Onboard Informatics, a data provider whose content fills out countless real estate websites, is planning to acquire property report provider AddressReport.
The planned acquisition, which is expected to close sometime in the first quarter of 2016, will enable Onboard to begin offering products that can help clients capture and nurture leads.
Onboard Informatics, whose clients include Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate and CoreLogic, did not disclose the proposed terms of the acquisition.
AddressReport provides deep-diving property profiles that can include elevator wait times, rodent sightings, neighbors’ political orientation, and crime maps.
Onboard Informatics — which already provides a wealth of neighborhood and property data and can offer clients access to over 100 listing feeds from MLSs — will weave AddressReport’s data into its existing data sets.
But, more notably, the data provider will use the startup to begin offering products that help clients capture and nurture leads over long periods of time through email updates on properties. AddressReport has already provided this type of service to at least one brokerage.
Many agents typically stop contacting online leads after 90 days, said Onboard Informatics CEO Marc Siden. Since the average lead doesn’t transact until more than a year after registering on a real estate website, that means those agents often stand little chance of converting many would-be clients when they’re finally ready to pull the trigger.
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Onboard’s product could help agents and brokerages avoid letting some of this potential business slip through their fingers by allowing them to automatically push email updates on a wide range of subjects, including properties, schools and crime, to leads, Siden said. The emails could encourage the recipient to contact an agent.
Siden claims early tests show that these email updates have a 60 percent first-time open rate, what he says is far higher than the industry average.
Brokerages and agents could implement the tool by sending email prompts to existing leads inviting them to sign up for the reports, or by building a feature into their websites that would prompt leads to sign up for the reports, similar to a tool that Porch powers for various real estate websites.
