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.
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.
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.
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 . . .
January 1st marked not only the start of a new year and new a decade. It also marked Lasso's official five-year anniversary; the launch of Lasso CRM across North America. I say official because we had been doing R&D and test marketing regionally for a couple of years prior. Wow, five years has flown by - it seems like just yesterday we launched.
As I look back and reflect on the triumphs and challenges that we have encountered I'm extremely proud of three things:
- The market acceptance of our CRM for real estate across the globe. Builders and developers across the USA, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, Europe and GCC have all embraced our solutions and helped us get better along the way.
- The people we serve across the industry are terrific. By far our biggest source of new business are referrals from existing clients; sales agents, marketing, managers, and executives.
- The commitment and passion of our employees. The last year or so has not been an easy one for the real estate industry and I love being a part of such a great group of talented, positive and down-to-earth people.
Looking forward, 2010 is going to be an exciting year for Lasso on a number of levels. As a business headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, we are excited to be "hosting the world" in a few weeks when the Winter Olympic games begin in February --- our love of hockey and beer is a perfect fit for the upcoming Olympic experience. We are also excited about the opportunities that lay ahead this year in real estate project marketing, sales and customer service. As much of the world begins to recover from recession and the housing crisis, Lasso is well-positioned to become the CRM real estate software of choice for new home builders and developers of all sizes - we just need to make sure we are relentless in innovation, client service and making it easy to do business with us.
Over the past few years Lasso has accomplished a lot. Here are some interesting Lasso tidbits:
- Over 1,000 real estate projects implemented
- Projects in over 35 countries - as nearby as a few blocks from our Vancouver office and as far away as Dubai, Montenegro, and Jamaica
- Accessed by users from over 50 countries every month, 7x24
- Smallest project - 6 waterfront lots
- Largest project - over 20,000 homes
- $ Billions in inventory sold through Lasso
- Millions of emails sent every month on behalf of our clients
- 250 software features & enhancements in 2009 alone
Statistics aside, my personal goal as CEO is that you, our clients, will think of us as a great customer service company rather than as a software company in the year(s) to come and that we really do help you turn prospects into purchasers!
I look forward to the challenges and opportunities that the next five years will bring to Lasso.
Happy New Year!
Once someone has registered on your new home project website, what do you? Is there a defined sales process (logical steps from interest list through to purchase)? Does your sales team get involved right away?
In most cases, the leads go into a CRM system, and then get assigned to sales reps. who are then alerted to new leads. One of the challenges that arises is that a significant number of the leads may not be "sales-ready" yet. It's a common fact that 4 out of 5 new home buyers are starting their research on the web and will register for more information but many are at the very early stages of the buying process. Therefore, keeping these prospects engaged and informed throughout their buying cycle is an important part of your real estate marketing strategy.
Let's first take a step back and define Lead Nurturing. Lead Nurturing or lead management is the process of following up with leads in a consistent manner, gradually moving them through their buying cycle along the path towards becoming a purchaser. The idea is to create a strategy to provide enough information to engage, provide interest and develop trust so that when they are ready to purchase, you have met their needs and they will buy from you (sounds simple!) Realistically, not everyone who signs up to get more information about your project is going to be a perfect match for your project but the concept of lead nurturing is to put these leads into an ongoing marketing program that will provide some triggers and indicators showing when and if they are getting ready to buy. Then the sales reps can get involved and convert these prospects into purchasers.
A key aspect of marketing includes keeping the prospects engaged. Most online registrants are looking for information right away, but may not be ready to purchase. A creative marketing strategy that keeps these prospects engaged and gaining confidence in your new project is important. The tendency is often to just keep sending mass mails and although this can be effective, always ensure that there is a clear call to action in the email and that there is value to the prospect - otherwise, you will lose their interest and when you do send a mass mail of importance, they may dismiss it as not relevant.
Use the technology you have available to help you! Often the old 80/20 rule comes into play - perhaps you're not using all the features available to you. For example, functionality just released in Lasso now provides you with the ability for you to track the behaviour of your prospects on your project website. Not only can you see what specific pages they are visiting but also track when they return to your site. This form of lead intelligence is powerful - especially when you tailor an email message or a phone message to a prospect and you make specific reference to something that they were viewing online!
Use Lasso's Self Serve Registrant Update (SSRU) to further qualify your leads and prospects. Nowadays, many home builders and developers are making it easier to complete registration forms by reducing the number of questions asked. The strategy is to make it really easy to register and then ask more qualifying questions throughout the sales cycle. If you've gone that route, Lasso provides you with the ability to use mass mail functionality to survey or ask additional questions via email. This allows you to engage your Registrants - if they responded that they enjoy skiing, then send them an email with pictures of your recreational development in the winter. If they select golf, customize one with pictures taken in summer.
To nurture something means to take care of it (to cultivate, cherish, develop) - that's exactly what needs to be done with leads; whether they are in the early home buying research stage or ready to buy now, the technology is available for you to achieve this.
When it's your money on the line, it's a little easier to swallow spending time and money doing research on major personal investments before dropping the actual cash.
Sometimes, it's harder to make that time for business technology purchasing decisions. Maybe the schedule has just fallen out from under you, and you need a technology solution up and running yesterday. Or, more common in today's world, there's a budget crunch going on and your first choice is to go with the cheapest vendor, whether it's a good fit or not.
Ultimately, if there's any way you can make the time to fully research and perform due diligence on your technology vendor, you should do so. Here are a few tips on what to keep an eye on as you make your business decisions.
1. Determine your needs and requirements. Before reaching out to any vendors, spend some time taking a close look at what is motivating your drive to purchase the real estate software in question. Always match the technology to the business requirements - not the reverse. What are the biggest sales and marketing challenges you are facing right now, and what are the biggest opportunities you are passing by? Create a brief one to two-page outline of prioritized list of needs and wants. Such a document will help guide your selection process and keep you from being seduced by the wide variety of technology features and capabilities.
2. Generate buy-in from stakeholders. From the top of your organization down to the front lines, there needs to be a commitment to utilizing technology to support sales and marketing initiatives. Inevitably, there will be push back from those who are perhaps not as technologically savvy as they should be, or those who see a system in place that is "working" already and don't understand the reasons for change. Respond to those arguments intelligently when possible, and ignore them when not possible. Keep the path clear and stay confident in your purpose.
3. Don't be afraid of sounding stupid. That may seem harsh, but it's true - you need to ask "dumb" questions of vendors in order to get every vital detail regarding the money you'll be spending. If you need to, recruit a tech-savvy advocate to help you in vetting vendors and understanding the minute details of their presentation and solutions. View every vendor presentation as a learning experience - even if a vendor comes in with a quote that falls out of your budget, they still may have insights on their products that can help guide your decision-making process.
4. Decide between software as a service offered via the internet or "on premise" software. One of the most popular trends in technology in recent years has been the rise of "Software as a Service," or SaaS. Through this delivery method for software, the software functionality is provided through a high-speed Internet connection. All maintenance, enhancements, upgrades, and customer support is managed by the vendor for a recurring monthly service fee. There is no hardware, networking, storage, or database technology investment required.
The simplicity, the lower financial and technical risk plus the inherent accountability of SaaS vendors can be quite compelling, but your specific needs will dictate whether a SaaS deployment is more cost effective and appropriate than an on-premise installation. Research should be devoted to this area in order to determine the best solution for your corporation.
5. Insist on the best customer service. Your business is building and selling homes. Your provider is in the technology business. Any vendor should understand this and be well equipped to bridge that gap and have a level of expertise about your business. Customer references to validate the vendors implementation approach and support responsiveness should be a given. If not, simply continue the search - you deserve the best value, service, and functionality for your sales & marketing software investment.