New Enhancement to SmartTouch Real Estate Marketing Automation Platform
Boosts Lead Management Capabilities for Real Estate Builders and Developers

Austin, TX – February 8, 2012 – SmartTouch® Interactive, an interactive real estate marketing agency and real estate marketing automation and CRM software development company, today announced that it has made available the new Smart Lead Adapter™. The new software solution enables leads from third party sources, including New Home Source, New Home Guide and New Condos Online, to auto populate leads into SmartTouch®, eliminating double data entry and leveraging the SmartTouch Platform® lead scoring and nurturing capabilities.

“We continue to push our development efforts forward to create the most effective Real Estate Marketing Automation and CRM solutions available in the market,” said Alan Daniel, CEO and Co-Founder, SmartTouch Interactive.”

“There is tremendous value for builders and developers to have lead data going directly into a CRM solution from a third party source,” said Peter Brumme, Vice President and General Manager, BDX. “This will not only save time and money, but gives sales team the knowledge they need to act in real-time.”

The Smart Lead Adapter empowers builder and real estate sales teams with a complete view of lead activity from these popular real estate listing sites through SmartTouch CRM® and Marketing Automation, optimizing lead management and lead nurturing efforts and ensuring no leads are left behind.

Oscar Maria, General Manager, New Condos Online, commented, “By populating a CRM solution with leads gathered from a site such as ours, builders and developers will be better able to leverage the data for improved lead scoring and deploying more targeted automated nurturing e-mails.”

“We were the Beta client for the new Smart Lead Adapter and I absolutely love that these leads go directly into our SmartTouch CRM and I no longer have to forward them to the sales team to follow up on. They know immediately that there is a new opportunity,” said Natalie Bowers, Director of Marketing, MileStone Community Builders. “Plus, now we can see which leads are making it into our traffic pipeline and we are able to easily nurture these leads with our automated e-mail campaigns.

For builders and developers without a current lead management system in place, this gives them a turnkey solution to gain visibility into their advertising investment on these third party websites. More importantly, for real estate builders and developers using the SmartTouch Platform, they are able to use this information to achieve a higher ROI by leveraging lead nurturing campaigns, which have been proven to reengage 20-30 percent of leads and potential buyers that typically go untouched.

Robert Cowes, President and Co-Founder of SmartTouch® Interactive added, “The new lead adapter is a turnkey plug and play solution that further strengthens the SmartTouch suite and assures that leads from some of the top real estate listing sites are captured, scored and nurtured. The tool gives real estate builders and developers a competitive advantage and helps them ensure their sales and marketing teams stay in front of leads and never leave a lead behind.”

To learn more about the Smart Lead Adapter and the SmartTouch Platform, visit with SmartTouch CEO, Alan Daniel at the International Builders Show 2012 this week in Orlando. He will be available throughout the conference. Please call 214-662-4008 or e-mail adaniel@smarttouchinteractive.com to schedule a meeting.

About SmartTouch Interactive®
SmartTouch Interactive is an interactive marketing agency that provides proven lead generation programs and lead management system, SmartTouch® Platform. The SmartTouch team’s expertise in lead generation and online marketing helps firms that require a multi-touch sales cycle create demand for products and services and grow their business with customized, interactive lead generation programs and a lead cultivation. Backed by 30 years of experience in developing lead generation programs for 100s of clients, SmartTouch sets a new standard with lead generation programs and a single solution that integrates CRM, Marketing Automation, E-Mail Marketing and Inventory Management in one platform, SmartTouch. www.smarttouchinteractive.com

Growing New Homes Austin and New Homes San Antonio Builder Gears Up to Launch New Website Integrated with Real Estate CRM and Marketing Automation Platform

SmartTouch Interactive®, an interactive real estate marketing agency and real estate marketing automation and CRM software and services company, today announced that Brohn Homes, the well-respected New Austin Homes and New San Antonio Homes builder, has selected SmartTouch Interactive as its agency of record to improve its marketing prowess.

“I have tremendous admiration for the Brohn Homes operation”

“We chose to work with the SmartTouch team, because we wanted to work with the best,” said Aaron Boenig, Principal and Founder of Brohn Homes. “The SmartTouch team’s experience and deep understanding of the real estate market and proven sales and marketing performance, accountability, and results while delivering a great customer experience make them second to none in our industry.”

Brohn Homes will deploy the integrated SmartTouch Marketing Automation and SmartTouch CRM solutions and interactive lead generation programs as well as leverage the companies’ deep real estate marketing expertise to execute a digital marketing conversion strategy that will improve the effectiveness of Brohn Homes’ email marketing and website. The SmartTouch team will be redesigning the Brohn Homes website, developing and implementing email marketing campaigns, an SEO strategy, search engine marketing and interactive media listings management as part of the digital marketing programs.

“I have tremendous admiration for the Brohn Homes operation,” said Robert Cowes, President and Founder, SmartTouch Interactive. “Their commitment to quality and integrity is apparent in every aspect of the business; from the elegant design of the homes they build that maximize every available square foot to create smart living spaces to the way the sales team engages personally with each and every customer. We are delighted to have the opportunity to work with the Brohn Homes team.”

“Since founding Brohn Homes in 2002, we have been very successful growing our business organically,” said Adam Boenig, Principal and Founder, Brohn Homes. “As we began to expand the number of active communities we build in Austin, Cedar Park and San Antonio, we knew the time had come to take our marketing efforts to the next level. The SmartTouch team is a bit of anomaly, having both the marketing and real estate expertise that we needed. I look forward to seeing strong results from this team.”

“As a marketing agency and software services organization with a deep background in real estate as well as extensive experience in the markets Brohn Homes serves, our team is uniquely positioned to help, much more so than working with a traditional agency,” said Cowes.

About Brohn Homes

Founded by and for Central Texans, Brohn Homes is single handedly redefining home building from Austin to San Antonio. With over 25 years of combined experience, the company has established a reputation for building luxury homes in some of the hill country’s most sought-after locations. Brohn Homes combines craftsman quality and attention to detail with efficient processes and innovation to create a superior product and tremendous value for our customers. As we expanded into multiple markets over the years, maintaining the integrity of our product, regardless of size or commodity, has remained our guiding principle. www.brohnhomes.com

About SmartTouch Interactive®

SmartTouch Interactive is an interactive marketing agency with expertise in lead generation and online marketing that helps firms that require a multi-touch sales cycle create demand for products and services and grow their business with customized, interactive lead generation programs and a lead cultivation CRM solution. Backed by 30 years of experience in developing lead generation programs for 100s of clients, SmartTouch sets a new standard with lead generation programs and a single solution that integrates CRM, Marketing Automation, E-Mail Marketing and Inventory Management in one platform, SmartTouch. http://www.smarttouchinteractive.com/

The Challenge

Today 95% of home buyers begin their home shopping online.    The challenge that real estate sales & marketing professionals have is the reality that only 8 our 10 of prospects that request information online are not ready to engage in a serious buying conversation – “they are researching.”

So what can sales agents do to figure out who are the 2 that are ready to have a serious conversation?  Answer is quite simple:  “filter the leads by working them aggressively, after all isn’t that sales 101.”  So what does that mean?

A Follow Up Tip

Contact them as soon as possible even if its 9PM at night, acknowledge your receipt of their e-mail and request a call time the next day to discuss their home buying criteria.   If it’s during normal business hours call them.   If a prospect gives you a legitimate phone number it’s because they want to be called, if you opt to use e-mail rather than fire off a canned e-mail with all of the details of the homes or communities you are selling in, give a simple overview and focus on open ended questions to engage the buyer in sharing their needs.

You will be amazed on how much you impress your serious prospects and how much you will improve your results.   Once the initial follow up is executed and the lead is not engaging or ready to buy what can sales or marketing do to increase the opportunity to nurture the lead?

So what can you do to try to engage and convert the 8 out of 10 that were not sales ready after all they responded your marketing campaign?

Having the opportunity over the last 6 years to manage over 20 million dollars in marketing and advertising budgets that has lead to over 125,000 leads and close to 400 million real estate sale for our builder and developer customers I will share with my fellow NAHB members our experience with these tools to reengage leads and increase the conversion results from your marketing investment.

Social Media

As social media made its emergence in the late 2000s as marketing communication channel we had an opportunity to be amongst the first firms to help builders & developers to leverage this channel that had such hot buzz.    As we approached this endeavor the market was beginning to turn and we had to justify how we would spend each dollar and what was the ROI for our customers.  We were able to justify the effort in developing Facebook & Twitter pages for our customers because at the time it was a variable that had significant weight on search engine rankings.

I’ll share with you a few tips of what you can expect out of a Social Media Marketing Campaign effort.

1)    If you are going to do social media you need to have valuable conversations posted at least 4 days a week.  Otherwise it actually dents your credibility.  It’s the equivalent of going to website news section that has not been updated in months or years.

2)    The amount of effort it takes in man hours to have genuine content and conversations takes in the neighborhood of 4-6 hours a week.  It takes quite a bit of effort so whether you do it internally or outsource it be prepared to justify the ROI.

3)    The voice or personality needs to be genuine and there needs to be a grass roots focused effort on growing the list.

4)    Do not expect social media campaign to be a source of lead generation.   The reality is that potential buyers will search a brand they recognize or utilize Google to search for location and product they are looking for.   Facebook & Twitter will be the last place search for homes in.   People go to those sites to keep up with friends, not to search for real estate.    What do you do when you browse through Facebook?   “Go look at your old friends pictures?”   Yeah…

5)    If you build a significant following or fan base of realtors, these sites can be leveraged to help you manage and boost attendance at your realtor events.

6)    If you want to leverage your fan base to convert leads or cross sale your best shot is to put incentives that are only available on Facebook or Twitter.   “Yeah right”, I have yet to meet a builder that will publicize their most aggressive incentives online.   But if that is not an objective, this can actually be a way to get a true ROI.

Marketing Automation (Intelligent Drip Campaigns)

Historically, broadcast e-mails have been a primary weapon in all real estate sales & marketing programs.  It’s the most economic marketing communication channel.    85% of builders with a formal marketing program use email to broadcast marketing information to potential buyers.   However less than 20% utilize the power of Marketing Automation a.k.a intelligent drip campaigns.

Three years ago we began to follow the emergence of this technology in the B to B arena.   Providers and industry analysts raved about how these automated 1 to 1 emails were increasing their engagement and sales conversion rates by 20-30%.    In addition to being a provider or real estate marketing programs our firm is also a software development company that provides a lead management platform.

So in 2010 we added marketing automation to the Smarttouch® Platform and began using the technology with the objective of helping builders and developers engage more of those leads that went into a black hole or that sales simply gave up on.   What we found was that by automating follow up with well crafted marketing messages we were able to match the same results providers in the B to B arena boasted about – on average 20% of leads engaged and responded to these campaigns and across the board with our customers marketing automation has helped increased net sales by 10-15 percent.

I’ll share some quick tips on some keys to the success in managing a marketing automation program

1. Content is king.   You must invest the time in developing content that helps your prospects make a good buying decision.   For example, some of the most popular concepts we produce and have high engagement rates are; “8 Reasons on Why Buying New vs Resale,” 10 Fun Things to do in ABC Community”,   “Area Accolades”, “Top 10 Tips to Prepare For a Move.”    Opportunities are endless, but the content needs to be genuine.

1. 2. Timing. Every 7 or 14 days is a good interval for frequency.  After all you want to stay in front while the idea is fresh on their mind.   You will want to produce at least a series of 5 e-mails that will go off automatically on behalf of your sales agents, to supplement their follow up efforts.  The date and time that gets the best results are Thursday’s at 10am.    In box is clear by that time and folks are making weekend plans.

1. 3. Technology. A lot of email marketing programs offer drip campaigns, however true marketing automation technology goes way beyond that.  It enables you do introduce lead scoring to help you rank prospects that engage the most.   In addition, they offer the ability to utilize links to capture additional buyer info.  

After all this is a tool to market to existing leads so chances are you already have all of their contact info.  So why make them go to a landing page and fill out everything all over again?

A key tip if you proceed with that is limit yourself to 3 questions on let us know what you are interested is about as much as you want to ask.    Sample questions that we often use is location preference, timing, number of bedrooms and of course “contact me to schedule a tour.”

Whether you use a regular email service for drip campaign or marketing automation, assure that your calls to action generate notification e-mails to the person responsible for working that prospect.

1. 4. Response Time. If you are able to set up a notification alert when prospects engage with your automated marketing messages, treat these reengagements with the same follow up urgency we advice on new leads.  

Try it and do a test run in 2012.   If executed properly it will get you a larger ROI from your marketing budget and can be what leads you increase sales by 10% this.   It’s in our arsenal because it WORKS!

Robert Cowes III
President & Co-Founder
SmartTouch® Interactive
www.smarttouchinteractive.com

Robert Cowes III, President and Co-Founder of SmartTouch comments on this great article.

This article highlights the adoption of a digital marketing strategy to take advantage of the nearly 80% of consumers and business decision makers using the internet to research product.  The key to getting the most out a digital marketing strategy is to put measure all efforts.   From search traffic, investments in search engine marketing, third party website advertising, e-mail marketing and social media.   Establishing a bench mark for cost per lead and cost per sale are key to establishing measuring mechanisms that ultimately will provide visibility to the data to optimize the plan by shifting marketing dollars to what works.    So the game plan needs to have the following components.

1) Establish cost per lead/cost per sale bench mark

2) Put together the tactical plan of where you will advertise and promote your products online

3) Set measuring criteria for all media buys

4) Integrate a lead management (CRM) system in place to gain visibility on the opportunities generated by the digital marketing plan

5) Establish a reporting calendar, assess and adjust the plan accordingly. A key tip is that give each effort 60-90 days before taking action on your conclusions.

6)  Optimize the campaign based on your findings and make this a repeatable process.

How to Get More Leads for Less with an Integrated Marketing Approach

By Biserka Anderson, www.business2community.com

Gone are the days when comprehensive marketing campaigns were the preserve of the super rich corporations. To plan and deploy traditional advertising and all-embracing marketing campaigns, one had to spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds on TV commercials, radio and print adverts, direct mail, trade shows, not to mention the labour needed to handle all these activities that would ‘convince’ consumers to buy your product.

As audiences get increasingly adept at blocking out these ‘interruptive’ – and quite possibly annoying – commercial messages, outbound marketing as we know it is fast losing ground.

So is there a better way to spend your marketing?

Still thinking outbound marketing? Think again

The good news is that with the advent of the internet and the shift in people’s purchasing habits, there is a much more effective – and affordable – alternative to traditional marketing methods. All a business needs to do is open up and embrace integrated digital marketing.

Indeed, with 78% of consumers searching online before buying a product and 66% of these people purchasing on the internet (Hubspot), businesses can’t afford to miss out on the opportunities offered by the internet and ecommerce.

Yes, you may say, but how exactly can I tap into these opportunities when there’s so much to take care of? Making your webpage visible, driving traffic when there’re billions of pages vying for consumer attention, capturing and nurturing leads, converting them into real customers…  Throw regular blogging, search engine optimisation and the need for social media interaction in the mix, and all these processes can appear quite mind-boggling, indeed.

Create a holistic digital business strategy from the get-go

Luckily, now there is an easy and cost-effective solution to the streamlining headaches many an emarketer experiences. It’s called marketing automation and comes in the shape of an all-in-one integrated tool offered by software-as-a-service providers.

An integrated marketing platform streamlines processes by automating otherwise time-consuming manual marketing tasks, such as lead generation, lead nurturing and conversion, thus reducing turnaround times and minimising cost.

But beware – simply integrating digital marketing software into your business strategy won’t yield the results you hope to achieve. Everything – from lead generation down to that crucial sales call which will convert a lead into a client, has to be thought out before you even incorporate the online marketing software. Technology is no substitute for the power of thinking.

As a rule of thumb, use an integrated approach when devising your digital business strategy, optimise the marketing-sales experience and utilise any software as exactly what it should be – a tool for the execution of your overall strategy.  UK recruitment software company FireFish did just that for their new recruitment software product and achieved a whopping 84% cost saving per lead!

Since adopting an integrated digital marketing model, the company has slashed its cost per lead more than six times, while the cost to acquire a client dropped from £800 to £148. What is more, with nearly a third of all FireFish demonstrations now carried out with overseas organisations, the integrated digital marketing approach has levelled the playing field for a UK SME and placed it on the global map – something which would otherwise have been impossible.

Why the time to adopt an integrated approach to digital marketing is now

Facts pointing to the need for an integrated inbound marketing approach are incontestable:

• B2B and B2C companies using inbound marketing techniques experience 60% lower cost per lead.
• Companies which adopt inbound marketing enjoy 60% increase in traffic (MIT Sloan School of Management independent study).
• Inbound marketing-dominated organisations experience a cost per lead 62% lower than outbound marketing-dominated organizations.
• Users experience an average of 32% increase in leads per month (Hubspot).

Still, as an Econsultancy study of marketing automation buyers revealed, businesses at large are slow to adopt integrated marketing practices. Surprisingly, the report found that while decision-makers are picking up on marketing automation, 37% of businesses have no plans for using integrated marketing platforms at all.

With a low-cost digital platform, a marginal cost per customer close to zero and a promising return on investment, businesses savvy enough to be among the first to move towards integrated inbound marketing are the ones who will – naturally – be ahead of the pack.