Traditional marketing with a digital edge

So, the future of estate agency is digital? If you believe that, you could be riding for a fall. Not only are vendors weary of wading through overflowing email in-boxes, but a revolutionary new trick has given print a new lease of life when it comes to reaching potential clients.

In fact, the ‘quick response’ or QR code isn’t really new at all, having been invented in the 1990s to keep track of components as they moved through the Denso electronics factory in Japan. But its new application as a digital gateway for print has created a powerful new tool that brings together the best of both worlds: the permanence of print and the immediacy of digital.

Kremer Signs has just launched a QR code initiative with OnTheMarket, and the take-up has been dramatic, according to sales and marketing manager Tom Cummuskey.

Since the pandemic people are more accustomed to QR codes and how to engage with them, more so than when we initially launched the idea a few years ago. Tom Cummuskey, Sales Manager, Kremer Signs.

He explains that the For Sale board will go up as normal, but a small ‘post-tag’ – a smaller board – featuring a QR code will be attached under the main board. That code can be scanned by anybody walking past in the street and it will take them straight through to that property’s details with OnTheMarket. The agent will receive notification that the board has been scanned, giving them live analytics on the attention the property is getting.

Link to website

If the person fills out the contact form for more information they will be sent the lead straight away. If they call the agent after scanning the code on their phone, the system records how many calls have been made this way. Under the OnTheMarket (OTM) deal, the QR codes link through to the OTM website, rather than the agent’s, but OTM pays for the service and it doesn’t cost the agent anything above what they are already paying.

Kremer also has its own smartboards which are available to all agents and which will go straight through to the agent’s own website.

QR codes have been tried on signboards before, but never really took off. Now all that has changed. “Since the pandemic people are more accustomed to QR codes and how to engage with them – more so than when we initially launched the idea a few years ago,” explains Cummuskey. “Then you had to have an app on your phone to be able to scan them whereas now you just use the camera – the tech is there for it to work automatically, and people are engaging with them. The results we have seen have been really, really good.”

The QR codes are dynamic, which means that once a property is sold and the board is retrieved by the board man, you can log on to the platform and reassign that QR code to another property’s URL. “It’s very cost-effective,” says Cummuskey. “We’re always looking at ways we can integrate the proptech world with traditional marketing so they can work in unison.”

Active marketing tool

Ben Brookes, Managing Director of Agency Express, agrees wholeheartedly, and says QR codes are “the change you need to be involved in right now”. He adds: “AgencyQR harnesses the power of QR codes to turn the passive For Sale board we have erected into an active marketing tool.

AgencyQR harnesses the power of QR codes to turn the passive For Sale board we have erected into an active marketing tool. All scans can be tracked on Signmaster3. Ben Brooke,s MD, Agency Express.

“The ordering process is simple – the instructing agent selects the use of an AgencyQR panel by entering the URL of the respective property details when instructing for the board to be erected in our board management system, Signmaster3. The URL they have chosen can be directed to their own website, a property portal or a virtual tour.

“Once the panel has been installed underneath the For Sale board, the code is scanned by the franchisee for the first time, which immediately live-links the AgencyQR panel back to the property URL supplied. The AgencyQR panel is now live and ready to actively direct potential purchasers to the agency customer. All scans can be tracked on Signmaster3.”

Brookes says that since its launch in April, Agency Express has erected more than 3,000 QR panels, generating more than 20,000 unique scans. The highest number of scans on a single property was 470 on a beautiful house in Cambridge. “If you aren’t using QR quite simply you are not harnessing the full potential of your boards,” he emphasises.

Messaging is key

QR codes have also now started to appear on flyers because they enable agents to keep track of their marketing budget. Phil Hawkins, studio team leader at specialist property printer Ravensworth, says they were first trialled a few years ago, dropped off, but are now coming back with a vengeance.

“Even top-end London clients are coming to us saying, ‘We would like to do direct mail with you or a door drop, we would like a QR code on there that takes them to our valuation page’ – their marketing teams can track that. We are finding huge success with flyers at the moment because they can be tracked.”

He adds: “We’ve been running our really popular door-drop service and even our direct mail service, where agents can target specific postcode areas, which is huge for them. They can target homes in a certain price bracket or a certain council tax brand, which is absolutely fantastic for them.

“It’s quite an emotional thing to get something through the door – there’s a statistic that the average door-drop leaflet stays in the home for about 5.7 days, which is huge compared with email – people get bombarded with so many emails.”

However, he is at pains to point out that “messaging is key”. “Messaging and a call to action are definitely the two most important aspects of any type of marketing at the moment, because the market is so flooded at the minute – with stock not moving as quickly as it was 12 months ago,” he explains.

“I was speaking to a couple of well-known national agents in London and they were saying exactly the same thing. They have sent so many flyers and emails throughout the years with the same hook – ‘We are a fantastic agent in your area, we can sell you property for 1%’ or whatever it may be, and it’s been regurgitated for years and years. They realise they need to change to get that vendor through the door.

Ravensworth specialises in QR code tracked leaflets

Postcode-specific data

Ravensworth now partners with Dataloft Inform to provide postcode-specific data on key facts such as house price changes and the number of recent sales to keep flyers relevant. “The data they [Dataloft] can dig down to is absolutely fantastic,” adds Phil Hawkins. “We’ve got their data in one of our online web-to-print systems, where agents can log on, figure out what, say, the figure is for sales in that particular area and generate a flyer from that.

Even top-end London clients are coming to us saying, ‘We would like to do direct mail with you or a door drop, we would like a QR code on there. Phil Hawkins Team Leader, Ravensworth.

“People are getting so many emails, day in, day out, they’re coming back down the print route. Our prices are not expensive, by any means, so they are finding it cost-effective for them – they still have something going out that is tangible and it is taking them back to a digital platform via the QR code.

“We’re having customers coming back who haven’t been in touch for three or four years, saying, ‘We’ve tried some digital stuff, we want to come back…’ In some cases they want a complete rebrand of the agency. But a lot of the time, it’s, ‘We’ve tried this, now we want to go back down the print route’.”

The key to marketing is the drip-drip strategy. You repeat to the same audience regularly, amending your message each time. It’s the reverse of the one-hit wonder approach. Andrew Robinson, Mr Flyer.

Over at Mr Flyer, head of sales and marketing Andrew Robinson pulls no punches on the importance of messaging. “If your flyer is saying ‘We want to sell your house’, don’t expect a response – that’s a ‘So what?’ statement that no one cares about; it doesn’t add any value and it doesn’t inspire,” he says.

‘Don’t talk about yourself’

“Don’t talk about yourself – ‘We’re the number one agent, according to Rightmove’ or ‘We’ve had a really great quarter’. You want to send out something that adds value and shows you care about them; it’s not about you, but what you can do for them.”

Robinson says the message could be as simple as a free online valuation tool – ‘Would you like to know how much your house is worth?’. But it needs to grab the attention of a potential vendor.

He says another approach is to inspire people. “If you inspire someone to take action, that is powerful. Rather than saying ‘We use professional photography’, you show that with your front image – the entire flyer is an image of a beautiful home in an amazing setting that is taken incredibly well. You have that as inspiration, and a simple headline – something like ‘Thinking of moving?’ or ‘How would your family look in this home?’ Something that would get the recipient to put themselves in that position.

“If you say ‘your family’ rather than just ‘you’ it makes the desire go away from a selfish one to ‘I want to move because it will better my family’. And literally just have your logo on there. So you are not pushing your brand, you are just enticing them to think and want to turn over to see how they can make that house become a reality.

‘Inspire people to action’

“You can even add the price and the location of the house, so you are also adding value to your existing customers – you can say to a vendor, ‘50,000 potential buyers will see your property’. To inspire people is the best way to create action; to show them ‘here is what is possible’.”

Robinson says that when it comes to planning campaigns, regular contact is much more effective than a random, one-off flyer. “The key to marketing is the drip-drip effect strategy. You repeat to the same audience regularly, amending your message each time. It’s the reverse of the one-hit wonder approach.”

Mr Flyer uses Royal Mail, which, says Robinson, adds credibility when the flyer is received with the mail, and ensures it is delivered to precisely the addresses the agents wants to target. He advises every month to start with, before dropping down to every other month after that.

“If a company is active on social media they will post maybe every day and use paid advertising every week. The whole reason for that is they know you need to appear in the eyes of your audience frequently to build awareness, to build trust and to build engagement – the three key stages,” he explains.

“You can’t expect to send something out once and get an instant response. You want to keep brand consistency, but you can’t just send the same thing every month because that just shouts out laziness and people will dispose of it immediately.”

Robinson also emphasises that, contrary to popular opinion, print flyers not environmentally unfriendly, providing steps are taken to mitigate the carbon footprint. Mr Flyer’s new brand, Greener Mail, works in conjunction with the Wildland Trust, to provide fully carbon-balanced printing.

“Planting trees is what most companies that claim to be greener do, but they don’t have a positive impact for 20 years, on average,” points out Robinson. “The Wildland Trust’s purpose is to preserve and protect the most carbon-rich and endangered places in the world – in places like Guatemala. Any time a client does any door-to-door mail with us, we will send a certificate showing exactly how many square metres of endangered woodland they have protected and restored, and how many kilos of CO2 they have balanced.”

Robinson says many people wrongly assume that electronic marketing doesn’t have any impact on the environment. He says emissions generated by using email are estimated to be equivalent to 300 million tonnes of CO2 a year, globally – the equivalent to 63 million cars.

So with clean eco credentials, print still has a vital role to play for agents, whether it be signboards, brochures or flyers.

Trust equals success

Ben Brookes at Agency Express says “regular exposure to the branding, colours, logos, names etc helps to breed trust, and trust is the basis of a successful sales environment. Buyers will feel more confident to proceed with an agent who is well recognised.”

Perhaps Phil Hawkins at Ravensworth sums it up best: “Because social media campaigns can be tracked we thought it would kill off the print side of marketing, and it started to for a little while – but now we are seeing a huge resurgence and it comes back to the fact that people like something tangible.”