RISMEDIA, Sept. 21, 2007-Alain Pinel Realtors (APR) has formed an exclusive, online partnership with Trulia.com. This alliance is in-step with APR’s tradition of marketing leadership through technology, announced President and COO Larry Knapp.According to Trulia representatives, the affiliation with APR is likely the first of many such relationships Trulia hopes to form in numerous markets across the country, with mid and large-scale brokerage firms specializing in residential real estate sales.
A residential real estate services firm, Alain Pinel Realtors is one of the largest, privately-held companies of its kind in the United States with 26 Northern California locations, some 1,300 real estate agents and annual sales volume of approximately $7 billion. APR was one of the first real estate companies in the country to have a Web site when apr.com was launched in late 1994.
APR & Trulia
With the Trulia commitment, Alain Pinel Realtors has taken online residential real estate marketing to the next level with a corporate-sponsored and supported, online advertising vehicle that is the first of its kind. Since Trulia’s inception, individual real estate agents have posted their listings on trulia.com and paid for enhancements to their postings.
Alain Pinel Realtors and Trulia have agreed to a new format of individual marketing and branding that features personalized banner advertisements in the sidebar of Trulia’s Web pages, as well as highlighting all of APR agents’ listings.
By striking a company-wide pact with Trulia in which APR agents can opt in and out of using the online marketing service, Alain Pinel Realtors is the first company to organize and sponsor the marketing of homes for sale online and to offer the service to all of its sales professionals. By doing so and because of the promised volume of business to Trulia, the realty firm’s agents receive a significant discount for online marketing with Trulia.
How it Works
When a prospective home buyer types a city into Trulia’s search field, APR listings appear in the “Featured Listings” section at the top of the page, and APR agent banner ads appear in the right sidebar of the Webpage. The agents that opt-in to the program are divided equally and then rotated evenly through Trulia’s Web site, based on the cities that they purchased.
Tracking, Measurement and Results
Officially launched in early August, about 800 APR sales professionals signed up to advertise themselves on Trulia’s Web site. To help agents track their Trulia campaigns, APR provides agents a subscription to VisiStatTM. VisiStatTM is an effective, real-time viewer tracking service allowing agents to maximize and visualize their marketing efforts. Important features include ad campaign management, keyword analysis, comprehensive, geographic mapping capability and interactive visitor reports. By tracking online activity and marketing results through VisiStatTM, the benefit to agents and their clients is significant; agent/advertisers are able to track the effectiveness of their marketing investments and directly connect to interested home buyers or their representatives.
The combined tools for promoting homes for sale (listings) and tracking have produced results. Homes that are featured and listed on Trulia’s Web site increase visitors to agent listings by 200-to-400%, according to Trulia’s Manager of Strategic Partnerships, Alejandro Foung. Moreover, featured homes that are clicked on by visiting consumers convert to sales 50% more often, based on Trulia’s experience with the real estate industry.
Agent Discounts
According to the two companies, agents pay for their Trulia banner advertisements on a per-impression basis, while APR covers the cost of placing the agents’ listings onto Trulia.com. APR also pays for the VisiStatTM service and offers corporate marketing-coordination support at no cost to its agents. APR agents receive a significant discount on Trulia’s posted rates.
APR acquired a sizable number of total impressions from Trulia for the first year and set maximum budgets for each city in which APR agents work. With nine Northern California counties being served by APR agents, the online marketing covers many regional cities. Total cost per city is determined by page views for that city. For example, an individual agent may pay more for a banner ad in Berkeley with 11,000 page views, versus an ad on the Capitola listing page, which may only get 100 page views.
For more information, visit www.apr.com and www.Trulia.com.
