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











CRM-Integrated Marketing Automation – 5 Ways to Boost ROI
October 20th, 2011Commentary by Robert Cowes, President & Co-Founder SmartTouch Interactive.
Without a doubt there is a lot more value in having an integrated CRM & Marketing Automation solution in place. The timing of when event based activities take place are critical to sales in the same realm to instant visibility to the performance of campaigns and different media buys is for marketing. Having sales and marketing with transparency and visibility enriches the organization by improving efficiencies. If you are considering migrating from an old CRM or introducing a marketing automation platform, below are a few factors to consider in your decision.
1) A complete all in one solution or an independent CRM & Marketing Automation platform integrated by API.
2) Customization: Most of the solutions in the market place come as a base tool kit that will require an investment in either your time, a consultants or the solution provider to understand your business process and customize the applications accordingly. You will want to make sure that you budget for this and put in the time and effort to make it work.
3) Look at cost structure: Most solutions are priced by a single or combination of users, storage, number of e-mails or contacts.
4) Put in place an internal champion/owner. A successful CRM/Marketing Automation implementation will be dependent on the level of service and support provided by the solution provider combined with go to resident expert inside your organization.
5) Be practical. It typically takes anywhere from 2-12 months of power using to see a true difference in your efforts and results of an investment. The most important effort for sales to take the discipline to enter the data and leverage the features/tools. Marketing uses the platform to nurture and reengage leads.
6) You want to make sure you understand your terms of service on e-mail and list management. Beware that most marketing automation solutions provide e-mail service and under their terms of use they may not allow for users to send e-mails to third party lists. Be sure to READ THE TERMS of MAILING Service.
7) Be practical #2. Marketing automation mailing systems can provide some powerful 1 to 1 marketing features that can make very personalized communication with your mailing list. You want to consider the size and profile of your list. Consider that e-mail marketing is like any other direct marketing, you are playing the law of numbers. So build out a marketing nurturing campaign that puts the effort involved in creating the content and strategy in perspective with the size of your list.
The Smarttouch Platform is an integrated CRM & Marketing Automation solution. If you would like to schedule a personalized demonstration click here.
CRM-Integrated Marketing Automation – 5 Ways to Boost ROI
By: Debbi Qaqish
destinationcrm.com
ROI as a topic and as a goal for marketers is here to stay. Leveraging tools, people, and processes to effectively contribute to revenue and demonstrate ROI is job number one for all revenue marketers.
While I am passionate about the softer elements of this success equation, it needs to be understood that it is the integration of a full-featured marketing automation tool with CRM that creates the foundation for establishing and reporting on ROI success.
Lead Generation & Marketing ROI, a recent study sponsored by The Pedowitz Group and conducted by Lenskold Group, found the connection between CRM and marketing automation as an enabler of ROI to be critical. In the study, marketers without marketing automation, marketers with marketing automation, but not integrated into CRM, and marketers with marketing automation and integrated to CRM were compared. The study refers to marketers with marketing automation and CRM integrated as “Integrated Marketing Automation.”
One of the key findings in the report is how marketers using both CRM and marketing automation perform better. “Companies using full-featured marketing automation integrated with CRM or sales automation indicate much higher rates of reporting and forecasting metrics. Compared to marketers with no marketing automation, integrated marketing automation users were more likely to report performance metrics (average 58 percent vs. 36 percent per metric), report financial metrics (average 46 percent vs. 22 percent per metric), and forecast metrics (average 56 percent vs. 35 percent per metric).”
In the study, performance metrics were items such as reporting on number of opportunities, percentage of leads converting to opportunities, etc. For the marketer, these numbers clearly indicate the value of an integrated solution.
And this makes sense. It’s the integration of marketing automation with CRM which creates a complete revenue picture and process. I recently had an interview on Revenue Marketer Radio in which the marketer referred to the joint sales and marketing organization as the revenue team. This type of continuity and clarity can only be achieved with the integration of CRM with marketing automation. This integrated foundation allows for the tracking of every lead from the top of the lead funnel to the bottom of the sales funnel.
With this key finding in mind, here are five ways for improving marketing ROI based on research from Lenskold Group:
1. Target high value, high potential leads. This is one of the most powerful features in marketing automation in that it allows you to segment during any and every stage of the client buy cycle and do it automatically. With lead scoring, personalization, and automatic segmentation based on behavior, this can be a huge ROI winner.
2. Improve conversion late in the funnel. For most clients, this is an area of low hanging fruit and huge impact. One recent example is a client we are working with where they only convert 2 percent of all trials. A trial occurs very late in the cycle and a 1 percent uptick in conversion rates has an immediate and incredible impact on revenue and marketing ROI. Using marketing automation, we can effectively nurture the experience and do it dynamically based on response and use or non-use of the program during the trial.
3. Reduce leakage with better integration. We call this “No Good Lead Left Behind” and with marketing automation, this is an area of big upside. Take the time to map out the life of a lead from lead to close and look at those key areas where leads are leaking out of the process. Once you understand where and why they are leaking out, you can plug those leaks with automatic nurturing through your marketing automation system, especially when it is integrated with your CRM. An example is when a lead is passed to sales and the lead is not ready. Typically what happens is this lead is lost or re-bought at a later date. With marketing automation, either the rep can place that lead back into a nurturing program with two clicks when marketing automation and CRM are fully integrated or marketing can set up an automatic sweep of aged leads back into the nurture program.
4. Accelerate leakage of low-potential prospects. This means take out the trash, frequently. Taking this noise and distraction out of the system can have huge benefits both in terms of ROI and marketing-sales relations. By working on data quality in both CRM and marketing automation and instituting a highly effective lead scoring program to take out the trash early, you can diminish this noise and revenue drainer.
5. Gain efficiency and eliminate low impact media. Efficiency and spending money on high return marketing programs is the hallmark of an effective marketing automation program. The number one reason marketers buy marketing automation is for proof of results and decisions. Ever fought with sales in the effectiveness of going to a trade show or on running an ad? With marketing automation and the reporting that comes with it, you can now have a business discussion with proof points.
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