To date our blog posts have not highlighted too many client success stories. However, in today’s real estate market, it’s great to share positive stories and we will highlight more of these successes going forward.
Onni has a terrific story!
The Onni Group has several new multifamily developments in progress throughout Vancouver’s Lower Mainland and is one of British Columbia’s premier new home builders with a reputation for providing architectural innovation, superior quality and courteous customer service.
Onni recently announced that in the past 300 days, they have sold 350 new homes! Not a simple task; and no doubt they have accomplished this with a top-notch marketing strategy, consistency of sales tactics and processes and, at the core of everyone’s business, a team of great people.
Lasso is particularly proud that Onni uses Lasso real estate CRM for their marketing, sales and inventory management. From capturing leads off their website and at presentation centers, managing prospect and broker activity to email marketing and managing inventory and pricing from single source, Onni captures all registrant, purchaser, and broker detail in Lasso and can easily segment, market and communicate across their entire database.
Some current Onni Projects include:
We congratulate Onni on a great sales success story and look forward to highlighting more customer successes across North America.
In today’s unpredictable market, selling new homes is challenging. One of the secrets to sales success is establishing consistent marketing & sales processes and then leveraging the benefits of technology for better sales results. Over the past year, Lasso has been hosting a series of complimentary webinars to help new homebuilders and developers develop both online and offline marketing strategies. Lasso’s next webinar, features home sales experts Myers Barnes and Mike Lyon – this dynamic one-hour webinar will provide a roadmap to improve close ratios to 30% or more. Learn more here.
Have you figured out how to go beyond just staying in the game to really winning in these turbulent times?
Lasso’s upcoming complimentary webinar on September 21st – CRACK the code to +30% Close Ratios .. . Guaranteed! - will feature new home sales and marketing authorities, Myers Barnes and Mike Lyon.
We have asked Myers and Mike to present this one-time webinar where they will deliver a roadmap to success that is achieving 30% (and higher) close rates for homebuilders across North America.
They will demonstrate how to make the successful connection between online marketing to onsite sales with a proven formula that is not only pragmatic and 'doable', their combination of people, process and technology delivers proven results. Time after time!
Learning Outcomes:
- Successful integration between online & offline sales
- Role of the Online Sales Counsellor
- The transition to the Sales Team
- Define the lead follow-up process
- Master a paint-by-numbers sales process
- Double your conversion ratios
For more information and to register, click here.
Lasso holds educational webinars every 4-6 weeks. View our past webinars, featuring Mike Lyon, Jeff Shore, Jim Adams and Carol Flammer, here.
Real estate project websites have never been more important than they are today. This first impression of your project often determines if a prospect comes back or registers for more information.
But before these prospects even get to your website, they need to be able to find you. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important component to a real estate marketing professional’s strategy. In many cases, home builders and developers turn the website optimization over to their web developers and/or an SEO company. This is okay, but it’s important to have an understanding of how you can make a difference and contribute positively to improving your position in search. It’s all about being on page 1 on search engines!
Jim Adams, CEO of NewHomesDirectory.com has written a book called ‘Little Black Book of SEO Secrets – Search Engine Optimization Made Simple’.
All the SEO tactics presented in his book have been accepted, endorsed, and recommended by all major search engines, and will stand the test of even the most discriminating human reviewer.
The book is all about how to get your website found on search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and YouTube.
Not only does it cover the basics of what search engine marketing is, but it also covers:
- Keyword research
- Paid search vs organic search
- Website design and important elements that assist with search
- Developing compelling content
- How to hire a SEO company
Included are helpful tips as well as things that you should avoid. For example, having well thought out title tags on each webpage is an important part of a website strategy. But at the same time, it’s important to always avoid having pages with the same title tag, as well as just having your company name in the title tag. Read the book to learn why!
Jim has laid out the book in an easy to read, concise format that will get you on your way to understanding search and what you need to do to get your project website found!
To order his book, visit his profile page at www.jimadams.me
Lasso Data Systems, leaders in customer relationship software (CRM) for real estate homebuilders and developers, is pleased to announce that CEO, Dave Clements and Vice President Sales, Dave Betcher, have been added as faculty members to the BuilderRadio network. Adding to BuilderRadio's distinguished list of real estate professionals, they will provide sales and marketing resources to builder executives, managers and new home marketing and sales specialists.
"Our membership frequently tells us that one of the biggest challenges faced today is using automation in real estate marketing and sales and Lasso truly is a leader in the CRM domain with an exceptional reputation in the homebuilding industry, as both Dave Clements and Dave Betcher have broad comprehensive knowledge of the residential housing industry having been involved in hundreds of CRM implementations throughout North America," stated Jerry Rouleau, Principal of BuilderRadio. "Both Clements and Betcher possess a deep understanding of the challenges facing sales and marketing professionals today," added Rouleau.
The Lasso representatives will deliver educational webinars as well as provide expert panelist representation on various podcasts and sessions on topics such as technology strategy in new home sales, online marketing, email marketing, lead and prospect management, amongst other topics.
"We are delighted to be part of the BuilderRadio faculty", stated Dave Clements, Lasso Data Systems, CEO. "Our mandate is to equip builders and developers with the technology tools to sell their projects and communities faster and more profitably. Core to the mandate is being passionate about providing education and delivering topical, high value information to homebuilders. We are excited to work with Jerry Rouleau and Scott Stroud and to be amongst a terrific group of industry leaders," added Clements.
Read complete article here.
Are you on the right Social Media track?
Save the date! Lasso's third webinar, in our 2010 New Homebuilder Webinar Series, is scheduled for Thursday, May 20th and features, Marketing Consultant, Carol Flammer.
Do you want more traffic to your website? Learn how to focus on the engine of social media marketing: Blogging. Find out if you're on the right social media track!
It seems everyone posts and tweets these days, to keep in touch with friends, family and clients. But is this all there is to social media? What are the BUSINESS benefits of using social media for home builders and developers?
Learning Outcomes:
- The benefits of blogging
- Which Social Media type will give you the best return
- The relationship between blogging and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Attracting and converting visitors
- Measuring ROI
- And much, much more...
Learn more about this complimentary, 30-minute webinar here:
Missed the past webinars? View the recordings of our previous webinars here.
Lasso has been selected by New Jersey-based new home builder, Paramount Homes, as their sales and marketing software solution for new home developments, including Paramount's newest project, Escapes Ocean Breeze, a 55 plus active adult community in Ocean County, New Jersey.
"Our decision to use Lasso was based on several factors, including Lasso's solid reputation in the homebuilding industry and their customer service and support," stated Richard Selikoff, Vice President, Sales and Marketing for Paramount Homes. "Lasso provides the flexibility for us to personalize the application to meet our needs today as well as allowing us to easily upgrade and add on more features & functionality down the road," added Selikoff.
"We are delighted to add Paramount Homes to our growing list of clients on the U.S. east coast", stated Dave Clements, CEO of Lasso Data Systems. "We are excited to work with the team at Paramount to provide the CRM infrastructure for managing their relationships with home buyer prospects and purchasers."
Lasso has introduced more options for homebuilders and developers that accommodate from basic to advanced business needs - Lasso QuickSTART Sales, QuickSTART Sales and Marketing, and Lasso Pro versions. "We have a solution for new home developers and builders whether they have one project or multiple projects across several geographic regions, reported Dave Clements. "We are receiving strong response from the marketplace. Our goal is to deliver great value, make decision-making easy and offer a setup process so clients start getting the benefits of using Lasso in days rather than weeks or months", added Clements. Read more . . .
Learn more about Lasso's recent news and announcements here.
Thanks to our many new clients for their strong endorsement of Lasso since
we bundled our software into two editions - QuickSTART and Professional - a few months ago. QuickSTART, specifically for marketing & sales of new home developments, has resonated extremely well with builders all across North America - from luxury hotel residences like W Hollywood Residences, to leading multifamily developers like Concert Properties, to active adult community specialists like Paramount Homes.
We are finding that builders, more than ever, have recognized the necessity and are now acting to capture every lead and nurture their home buying prospects -- from initial interest stages through the buying cycle to purchase and occupancy. Our feedback has been particularly strong in four key areas:
 | - Capturing leads. Every one. From multiple sources, whether it is from website, kiosk, landing pages or external directory listings. Then being able to evaluate ROI of which sources deliver best results.
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 | - Nurturing prospects. With extended buying cycles now the norm, the ability to incorporate a scheduled series of marketing tasks and activities for regular communication to build trust with prospects over a period of time.
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 | - Email Marketing. Being integrated, having a template library, campaign manager and real-time reporting of open and click through rates makes it easy for targeted professional campaigns.
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 | - Lead Intelligence & Web analytics. The functionality to learn and understand the online interests of prospective homebuyers, for everything from popularity of floor plans and models, to key words and time spent on the site makes personalized prospect follow up much more effective.
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Just like homebuyers want choice, we think homebuilders should have the flexibility to choose the feature sets they need along with pricing that delivers leading CRM for as low as $200/month a community or the option of unlimited projects and users at a set predictable monthly fee.
Creating templates for email marketing can not only be time-consuming and require some design knowledge but it's also recommended to have an understanding of email marketing best practices to maximize deliverability and open rates.
At Lasso, we're pretty passionate about email marketing and helping our clients achieve success (we've written many posts in the past on email marketing best practices for real estate project marketing).
We recently announced a new enhancement to our integrated email marketing which will help real estate project marketing professionals. Now included with Lasso is an email template library.
This is a library of pre-built templates that gives you a starting point for your email marketing campaigns. Well-built email templates are an important start to creating great email marketing campaigns. A good balance of images and text is important, along with testing to ensure that the emails render properly in Outlook and the major ISPs such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail. Lasso has done this for you (although it's still important to test after you've put your own content and images in the template!)
Our goal at Lasso is to make using our Real Estate CRM easy for our clients. To start, the template library contains 10 different emails and we'll be adding more each month so keep checking back and let us know what you'd like to see . . . or maybe you have an email template that you'd like to share with other Lasso users - let us know!
The library includes templates for newsletters, events, announcements and letterhead. We've given you a great starting point to make it your own - add your images and your content and you'll be ready to go in no time.
Email marketing should be an important component to your marketing plan. Whether it's a community or construction update, it needs to be professional looking and follow good email best practices to maximize open rates.
If you have any questions about email marketing, contact Lasso Client Support, we're here to help.
Our industry spends heavily to drive traffic to their new home community websites and to their sales & discovery centers. But often, if a prospect is not an ”A” lead that is planning to buy in the next 30 days or so, this prospect gets buried in the database of names never to be contacted (except for the odd email blast) or nurtured systematically through their home buying process. So, while we're all concerned about driving more traffic to our communities, that strategy makes no sense if we are not maximizing our existing opportunities.
We are excited to host our next webinar Thursday March 25th featuring Jeff Shore, a popular homebuilding industry veteran and renowned expert who will discuss how and where to spot the “lead leak”.
Sales: It’s Likely Not a Traffic Problem
Maximizing Existing Leads and Prospects
Some of the Learning Outcomes:
- Why your sales report is nothing more than a history lesson.
- Why spending more to drive more traffic is not the best use of your $$$.
- Why lowering your price might be your biggest mistake.
- How successful companies make converting internet leads priority #1.
- How to find 'A+' leads (Hint: they are already in your system labeled 'B-')
Click here for more information on how you can join in this 30 minute discussion with Jeff Shore.
Lasso is presenting a free webinar series in 2010 that brings you acclaimed home building industry experts to discuss the business of marketing, sales and customer service in today’s evolving market. We hope you will join us.
This week elite athletes from all around the world have congregated in Vancouver and Whistler for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Games have been a long time in the making and it has been fun to watch the excitement and the connection with the games build, especially over the last few weeks as the Olympic Torch relay has made its way through Vancouver and surrounding areas (after travelling all across Canada and touching 90% of Canadians). The Opening ceremonies take place today - people everywhere are smiling, they are happy, there is a sense of pride and inspiration - the list of superlatives could go on and on!!
Since the inception of Lasso (at about the same time as the games were announced for Vancouver in 2003) our goal has been to serve the world. We've been proud to be based in Vancouver, partly because Vancouver has been a model city for the world in urban development and more recently green and sustainability initiatives. But I'm not sure there has ever been a time when we've felt so overwhelmingly Canadian . . . and so extremely proud of it.
One of the theme songs for the Vancouver Winter Olympics is called "I Believe". The video is moving and reflective.
At Lasso, We Believe! We believe in the power of our team and we're very proud to serve our customers around the world. Thank you for believing in us! We believe we are doing some pretty exciting things this year:
- Software Feature Enhancements - whether it's usability, more marketing and sales features, or better ways to report on information or better manage inventory , we are constantly working to enrich your user experience and make Lasso even easier to use to help you convert prospects to purchasers.
- Customer Service - we want your experience with Lasso to be remarkable. It is a journey, but we keep trying! When a new home builder or developer begins using Lasso, we want to help them get going every step of the way and to be customers for life.
- Educational & Information - Started in 2009, Lasso runs a series of educational webinars every 6-8 weeks. Topics include Lead Management, Online Marketing and Sales, Sales Management and Email Marketing, amongst others. Webinars are facilitated by Lasso representatives and industry experts like Mike Lyon and Jeff Shore, with more featured speakers to be announced soon.
So ‘let the games begin'. May every country strike gold -- with Canada a little more golden during these games :)
Upcoming Lasso webinar: How would you like to convert leads better than 97% of builders and developers? Find out how on February 18th.
Learn more . . .