Commentary by: Robert Cowes III, MBA, President & Co-Founder of SmartTouch

If you are considering adopting a new CRM This article written by Jennifer Schiff of ecrmguide.com  is a great guide to how to make a good buying a decision.   We also offer the following key tips that are often overlooked.

• Test drives are great for testing functionality, but unless it has content in your demo you typically will not be able to make a good assessment of whether or not the CRM is the right fit for you.   You will get better influence on your decision if you rely on several references from the vendor of peers in your space using the solution.
• Cheaper does not always equal better value.  Do it yourselves 9 out of 10 times result in abandonment within 6 months.
• Set up and configuration is worth the investment so the CRM you select is relevant and useful in your business environment.   Depending on your necessities you should budget $1000-$10,000+ to get a software as a service set up professionally.   Price is typically pegged to how complex your customization of the tool you choose to your needs.
• Most organizations will typically power use 10% of the functionality of a CRM.   So focus your roll out on that 10% with a vision of growing into the desired bells & whistles that you want to leverage long term.
• You want to select a vendor that offers unlimited support and ongoing training.  This is critical in a successful CRM roll out.   Typically your users will grow into using more functions and ongoing support to transition into using those other features is critical to internal buy-in
• Your needs will evolve, just like your business objectives.   Consider the vendors product development strategy as it regards to how often they release new enhancements and their policies on customer driven input.
• Assign an internal trainer or product champion with a plan to add others to those teams.   This will go a long way in getting other to believe in the system
• Consider rolling out a pilot program with a few users first during the initial deployment so you can address any modifications before rolling out to your entire team.
• As part of your rollout strategy develop a strategy that will sell the benefit internally, for most it’s the benefit the end user will gain (efficiency, documentation, unmissed opportunities, more sales, it’s a tool for individuals in the organization to improve how they do their jobs).  Ultimately that results in better performance for the team members and the organization.
• Depending on your organizational culture (how savvy or experience they are at using a CRM system), expect to give your organization 6-12 months to fully embrace adoption.

These tips and the third party article information below will give you a good foundation in making a good CRM adoption decision.  If you would like additional advice feel free to e-mail us at sales@smarttouchinteractive.com

Best regards & happy CRM shopping,

Robert Cowes III, MBA

President & Co-Founder of SmartTouch

Ten Common CRM Mistakes – And How to Avoid Them

By Jennifer Schiff
April 12, 2011

Whether you’re in the process of choosing a new customer relationship management (CRM) system, about to deploy one, or looking to get the most out of your existing CRM software, these expert tips can help you avoid some common CRM mistakes.

Here, then, are 10 common CRM mistakes — and how to avoid (or fix) them.

1. Focusing on features instead of process

“Buying a CRM system because of the features it has today is the stupidest decision you can make,” said Martin Schneider, senior director of communications at SugarCRM. “Just like buying a computer — the system could be obsolete before you go live with the project if it is too rigid and relies on features instead of a fluid data model and simple process engine.” And Schneider is not the only CRM expert to warn against “feature-itis.”

“By themselves, all the CRM features in the world won’t make sales reps collaborate, improve customer service or raise customer loyalty,” said David Taber, CEO of SalesLogistix, a certified Salesforce.com consulting company. “Those results happen only when happy users have put good data into the CRM system as a natural part of doing their job. So the only features you should focus on are the ones that accelerate adoption by employees.”

2. Deploying a CRM system that isn’t optimized for mobility

Considering that today’s sales force is mobile, your CRM system should also be mobile. Yet according to the experts, there are still companies out there using CRM systems that don’t easily synch with mobile devices. The solution: “Ensure that your CRM system’s mobile capabilities are tethered to the core CRM platform — and not another system that needs to be bought, configured, implemented and maintained alongside the core CRM system,” said Schneider.

3. Trying to do too much, too soon

Start small — and gradually evolve your CRM system, say the experts. “The most effective CRM systems are built out gradually so that they fit naturally into the way you do business,” said Taber. “Sure it’s tempting to have a big budget and a fixed deadline — to get the project all over and done with — but that approach almost guarantees a CRM system that doesn’t work smoothly with your existing internal policies, channel interactions or business processes.”

Similarly, don’t worry about importing all your contacts in one fell swoop as soon as your new CRM system is up and running, especially if they are located in multiple places, said Pamela O’Hara, the president of BatchBlue Software. Rather, use an “incremental approach to CRM implementation and expansion,” said Taber. “With the modern, cloud-based tools of today, companies can start small, taking on very little risk and proving the value of the CRM system to each team before getting more strategic,” added SugarCRM’s Schneider.

4. Not owning your information

When deploying a CRM system, you need to take the appropriate steps to protect your information from the start by setting up your system wisely, advised O’Hara. “Use the business name, business credit card, and be sure that a business email address is used when registering the administrator on the account,” she said. “These steps will protect you from legal ambiguity about who can access the data, ambiguity you’ll be thrilled to avoid if the employment status of the person who sets up the account changes.”

5. Deploying from the top down instead of from the ground up

“In a world where social media and Web 2.0 application experiences rule, the key to successful CRM adoption is relinquishing control of the decision-making process to the end user, not to the CIO or vice president of sales,” argued Schneider. Find out which CRM-related tools your employees like using “and create a formal program based on real usage,” he advised.

6. Using CRM as a micromanagement tool

“CRM systems are about improving the speed and effectiveness of managing customerrelationships — which means a CRM system should be for the Sales and Support reps first, management second,” said Taber. “Of course you need visibility and discipline, but if the reps believe that the CRM is just a surveillance and measurement tool for upper management, they won’t really use it.”

Moreover, “the data will be incomplete or — worse — faked. So you won’t get either the effectiveness or the visibility you wanted out of the system.” Taber’s solution: Optimize your CRM system to save your sales reps time and hassle, so they can close deals faster.

7. Creating a CRM silo

“Many businesses deploy their CRM without thinking about connecting it with the larger business,” said Paul Turner, senior director of product marketing at NetSuite. That can mean having to manually reenter data, slowing business processes. To avoid this CRM mistake, Turner advised managers to “tightly integrate sales and service applications with accounting, so you can accelerate, streamline and reduce errors from the quote, to order, to fulfillment and invoicing, through to customer service process.” An added benefit: “integrating your sales and finance systems also provides the most accurate way of building accurate forecasts, and monitoring unbilled and billed orders versus quota,” he said.

8. Decentralizing customer data

“It’s easy to end up with customer data spread out and duplicated across lines of business applications, such as opportunities and upsell information in the SFA [sales force automation], invoicing information in accounting and customer issues in the service system,” said Turner. However, by doing so, “it makes it almost impossible to get a holistic view of your customers.” Worse, some systems or departments may have outdated or inaccurate customer information. The solution: Centralize your customer information in a company-wide CRM system. When “customer data is centralized, everyone gets consistent, real-time visibility into one version of the customer, improving productivity and overall customer satisfaction,” he said.

9. Thinking locally instead of globally

“It’s easy for global businesses to end up with multiple CRM systems,” said Turner. “But this can cause real problems when it comes to sales forecasting and quote planning — and can really hinder corporate visibility into sales performance.” If your business is multinational, it’s important to choose a CRM system “that can support multiple currencies, multiple subsidiaries, be easy to tailor to specific regional sales processes and enable a consolidated view of global sales performance (actuals, forecast and performance against quota),” he said.

10. Getting overwhelmed by social media

“Relationships are growing all over the Internet, thanks to social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs and Twitter,” said BatchBlue’s O’Hara. And while more relationships are good news for your business, keeping up with all your new friends, followers and contacts can be overwhelming. So, she advised, “be sure to capture these non-traditionalcommunication channels in your CRM system so you can get the bigger picture on your relationships and help them grow.” (For more on social CRM, see Ten Ways Social Media is Changing Sales and CRM and Top 10 Tips for Using Social Media to Improve CRM.)

During tax season, one of the first decisions you need to make when filing your taxes is long form (1040) or short form (1040A or 1040EZ)? Your tax form decision is based on your needs as a taxpayer, just as the lead generation forms on your site should be based on your needs as an organization. Here are some questions to ask when deciding how many and which questions to include in your form:

B2B vs. B2C? Consumers have been encouraged to be cautious with their personal information, resulting in programs like the National Do Not Call Registry. Business leads may be more willing to give information about their company in order to get more accurate or detailed information in return. Often, people who are at work, are under time constraints and don’t have time to fill out complex forms, no matter whether they are B2B or B2C leads. Be aware of your site’s usage patterns and demographics/psychographics in order to develop the best form for your visitor.

What’s the call to action? Write your lead generation form content so that the questions in the form are all relevant to the call to action. If your content is customer-oriented and focused on the benefits of filling out the form you’ll be able to ask more questions without sacrificing lead conversion.

How does the incentive for filling out your form impact your form length? Your customer wants to know,“What’s in it for me?” Create a compelling call to action that shows how the incentive you’re offering is (or has the perception of being) worth the information you’re asking them to give you.

What info do you need? Ask the questions you absolutely have to know on the initial form. Be clear about why you need the answers you are requesting. You can always ask additional segmentation questions once you begin to develop a relationship with the customer in order to customize their experience with your company. Give them a reason to like and trust you before you ask rather than overwhelm them with questions right away.

What answers will you really use? Everyone wants to make their communications relevant to the recipient and segmentation is a great way to do that. However, if you are creating text and HTML versions of your email newsletter anyway, don’t ask for that info in your forms. Similarly, don’t ask for other details about your customer if you’re not going to use them to create relevant content on landing pages, emails, or in offline communication efforts. Know how each answer will make your response customized especially for the person filling out the form.

What data do you already know? If a visitor has browsed your site, you should have web analytics data on how they got to your site (referring source, keywords, etc.), which pages they were interested in, and othersource tracking information that you can use to enhance their customer record without asking those questions in your lead generation form.

Does your form “feel” long? For lead generation forms with more than a handful of questions, use graphic elements, a completion status bar, or other page layout techniques to make the form feel shorter and/or give the prospective lead a sense of completion. Sometimes a multi-page form with one question on a page using the right visual effects gives the perception of being less daunting than a single page form with dozens of questions on it.

Are you getting lead quantity over quality? Short, simple forms often produce more leads than longer, more complex forms, but the ultimate goal is how those are leads converting. You can waste a lot of time and money if your lead funnel is too wide at the top and you’re getting too many unqualified leads. Ensure that the metrics you are tracking include not only how well the form gathers leads, but also how those leads convert to sales.

Final recommendation: TEST, TEST, TEST! What works best for one site doesn’t work at all for another. You need to measure the results from different form lengths and questions to see what produces the best results for your site.

Like what you’ve read? Don’t forget to share it! Did we miss other questions that you ask before deciding what to include in a lead generation form? Please leave a comment below to let us know!

The article originally appeared in B2CMarketingInsider.com posted by Sharon Mostyn, February 28, 2011

Commentary by Robert Cowes, President of SmartTouch Interactive.

We share this article on our News Blog as a reference point from a third party consultant that writes for the National Association of builders.   She states the need to be smart and measure all Internet performance and how critical it is to have a CRM Software in place, especially one with a  strong e-mail marketing platform, this is excactly the foundation of Smarttouch™CRM.

Sales and Marketing: Measure All Aspects to Maximize Your Internet Sales and Marketing Performance

Meredith OliverMiRM, CMP, CSP, MCSPMeredith Communications

From musicians to athletes, superstar performers understand that success is driven by numbers — the number of dress rehearsals, the speed of a lap around the track, the distance jumped from point A to point B.

Sales performance is no different. Top performing sales teams are led by sales managers and business owners who quantify performance, set goals and regularly review results.

The rise of Internet marketing adds a new dynamic to measuring sales performance. Some sales managers shy away from quantifying Internet performance because they don’t know what to measure. Others back away because they fear their own lack of Internet knowledge will become apparent, and some simply don’t have the right tools in place or won’t make the time.

Ounces, Minutes, Square Footage — What Should You Measure?

The beauty of Internet sales and marketing performance is that it is highly track-able. So, as managers and owners, you have the ability to measure many different aspects of your sales and marketing performance.

The first and most important measurement to track is your website’s performance. Commonly called “website analytic” reports, this data gives valuable insight into whether your website is working for you or against you.

The easiest and most affordable (as in free) website analytic program is Google Analytics, which will send automatic website performance reports via e-mail on a schedule of your choosing. I recommend reviewing the reports monthly. Like in-person walk-in traffic numbers, website visitor numbers are the foundation for assessing all your Internet sales and marketing performance.

Once you identify the average number of unique website visitors you have per month, the next step is to identify how many of those visitors convert into an electronic lead — an online registration, e-mail, live chat or phone call generated by the website. High performing websites convert 1%-to-2% of their unique monthly visitors into e-leads.

It’s Five O’Clock — Do You Know Where Your e-Leads Are?

How fast, how often and how many times does your sales team follow up on your e-leads? They can never be too fast with their follow-up, only too slow. The best way to measure your team’s e-lead responsiveness is through e-mystery shopping.

To do this, simply pose as an “A+” e-lead by providing detailed information via e-mail or online on pricing, a move-in timeframe and a phone number with a best time you can be reached. Then, record the type, quantity, quality and speed of your sales agent’s follow-up.

You do need to do this. If you don’t measure your sales team’s e-lead responsiveness, you’re just wasting time and money building a killer website and marketing it on the search engines. If you want your website to be effective, your team must have the training and mechanics in place to follow-up on your e-leads.

E-Mails Don’t Sell Homes, People Do

E-mail alone rarely sells a home. People do — because buyers buy from people they like and trust.

Consequently, when determining your sales team’s effectiveness, the final area you need to measure is your sales agents’ conversion rate of e-leads to in-person appointments and the conversion rate of kept e-lead appointments to sales.

You need to determine if your agents are only continually conversing with their e-lead prospects or if they are setting appointments with them because at some point, they need to actually meet their electronic prospect in person and give them compelling reasons to say yes.

Not only should your salespeople be appointment-setting machines, they should be closing machines as well. So determine the percentage of the e-lead appointments that result in a signed purchase agreement.  Well-trained and highly skilled sales agents convert about 25% of their e-leads into appointments and, of the appointments that show up, easily 30% should complete a purchase agreement.

Why Use a Hammer When the Job Calls for a Nail Gun?

Whether building a house or selling one, most people need the right tool to do their job effectively. When it comes to tracking Internet sales and marketing performance, customer relationship management (CRM) software is the preferred tool.

Think of CRM software as an electronic Rolodex on steroids. It far outperforms the tools we’ve used in the past — Excel spreadsheets, paper printouts, Post-It Notes, etc. — because CRM software automates the measurement process, making it easy and efficient, while the old tools require manual data entry and manual calculations.

When searching for a web-based CRM program, choose one with a strong e-mail marketing platform. Its set-up may take some time, but after that it should run on auto-pilot with only minor periodic updates and maintenance.

Be the Captain of Your Internet Ship

The biggest mistake sales managers and business owners make after creating their website is not minding their Internet store. Like every other facet of your business, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. If you want your Internet sales to soar, start operating by the (measured) numbers.

Meredith Oliver, MIRM, MCSP is the founder and president of Meredith Communications, a sales training and e-marketing consulting company based in Orlando that delivers marketing services to builders and developers nationwide. For more information, e-mail Oliver, call her at 321-285-1660 or visit her website, www.CreatingWow.com.

This article originally appeared on the NAHB Sales and Marketing Channel.

Commentary by Robert Cowes III, President of SmartTouch Interactive:

Probably the most common mistake we see with builder and developer websites these days is the reluctance to look at the investment in this channel equal if not more important than decorating a sales center. The majority of builders and developers look for a highly regarded staging company or decorator to deck out a model home or sales environment many times spending 25-50K per model, yet when it comes to websites those who have not experienced success find themselves not looking at that investment in the same realm. The fact is that your website if executed properly will have 100 times the number of visits than any model home.  In order to taste and make it an effective sales tool, the production and maintenance needs to have a well thought out strategy. Quite often at SmartTouch we inherit poorly executed websites or projects that were based on strictly awarding the job to the lowest bid. Typically in this business you get what you pay for. We share this article as a third party testament that making a web provider and strategy decision is more than just putting something out there, its only the first step in really leveraging the online sales center as your most important sales tool

Sales and Marketing

Creating a Web Site Is Only the First Step in Building a Strong Brand Online

By Stephen Feltner, CSP, and Tyler Waite, CSP

When it comes to both traditional and online branding, home builders, along with most businesses, would do well to think about building brands of value rather than trying to create successful brands.

It’s All About Them

Successful branding is not about getting the right slogan, colors and messaging. It’s about understanding what expectations your customers have and then crafting satisfying solutions that subtlety draw in buyers.

This is in direct contrast to advertising, which blends into the background hype — the millions of words that are constantly shouting at us, but often ignored.

The goal of any branding is first and foremost a commitment to the process of reassuring current and potential customers that they are making the right decision by placing their trust — and their money — with your company.

Successful branding aligns a customer’s feelings with a decision to purchase — and then delivers the product or service that enhances those feelings.

In the pre-Internet world, building and maintaining a trusted brand was a long-term process for home builders. Today, your Web site should constantly deliver glowing testimonials from clients and showcase housing awards won and other distinctions to an audience of prospective buyers whose decision to explore your homes and communities may be based largely on what they see online — and how it makes them feel.

Meredith Oliver MIRM, CSP, of Meredith Communications, sees the Internet as “the great equalizer when it comes to branding.” A compelling Web site, she says, can level the playing field, “but it is the starting point, not the ending point.”

Expand Your Internet Presence With Sub-Domains

Many builders devote time and energy creating a Web site and, once finished, think their online presence is complete. According to Oliver, however, “Branding takes place when you can be found in a lot of places. The more sites that link to you, the better. Internet listing services, sponsored search, display ads, third-party referrers — all are important to putting a builder on the Internet map.”

Building a brand online is a multifaceted endeavor that encompasses much more than merely trying to attract more attention to your Web site.

The use of Web site sub-domains can be highly effective in building a brand online because it opens up new territory for site indexing, improves the consumer experience and increases the branding footprint in a given market.

For example, a builder named Elegant Homes could add several sub-domains that complement its corporate name — such as www.ElegantHomescastlepines.com, www.ElegantCustomHomes.com and www.ElegantHomeCommunities.com — to expand its Internet presence. This would provide the builder strategic local content and improve its online performance on Google and other search engines.

Blog On

Creating a blog is a branding strategy that many builders haven’t quite embraced yet, though many tech-savvy ones have.

“Blogging is an important part of an SEO (search engine optimization) strategy,” says Oliver. “However, most builders do not have the staff or expertise to build and maintain their own blog.”

“Home builders usually have to hire a company to write the blogs and figure out where to post them. It takes at least one post per week to be effective,” she says

Strategies that builders develop for their blogs potentially can encompass all facets of their marketing, advertising and public reaction — both the good and the bad.

Blog strategies can include:

• Posting positive entries and customer testimonials on a builder-owned or sponsored blog
• Posts made to civic, community or nonprofit blogs
• Responses to negative posts and complaints, addressing grievances and voicing the builder’s viewpoint

Safeguard Your Brand in Cyberspace

The Internet has the ability to make or break a brand with startling speed — presenting home builders with a unique opportunity, their worst nightmare or simply a mediocre online presence somewhere in between.

To safeguard their brand, builders should consider developing strategies that address brand abuse, brand real estate and brand erosion. The vast unrelenting reach of the Internet almost demands it.

For instance, Web sites and blogs dedicated to airing home buyer grievances is an emerging trend that thrives on the viral and instantaneous nature of online communication — posting the latest builder blunders to bolster shrill rants. Many of these sites have undermined the advertising and marketing of their builder targets with subversive precision.

Builders have responded by buying the sites of these gripe-site operators and shutting them down; and they have taken the sites to court — with First Amendment supporters on one side and corporate libel lawyers on the other — with mixed results, oftentimes in the same case.

For example, when a builder sued one of its home buyers in Houston for creating a gripe site, the builder was initially awarded $80,000. The case was appealed and eventually overturned, with the appeals court ruling in favor of the grip-site operator and finding no “bad faith intent to profit” by the home buyer.

Tom Crandell, CEO of Ayohwahr Interactive, an online marketing agency that focuses on brand identity and brand protection, points to trademark protection provisions and the use of sub-domains in search engine marketing as a way to fight brand dilution and misrepresentation.

“Every search engine has a unique policy to mitigate trademark infringement,” Crandell says. “For example, Google will allow you to eliminate the ability for third parties to use your trademarks in the title and copy of ads.”

Five Points to Build Your Brand Upon

Building, maintaining and improving your brand online is an ongoing process. According to Paul Cardis, CEO of the Madison, Wis.-based Avid Ratings, a customer loyalty management firm specializing in the home building industry, builders who want to build brand loyalty need to:

• Focus on what their customers want and make sure their brand delivers it
• Simplify their brand by focusing on just a few key brand values
• Reinforce their brand by communicating it consistently in all their ads, business cards, brochures, Web sites, etc.
• Exceed what their brand promises — because failing, just once, can signal its demise
• Manage their brand by continually looking for ways to improve it

While Internet marketing and online branding may seem like a journey into uncharted territory, the good news is that with good planning, proper provisions and expert help, there can be great rewards for builders whose brands create trust and value.

Stephen Feltner, CSP, has held key management positions in the online real estate media industry since 1999. He has also served on the board of governors for the Builder Marketing Society and is an alternate associate director with the Building Industry Association of Southern California.

Tyler Waite, CSP, has been a regional new-home sales manager in Denver and Dallas and has won the prestigious Addy Award for marketing given by the American Advertising Federation.

This article originally appeared on the NAHB Sales and Marketing Channel.

Commentary by Robert Cowes – CoFounder of SmartTouch Interactive

Last December, as we set the stage to launch SmartTouch Interactive, we decided to join The Austin Home Builder Association – which as an added value benefit, got us membership with the Texas and National Building Associations. We have been actively participating in our local association, attending multiple chapter meetings a month and joining the Sales & Marketing council. As a result of our participation we get weekly ezines and e-mails. It was a great delight and surprise to see the first article on Marketing Automation for builders and developers generated from the association. It is a sign of what is coming.

March 8, 2010 NBnews.com (National Building News Online)

Market Effectively, Efficiently With Automated Marketing

Tougher market conditions and tighter budgets have forced many companies to get innovative in order to do more with less. Now, as the industry slowly begins to return to health, these same innovations can help position builders, not just for survival, but for rapid growth as markets rebound.

The marketing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Traditional marketing channels, such as print advertising, have been supplanted by a range of different online marketing outlets — from social media to pay-per-click ads. Many companies have struggled to keep up with these changes.

Even those who have moved more of their marketing efforts online may not be taking full advantage of the opportunities to reduce costs and track performance, increasing — and monitoring — the return on investment (ROI) of their efforts.

Furthermore, taking advantage of the full potential of online channels and enabling technologies is not just about marketing online, it’s also about leveraging electronic tools to streamline the generation and management of both online and offline leads.

It is not surprising, then, that there has been a recent surge of interest among home builders in marketing automation.

Marketing Automation in Broad Brush

Basically, marketing automation is all about doing more with less — conducting more marketing campaigns, reaching more prospects and collecting more leads while minimizing costs.

To accomplish that, marketing automation encompasses a variety of different kinds of technology solutions all designed to facilitate the planning, execution, management and tracking of marketing activities — from traditional print advertising to direct mail, e-mail, sales events and promotions.

For example, marketing automation can encompass event management solutions, e-mail and direct-mail applications, planning tools, marketing-analysis programs and more.

Ultimately, marketing automation is about incorporating a new set of tools to sell more homes faster — at a lower cost of sale.

Take Advantage of an Inexpensive Channel

Good marketing automation systems help builders and marketers manage and analyze the totality of their marketing initiatives, whether these include advertisements in print newspapers, glossy brochures sent by mail or in-person sales center events.

But one of the greatest advantages of automated marketing systems is that they enable builders to maximize the potential of the lowest-cost marketing channel — the Internet.

The Internet rapidly skyrocketed in its importance to the industry in just a few short years to the point where home builders today aren’t just using the Internet for marketing because it’s cost-effective, they’re using it because the Internet is where the home buyers are.

Studies conducted for NAHB’s Institute of Residential Marketing found that, not only did Internet-using consumers value online resources highly in their home buying search, they found them the most useful, most important resources they were most likely to use in future home searches.

When considered along with statistics from a study by the National Association of Realtors® indicating that 77% of home buyers use the Web when looking for a home, the picture is clear — builders who neglect or insufficiently utilize online channels are passing up an obvious and relatively inexpensive approach for reaching the majority of potential buyers in their market.

Nor is this push toward greater use of online channels driven purely by consumers; builders have reported that their best-quality leads find them on the Web.

Reaching More Home Buyers and Learning More About Them

The linchpin of marketing automation is e-mail marketing — a communication channel that allows builders to reach almost limitless numbers of potential customers without increasing costs.

With automated marketing systems, builders can create compelling, rich-media e-mail communications and customize them to reflect the recipient’s name, location and interests. Plus, with a small investment in creating content tailored to specific preferences and conditions, home builders can design highly personalized campaigns that really connect with the buyer, increasing e-mail open rates and sales conversions.

This can be accomplished by installing simple forms on the builder’s Web site or on kiosks at sales centers that allow for fast, easy collection of initial information about interested home buyers. Follow-up e-mails to the prospects who fill out the forms provide a perfect opportunity to gather further qualifying information in exchange for incentives and marketing collateral.

By using each touch-point as a chance to collect more detailed information about leads, home builders can avoid overwhelming prospective home buyers with a barrage of intrusive questions all at once — while also slowly building an ongoing relationship and valuable two-way exchange.

As builders learn more about buyer preferences and interests, they can use this information in tandem with marketing automation technology to further personalize communications.

For example, if a prospect has young children, the system can send useful information about the quality of neighborhood schools. Or, if a prospect is an avid golfer, the system can automatically send tantalizing descriptions of area golf courses.

As more in-depth information about prospects is gathered, increasingly sophisticated database segmentation can be performed, allowing for precise targeting of marketing initiatives.

Managing Leads More Effectively

During the housing boom, few builders complained about ineffectiveness of their marketing efforts. Instead, most builders were overwhelmed by a massive influx of leads from the Web and other sources, to the point where they had had trouble effectively assembling, assessing and managing the leads.

In a hot market, builders may be able to get away with ineffective lead management, but in cooler times, mishandled leads can translate directly into lost sales. The fact is that, whatever the market condition, builders need reliable systems to help them prioritize and manage their leads.

The secret to cementing marketing’s importance in home sales is to create a fluid process that integrates marketing directly with the sales team. Builders can close the loop between marketing and sales — and ensure consistent lead follow-up — by implementing marketing automation systems that include robust lead management functionality.

With marketing automation systems, home builders can define criteria, such as readiness to buy and financial preparedness, that can be used to automatically qualify and classify leads as they come in. If further information is required to qualify the lead, follow-up e-mails can be automatically triggered to complete the lead classification.

Once the leads are classified, they can be immediately funneled into an appropriate chain of activity — with hot leads assigned directly to the appropriate home sales consultants according to territory, specialization or other parameters the builder establishes, and longer-term leads assigned to automated communications based on their particular classification and attributes.

This process ensures the most efficient use of every sales consultant’s time, while also guaranteeing that, rather than ignoring cooler leads, builders can nurture them by placing them on an appropriate path of communication until they are ready to make a purchase.

With marketing automation, the often labor-intensive and error-prone steps of lead qualification, distribution and nurturing is now a thing of the past as it makes way for work-free, automated processes that advance consistency and free up your sales consultants’ time to focus on the best leads.

Measuring Marketing Success

An essential part of closing the loop between marketing and sales is to be able to accurately track the results of marketing initiatives. Marketing automation systems typically allow builders to track a range of useful metrics about campaigns — open rates, response rates, sales conversions and more.

Sophisticated systems not only enable builders to track projected and actual campaign costs, but also to assign a persistent lead source designation to an individual, allowing builders to reliably trace customers back to marketing activities and to track the lifetime revenues associated with them. This provides the information required to accurately report on success rates and ROI.

There’s No Time Like the Present

Marketers generally don’t begin to think seriously about ROI and efficiency until budgets are slashed. Marketing automation can be invaluable to help marketers do more with less when times are tough.

But as markets pick up, marketing automation tools are indispensable in helping builders manage volume, streamline operations and measure performance, alleviating a lot of manual processes and freeing marketers to think more creatively.

Strategic-thinking builders invest in solutions that will help them realize immediate returns while also equipping them to more effectively deal with future market changes — whether good or bad.

As builders consider areas for greater efficiency and cost-cutting and look to market smarter, marketing automation and lead management systems offer an attractive area for exploration.

By: Robert Cowes, President and Co-Founder, SmartTouch Interactive

Helping companies grow their business through smart leads, smart touches and smart marketing automation

The Austin Board of Realtors and the Home Builders Association of Greater Austin sponsored a 2010 housing and economic forecast event on Wednesday, January 13, 2010. The event was held at the University of Texas’ AT&T Executive Education and Conference and brought together approximately 500 people in the real estate and business community, plus local and state officials.

State and local experts addressed the housing market, jobs and overall economic development. According to MetroStudy, Austin is the strongest in economic and housing fundamentals among the 40 housing market it tracks across the country. Elton Rude, the Austin director of the housing research firm, stated “when the economy improves, Austin will be one of the first markets that shows stronger growth in its housing market.” Rude also said that an increase in home starts, as many as 7,000 are possible this year – up from the 6,490 homes in 2009.

What does this mean for local real estate builders and developers? 90 percent of home buyers go to the Internet first to research buying a new home. With over 20 production builders in the Austin area vying for 7,000 new home buyers, builders in this and all markets need to embrace and invest in the Internet and email marketing programs. It is vital to have the right tools in place to increase conversions in order to earn a piece of the market share in these extremely competitive times.

Furthermore, all 8800+ members of the Austin Board of Realtors (ABOR) are on email – builders and developers need a commercial email platform that allows them to send to all realtors on the association list. With a solution like this in place, builders and developers can keep ABOR members or any realtor association informed of new inventory, price changes, incentives, and even develop an electronic loyalty program with their top producers.

Those driven to succeed in this market will embrace a new approach to marketing automation and CRM – smart marketing automation that connects sales, the website, and day-to-day marketing activities.