have?


Where abouts in ActivePipe do we access this content?

  • You can access the content stream in your email builder in the ‘SmartFeed’ module. You can see this demonstrated by Henry in the webinar recording.


Is this Partica?

  • No, Kylie Davis is from RealContent. ActivePipe works with multiple content providers to offer content streams for our users.


How do we access the NZ specific feed?

  • The Australian and New Zealand content are not separated in the free feed. However, you can filter by NZ tags to access NZ specific content with the premium feed.

I do not seem to find the “real content” from ActivePipe. Is there anything for my admin to do to set it up for me?

  • This content stream has been added by default so there is nothing you need to do! If you’re having trouble locating it please reach out to success@activepipe.com

How do you change the category name? Can we write our own?

  • The communication categories are generally set at a brand level. You can create your own but please keep in mind these are client facing.


Will there be training video for admin accounts please?


If you do not have PREMIUM membership – where does the attached article land?

  • For the FREE content stream the full article is inserted into the email and the article does not link anywhere


Marketing 3.0: Applying Behavioral Intelligence to Real Estate

Travis Saxton of T3 Sixty talks about applying behavioral intelligence to Real Estate. Travis has 10 years of experience in residential real estate technology and has authored more than 10 reports and has spoken at nearly 100 real estate industry events.

Bring on the Bounce Post COVID 19

Verl Workman discusses four critical strategies that will put every agent, broker, and team leader in a position to take advantage of the post COVID bounce. Over the course of 20 years, Verl has delivered over 1,000 seminars, webinars, keynote addresses and motivational messages to professionals around the world.

For even more helpful tips, check out our COVID-19: Real Estate Response Plan and our white paper Digital Marketing in Real Estate: A guide to better ROI.

Register here for our next live Industry Insider Panel. We host top-producing real estate experts’ as they offer advice on building a strategy that’s right for you. Ask questions and get valuable feedback you can use.

How to use content to connect

Providing your clients with relevant content is now more important than ever!

In this webinar we discussed how agents can be communicating with their clients to build relationships that will set them up for success both during and post COVID-19.

Hosting the webinar is Ash Farrugia, CEO of ActivePipe who highlighted why content is going to be so important in the next 90 days. Our guest speaker and content expert, Fiona Okeson from Partica, gave some practical tips on how to approach communications with your community. Whilst Henry Osborne, ActivePipe’s Head of Customer Success presented how to implement those strategies using ActivePipe.

The questions asked by our audience during the webinar have been answered below!

A Message from Fiona

We are happy to offer all ActivePipe users a 20% discount, should you wish to purchase any articles for use on your own website. To activate your Partica.com discount, login or create your free Partica account and add an article of your choice to your shopping cart. Don’t check out straight away, but email fiona.okeson@partica.com so your 20% discount can be applied before finalising your purchase. Your 20% discount will be in place until June 30, 2020 – that’s almost 3 months of discounted articles ready to use.

Q&A

  • Is the Real Estate Voice content relevant to NZ audiences or just Australia?
    • Yes it is. There will be new and current NZ content added in coming days, and there are also articles relating to buying, selling etc that will be useful across both the NZ and Australian markets in the Buying, Selling, Management and Renting sections.

  • Can we edit the content from the Real Estate Voice?
    • The quick answer is no as the content on The Real Estate Voice is free. 
    • We ask that any shares via email and social media link to the original article on The Real Estate Voice.
    • For content that can be edited and posted on your own website blogs, simply visit www.partica.com and purchase/download the original article. The average price for an article is $50 and in some cases the article is already free so have a look and see what you can find to suit your needs.

  • Is the content specific to local states?
    • At this stage, the content on The Real Estate Voice mostly relates to the national agenda, however we are developing content to suit each AU state. Happy for you to get in touch with Fiona (fiona.okeson@partica.com) to discuss what you require to suit your needs.

  • What are the qualifications of the people who do write this content?
    • All real estate content is professionally produced by either current or past property journalists. We also source content from other media sources to make sure content is of high quality. 

  • Can we upload the articles to the blog section of our own sites and link to them there?
    • As the content from TREV is free, we’re asking to link to the original article on TREV. For content on your blog, where you can download, edit etc, you can purchase it through Partica.com and edit it to be your unique article.

  • How do you set up a new template if you don’t want to use any of the ones already there?

  • I create email content for a team of 4 salespeople – can I duplicate the ‘email’ from one active pipe account to another? or do I have to create it in each account?
    • If you have Admin access you can simply create the email once and send it on behalf of all 4 agents. If you don’t have Admin access it needs to be done separately in each account. Please reach out to success@activepipe.com if you would like to enquire about Admin access.

  • What if I want to write my own article. Do I just create by dragging a panel and then write my own?
    • Yes that’s correct, I would suggest using the Text & Image panels:

  • Will this be sent to “Unsubscribed” contacts in our CRM?
    • No emails will be sent to contacts that are unsubscribed in your CRM. The subscription status from your CRM will be mirrored in ActivePipe.

People-Based Marketing

Tom Flanagan is Chief Innovation Officer for The Group, Inc. and oversees marketing, technology, and relocation. Tom was previously a syndicated columnist for Inman News. His column explored the best practices and trends in website design, mobile applications, and online services that real estate companies can use to grow their businesses and run them more efficiently.

Tom discusses proper marketing etiquette during a crisis, marketing automation and how to leverage data during online spikes.

For even more helpful tips, check out our COVID-19: Real Estate Response Plan and our white paper Digital Marketing in Real Estate: A guide to better ROI.

Register here for our next live Industry Insider Panel. We host top-producing real estate experts’ as they offer advice on building a strategy that’s right for you. Ask questions and get valuable feedback you can use.

3 Things Agents Should Do Now (COVID-19)

Gregory Smith is the Broker Owner of RE/MAX Alliance and Team lead for BoulderHomeSource.com.

Aaron recently caught up with Greg to discuss what he believes are the three keys to success during the current crisis.

Lead, listen & be fabulous in every interaction you have. This is a time to be putting in the extra mile with everything that you do.

For even more helpful tips, check out our COVID-19: Real Estate Response Plan and our white paper Digital Marketing in Real Estate: A guide to better ROI.

How Agents Should Respond to COVID-19

In our first edition of Industry Insider, Ash chats with renowned real estate trainer Josh Phegan about the current state of the real estate industry and how best to tackle some common challenges being experienced by agents.

For even more helpful tips, check out our COVID-19: Real Estate Response Plan and our white paper Digital Marketing in Real Estate: A guide to better ROI.