Agents at independent brokerages partnering with CoreFact Corp. can create and manage direct-mail marketing campaigns online that incorporate their brokerage’s unique branding.
CoreFact says its "Store in a Box" offering was designed for small- to medium-sized brokerages, who typically don’t have a marketing design center.
Brokerages can upload their logo and agent list, choose a color scheme, and launch the service at their next office meeting, said Steve Elich, CoreFact’s vice president of marketing.
Small firms that aren’t household names need to focus on branding efforts, Elich said, and those efforts should be consistent and professional looking.
"This way, everybody’s not going down to the corner printer and making it up as they go along," Elich said. CoreFact said San Jose, Calif.-based CSR Real Estate Services is the first brokerage to offer its agents CoreFact’s Store in a Box.
CoreFact prints and mails customized property fliers and map-based postcards that look like a screenshot of what consumers see when they visit online property portals.
The mailers generate leads for agents by showing recent market activity in the recipients’ neighborhood, and offering consumers a free home estimate online.
"If (clients) mail consistently for a year, we see an 8.25 percent median response rate, which is pretty amazing in the direct mail business," Elich said.
The company last year announced its first enterprise-level partnership, with Realogy Corp.-owned Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Northern California.
Now CoreFact stands ready to provide branded services to any brokerage, and is offering to waive the $995 setup fee for "Store in a Box" through Dec. 31, 2010.
Postcards cost 54 cents to 89 cents to print and send by standard mail, depending on the the size of the order, with most clients paying 64 cents each for orders of 350-999 postcards.
