Community Data Marketing: BHHS Fox and Roach Gets Creative

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox and Roach, REALTORS®, one of the largest brokerages in America (over 5000 agents), is among the firms at the forefront of combining technologies using APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to get the most out of the technology solutions that power their success.

In the first quarter of this year, Fox and Roach implemented LiveBy as a partner for their community information. LiveBy writes and aggregates localized content used by Fox and Roach for a number of business needs. Their content is primary used to build out community pages on their broker websites that power a 360-degree snapshot of what it is like to live in a community. Fox and Roach integrates the API from LiveBy with MLS and other data sources to build very compelling pages. Check out this page for Chestnut Hill, PA.

Fox and Roach provides an interactive experience that not only powers their search engine performance, but delights consumers with the ability to view lifestyle information, driving increased website engagement and capturing high quality leads.

The SEO benefits of custom content pages on broker websites is fantastic. Since April this year through June, they have seen a 72% increase in organic traffic to these community pages. The components of these community landing pages include:

• the custom community description
• a map of the community (boundaries from LiveBy – a key feature of their service)
• restaurants from Yelp
• schools
• market trends, and
• property listings driven by MLS data feeds.

Search engines index all of this information, and in our opinion, the resulting pages are better than any found on the national advertising portals. Perfecting these pages for SEO performance is a living project that requires frequent updates for maximizing effectiveness.

The second place where Fox and Roach are leveraging the LiveBy content is Buyside. LiveBy data is now available in the "What's your home worth?" pages created for Fox and Roach by Buyside (example). Again, the LiveBy integrations drive a rich experience for consumers to add context to the property valuation pages and move consumers into examining properties.

The landing pages for Buyside and the community pages on their broker website are getting a steady volume of consumers subscribing to receive updates.

The third place where Fox and Roach is leveraging LiveBy data is in their email marketing solution provided by Active Pipe. Active Pipe is a brokerage newsletter application developed in Australia. They focus on real estate and have created a user-friendly interface for agents to drag and drop content into their email marketing newsletters and campaigns. For example, an agent can drag in a Market Insights from LiveBy that includes sold vs. list price, median price, listing volume etc. The following are additional compelling content pieces that follow the style guide of the newsletter:

• Ease of use with property and data integration
• Whiteboard where you can drag and drop widgets that have active data
• Shared and personal images are in a library
• Smart Feeds are RSS compliant feeds
• LiveBy Insights integration – charts and statistics
• Save template and send each month to a person or group of people in a town
• For properties: can select coming soon, office listings, coming soon office listings, or pull properties based on criteria – like my listings, my open houses, resent solds, etc.
• Send as an email or use as a campaign
• Broker can do an agent approved send on behalf of agents to their sphere – some agents just select "trust broker" or have the ability to selectively trigger broker created campaigns
• Support for triggers and schedules – so you can create email that goes out when something happens or on a cadence like once a month (like market report). Then you can send again if it was not opened. Send them another one if they click it, etc. It makes newsletters smart
• Totally integrated to company-offered agent CRM for contact integration – pull individual people, groups, etc. Stores a copy of the sent email in the customer record
• Neighborhood Guides – has every component that agents can include or exclude for out of town buyers, or offer it at their open houses as a get-to-know-the-area guide

Open rates on Active Pipe are 67% in the early adopter group, according to Fox and Roach.

Next up for Fox and Roach will be integrating LiveBy data into their social media strategy. You can imagine how hungry agents are for the ability to post market snapshots into their social media marketing efforts.

Other articles mentioning Fox and Roach:

• Magic Happens When Broker Culture Fits with Technology Offerings
• BHHS Fox and Roach Launches ACE to 5100 Agents
• Property Reports Increase Client Retention For Fox and Roach

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