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Addressable is a multi-channel AI-drive marketing solution for real estate agents.
Platforms: Browser
Ideal for: Agents, teams and brokerages
Top selling points:
- Automated, handwritten direct mail
- AI-generated listing landing pages
- Traceable direct mail campaigns
- Targeted mailing lists
- Variable property descriptions
Top concern:
I’d like to see Addressable build integrations with existing website content management systems to overlap its landing page experience with an agent’s existing domain.
What you should know:
Addressable offers a couple of powerful value propositions to the real estate industry. It uses robots to “hand write” postcards for targeted direct mail campaigns. It’s not using a cheesy script font; the machine actually writes the messages. Each campaign is coded to measure responses and can be adjusted as needed.
If you don’t want to provide the copy for the campaign, Addressable’s newly launched ChatGPT integration will do it for you. The company has its own algorithm layered with ChatGPT to help it better understand real estate and uses that primarily in its other offering, an automated property description and landing page generator.
First, stop thinking direct mail isn’t effective. It absolutely is, and this USPS research report on the topic is actually awesome. Anecdotally, I had dinner once with the founder of a major real estate direct mail company and his watch alone was worth more than an average 20 percent down payment. (And he was a very nice guy, to boot.)
The USPS report found that more than 70 percent of Gen X survey respondents feel mail is more personal than online digital communications. Forty-seven percent of millennial respondents said they took the action of visiting the website of a company sending them direct mail.
While Addressable isn’t the only company offering handwritten direct mail campaigns, they do have one of the easier user experiences I’ve seen, and it emphasizes response tracking with QR codes, critical to all forms of marketing but most often ignored in direct mail. Too many times agents use it as a passive, supporting component of their media mix when it can actually be its anchor.
Users select a mailing zone by selecting “tiles” on a map for a fixed cost, around $12 each. No other Addressable customer will be able to access those zones.
Complimenting its direct mail offering is Addressable’s Listing Architect, a solution that builds landing pages for properties. Users need only upload a few photos, enter some property features and a narrative tone, and a few paragraphs of very usable copy are generated.
The tool lets the user vary the “intensity” level of the copy, as well as the length and overall approach based on the property type. You can choose “rustic,” “luxury,” “historic,” “new” and “vacation,” among others.
Unlike ChatGPT itself, Listing Architect doesn’t rely on the user to type, or write, a prompt. The process is encapsulated in the description commands.
Finished descriptions can then be pushed to the web along with the initial photos under a wordy domain Addressable owns. It’s tedious, and I hope they adjust that. Nevertheless, it’s overall an effective and time-honored marketing tactic to directly link direct mail to a web page, and it’s all in this single application.
It may seem as if Addressable is just now hopping on the AI train; however, what’s different is that its co-founder and CEO, Chris Tosswill, actually studied it in college, and speaks of its merits with nuanced expertise. I expect more to come from the company because of this, likely involving fleshed-out websites created in a few seconds and other such marketing automations.
For now, know that what Addressable offers is a smart, integrated marketing solution for agents at any level of their career, but perhaps most valuable to those just getting underway.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
