In March, Compass released Compass Collections, a proprietary collaborative search tool that enables buyers to “organize, monitor, discuss and collaborate” with their agents on a number of properties they’ve picked.
The tool aimed to reduce confusion and streamline the search process, saving precious time in a housing market where new listings are being swept up quick.
Well, Compass is back at it again with the release of Marketing Center, the newest tool in the company’s agent suite. Marketing Center is a digital design studio that allows agents to design and produce marketing materials, such as brochures, show sheets and postcards in as little as 10 minutes.
Marketing Center is pre-loaded with all of Compass’ listings, agent information, hi-res agent headshots and a number of templates that simply require agents to drag and drop information, save and print right from their office.
Compass Head of Marketing and Design Matt Spangler said the tool was created to free up agents’ time so they could spend more time doing what they need to do — actually serving their clients.
Before the launch of Marketing Center, all Compass agents sent their marketing requests to the company’s marketing team to be designed, completed and sent back, something that took anywhere from an hour for a show sheet to a whole day for a brochure.
Spangler said his team began keeping analytics on the number of requests per day and how much time it took to complete the requests and realized that creating a DIY marketing tool would allow their designers to focus on larger projects and enable agents to create on-demand content for clients.
Los Angeles-based Compass agent Ari Afshar said Marketing Center’s “plug and play” interface has greatly reduced the amount of time he spends on creating materials, reduced the amount of money he spends on marketing each month, and it provides a fail-proof way to create beautiful results.
“It has eliminated the need for me to have to hire another administrative position,” Afshar wrote in an emailed statement. “My Saturday and Sunday mornings were spent with my Marketing Lead on my team to create messaging, templates for email campaigns as well as set up sheets for all our open houses.”
“This past Sunday we had 12 properties open which would normally take us around 8 hours to get through. It now takes us about 8 minutes. Time is money,” he added. “The time I now have freed up can help me better service my existing clients and generate new business for the team.”
Spangler said social media and email capabilities will be added in the upcoming months and that “getting the print medium right allows us to easily move into other mediums.”
Marketing Center is fully integrated with Compass Collections, and as the company rolls out other tools, those will be fully integrated as well.
“Our vision is to build an end-to-end suite so our agents will never have to leave the Compass platform,” he said.
