Month: July 2012

Date: August 6th, 2012
Time: 12:00-1:00pm CST
Register here

This is your invitation to achieve unprecedented success in new home sales management. Join leading new home sales educator, Myers Barnes for this free online event.

Savvy sales managers know profitable sales and an inspired sales force are the keys to success. During this session you will learn you how to race past your goals, multiply the number of new homes sold, and increase your bottom line with profitable sales. It’s a practical, yet powerful approach to sales management, you can’t afford to miss.

During this session you will:

1) Develop the iron-clad confidence that top managers have at their command.
2) Discover the proven way to devise sales strategies that create a profit.
3) Raise expectations of all your staff and walk them through increased sales
4) Lead, motivate and inspire a sales team to peak performance standards.

SPECIAL OFFER! One lucky webinar attendee will win a ticket to the upcoming SuperCharged Sales Manager Conference featuring Myers Barnes and Mike Lyons — that’s a $1500 value that could be yours just for attending this webinar.

For more information about Myers Barnes visit: www.myersbarnes.com to register for this event visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/505528809

By Jon Odishoo, manager of email operations for BDX.

The subject line of a marketing email is fairly the most important part of the entire message: it tells the story of your communication before it is opened, drives the user to take action on the message, and gives them a memorable impression of your company if they see it but don’t click that “open” button. However the process of creating a great subject line is not as difficult as I perhaps have made it seem here. In a few easy steps, you should be well on your way.

First, you must always be concise. Make sure to share the message of your email in a tight package. Space is at a premium in the “subject line” area of most email programs, and if your subject line is over 50 characters there’s a good chance that it will be cut off. If it isn’t absolutely necessary that the consumer know that your homes have energy low-e windows, dimensional shingles and high efficiency furnaces, don’t include all of it. Perhaps say that you are the area’s “only green builder” and they can find the particulars for themselves in the message or on your website, or they may even show up at your sales office to find out more.

Be compelling. Give them a reason to open the message and see what’s inside. You want to create a sense of urgency, but not to the point where you are sending exclamation marks flying. Entice them into opening the message by identifying a strength of your company that is a touch point (or pain point) of the audience, and this should help garner returns. For example if an area you build in has a large amount of renters, share average monthly mortgage rates for your homes and compare them to paying for rent.

The last rule is simply to research and find out what works. Try using different subject line methods, such as including your company’s name (or not), rearranging wording and using different styles of language in campaigns. Send two campaigns with differing subject lines to the same audience and see which performs better (this is referred to as A-B testing). Using this tactic you can adjust your message for the next campaign and follow an upward path to more successful campaigns.

As you can see by following a few simple rules, it can be easy to craft effective subject lines that will help you meet your email marketing goals.

Jon Odishoo is the manager of email operations for BDX. If you have any questions about reaching real estate agents through the BDX Connect email service, click here.

Banner Ad Retargeting —  it’s the hottest buzz word for online marketers and a growing trend amongst many players in the online space, but what exactly is it and how does it work?

Imagine spending your marketing dollars by only getting in front of people who have some knowledge of your brand. Banner Ad Retargeting does just that. Simply put, it allows you to concentrate and maximize all of your efforts on your current pool of consumers. This process is quick and painless, involving only one short line of code on your website. When a user visits your site, that single line of code drops a cookie onto the user’s computer which triggers an alert for the Retargeting campaign to activate. Once they begin visiting other websites, your banner ads will follow them across the internet, serving as constant reinforcement for your brand and a means for them to return to your site. For the building industry,  BDX has created the builder BeBack program solely meant to retarget YOUR traffic in order to increase lead conversion for your home-properties.

“Just how many websites will our Retargeting campaign run on?”

This is the single most common question I receive from our clients regarding BeBack. My answer to this question is remarkably simple: “How big is the Internet?” Without fail, the follow up question is, “and just how can I be sure that my banners will hit our users on relevant sites?” The answer to this question is just as simple. We will only retarget users on sites that they themselves visit, so in a way, users are ONLY shown banners on sites that are relevant to their interests and lifestyle. What’s fascinating is that by filtering through the thousands of domains where our ads have run I’ve noticed that the interest of one user is typically very similar to all of the others. By doing this it’s easy to paint a very robust picture of the online foot-print a typical home-shopper leaves across cyberspace.

For our own marketing efforts, NewHome Source.com runs several hundreds of thousands of impressions each month across a little more than 26,000 unique domains. Many of these impressions appear on major, nationally recognized websites like careerbuilder.com, toysrus.com, homes.com, facebook.com, eonline.com, petfinder.com, Zillow.com, and webMD.com. By looking at just these domain names I can almost see this person in my head. I can tell that our he/she is more than likely female, late 20’s to mid 30’s, has young children, and is very career driven. For our builders, can you imagine a more qualified home-shopper that you’d like to reach?

Filtering through these domains has given us additional insight into not only who the shopper is, but where they’re shopping and how often. For the last two months, roughly 25% of all of our view thru conversions have come as a result of banners located on other real-estate sites. This tells me two things. First, consumers in this phase of the purchasing process are shopping multiple websites; gathering data and considering all of their options. For advertisers, having a broad reach across these sites is essential to stay top of mind and drive awareness. This is one of the main reasons we launched the Builder Vertical Ad Network – to help builders maximize reach though a single point of contact with guaranteed results.

Second, advertisers should consider looking beyond just real estate websites when reaching their customers. If they didn’t, advertisers run the risk of ignoring potentially all conversion traffic from other sites (75% in our case). That’s the benefit of Be Back; it allows marketers to target the audience and not the website. This allows for a more efficient media spend while reaching your most valuable prospects especially as their online search takes them through sites ranging in scope from small builder websites to massive real estate search engines.

Below are a few interesting websites where you probably wouldn’t do a direct media buy, but have resulted in a click to lead conversion with BeBack. What’s even more interesting is that many times the ad will redirect to an area that has nothing to do with the market from which they shopped. For example the conversion off of OhioRunner.com came from a Philadelphia banner, meaning that consumer was likely looking for a home in Pennsylvania while still living in Ohio.

           

 

 

 

 

For more information about this blog post or BDX BeBack retargeting, contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager or contact your local  Representative.

By Jay McKenzie

Recently, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) hosted “Building in 2012,” its annual Mid-Year Update and Economic Forecast.

If you weren’t able to attend this important industry webinar on July 12, 2012, BDX has summarized key findings that NAHB shared with members, the media, and industry leaders.

Some of the key take-away’s:

  • NAHB sees clear evidence of a housing rebound, dating to last year.
  • Since September 2011:
    • Total housing permits are up 26.6% nationally.
    • Single-family housing permits are up 15.4%.
    • Existing home sales are up 6.6%.
    • New home sales are up a much stronger 21%.
    • Housing prices are up slightly nationally — and up significantly in many markets.
    • The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index is up 107%.
    • New home sales from large public/private builders surveyed by NAHB are up 23.5%.

As strong as these indicators are, NAHB sees three major factors slowing the pace of recovery: slow job growth, housing units in/poised for foreclosure, and tight mortgage lending standards.

NAHB compared current housing production levels to an average for 2000 to 2002, prior to the boom and bust cycle in housing. According to NAHB:

  • Remodeling production has rebounded to 102% of 2000-2002 levels.
  • Multi-family home production is at 66% of 2000-2002 levels.
  • Single-family home production is at 38% of 2000-2002 levels.

Clearly, single-family production — typically the largest component of the market — is lagging other product segments. NAHB cited these reasons for the slower pace of recovery in single-family home sales:

  • For the past five years, average household formations are at 43.3% of the prior five-year average.
  • 80% of new households in the last five years are renting housing, not buying it.
  • Real incomes have declined for all age groups except 65+.

While builders remain concerned about losing market share to resale and foreclosed homes, the number of homes in foreclosure or more than 90 days past due varies widely by state. Six states (Florida, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Delaware and Connecticut) have more than a 12-month supply of distressed homes; 24 states have less than a six-month supply.

Similarly, home values vary widely by market. To zero in on the pace of recovery by market, NAHB created its Improving Market Index (IMI) which ranks major metropolitan areas on three barometers of recovery in each market: employment, single-family permits, and change in home prices.

Based on those criteria, The NAHB/First American Improving Markets Index is up 600% — from 12 markets in September 2012 to 84 markets in July 2012.

NAHB closed the economic update by noting that mortgage credit standards are very tight.

As David Crowe, Chief Economist of NAHB put it, “Lenders were approving mortgages for buyers with a FICO Score of 710 before the boom. Now they’re denying loans to buyers with FICO Scores of 730.”

Despite concerns around the pace of housing’s recovery, NAHB sees a clear rebound in the market for single-family homes and forecasts that sales will rise 19% in 2012 to 519,000 units.

Jay McKenzie heads up content for Builders Digital Experience.

By BDX Guest Blogger, Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

We’ve all been there, we’re at the store looking for a simple everyday household item, but we are inundated by a wide variety of brands and price points that complicate our decision process. When this happens, our logical next step is to call our best friend or family member, someone we can trust, to get their opinion.

And when it comes to buying a new home, it’s no different. We want to know before we buy, and of course with a home, knowing before buying is even more crucial since it is one of the biggest investments we’ll make in our lifetime.

So, just how are buyers choosing your home building company over Joe Schmoe’s company down the street? As with any other purchase decision, they are turning to their friends, families and neighbors, but they increasingly doing so online. Instead of having a conversation over the phone, buyers are having this conversation online. They’re looking for social proof, they want to make sure their friends have “liked” the product or company and that the company has user reviews, both good and bad.

The social savvy buyer is starting their new home search online. They sift through listing service sites before visiting builder’s websites, and then finally checking out the builder’s social media presence before going to tour the community or email for more information. This means that today’s buyer has gone through an extensive search and verification process before they even make initial contact with your salesperson, and they are going to know more than ever before. In fact, they may opt to do follow up with you via Facebook or another social media site.

To survive, builders must be prepared and ready. Survival Tips:

  • Make sure your website is accessible by both desktop and mobile
  • Maintain a fan page on Facebook
  • Have an active Twitter account
  • Demonstrate good customer service through review sites
  • Make sure your sales team is aware of all of your social sites

Carol Flammer is managing partner of Marketing RELEVANCE, LLC, a Marketing, Communication, Interactive agency with offices in Atlanta and Chicago. She is the author of “Social Media for Home Builders 2.0” published by BuilderBooks.