RISMEDIA, April 2, 2008-QuantumDigital, an online service provider for direct mail, on-demand digital printing and eMarketing solutions, announced an expanded relationship with Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc. (L&F) – one of the nation’s largest privately-owned real estate companies. After its six year partnership, L&F will be moving direct mail and print marketing collateral from an inside direct fulfillment facility to QuantumDigital’s Web-to-print online portal for processing, production and mailing. The decision was made by Long & Foster after 16 years of producing collateral internally for up to 15,000 real estate agents in 245 offices on the East Coast.
“We’re encouraging our agents in a down market to do more and get back to basics by getting back in touch with spheres of influence,” says Ed Sears, VP of Marketing at L&F. “QuantumDigital makes it easy to do that. We’ve been so impressed with their customer service and their product, and our agents had been using them quite a bit.”
“QuantumDigital’s technology will provide our agents the ability to go online to order ‘Just Listed’ and ‘Just Sold’ cards and other pieces and have them in the mail stream the very next business day. We’re confident that the flexibility to order online 24/7 will be a great advantage for all of our agents, putting them a step ahead of competitors,” said Sherry Schneider, director of L&F’s direct mail center.
Long & Foster hopes to double its online direct mail output to over two million pieces per year by using QuantumDigital’s online portal, which will include a variety of postcards, flyers, brochures, door hangers and business reply cards for use by its agents. The portal will feature an array of approved, pre-designed, corporate-branded marketing collateral that can be personalized by agents for their local market. Agents can log on to the company intranet at any time of day to do so, making them more productive and freeing up a lot more time. Once the agent completes the order, QuantumDigital then processes the order within a 24-hour turnaround time.
“We’re finding that agents are spending less but asking us to come up with new services to communicate with buyers and sellers through different approaches,” says Eric Cosway, CMO of QuantumDigital. “Long & Foster has asked us to continue to use new technology in which they could never have adopted in-house. They want to reduce marketing expenditures, promote personalized direct mail and e-mail marketing techniques that work. Considering the portal and what we offer – they made the decision that they can get all of that that through one service provider and luckily that’s us.”
By choosing QuantumDigital, the company looks forward to stepping out ahead of its competition. By partnering with QuantumDigital, Long & Foster agents will have the combination of consistencies and frequent-touch in their local marketplaces. Using the technologies provided, agents can easily schedule mailings advance.
QuantumDigital’s MapMail mapping technologies enables agents to specifically see areas that are the right demographic for their ‘Just Listed’/’Just Sold’ flyers. What’s more, all L&F agents will have the opportunity to stand out in all categories of direct marketing, newsletters, and e-mail-all on one portal.
“It’s fast and efficient,” says Cosway. “And we’re able to help those who are not Web-savvy execute direct marketing quickly without having to go to multiple platforms to do that.”
“Cross channel marketing is really where the real estate market is going to go,” says Cosway. “Having personalized print pieces still touches people and are as powerful as e-mail communication. Direct mail is also still seen as very personal, and it really can be targeted to a local audience and has high readership.”
In a few simple steps, agents will be able to register, choose pre-approved templates that fit the message they want to send to their audience, personalize and then order a quantity-all charged to their credit card. Agents are then given tracking information with notification alerts along the way.
“The technology that has come out within the past three years is making it more difficult for real estate companies to execute direct mail fulfillment internally,” explained Ed Sears, vice president of marketing at L&F. “We’re in the real estate, mortgage, title and insurance businesses. By turning the mail process over to QuantumDigital, L&F will be able to focus on our core businesses. We hope to grow that business considerably. Once agents discover all they have to offer, they just love it. We expect the volume to increase dramatically.”
“We’ve worked with Long & Foster for over six years, and we are looking forward to taking the relationship to the next level,” stated QuantumDigital president and CEO, Steve Damman. “QuantumDigital understands that real estate mailers are often extremely time sensitive, and our portal requires little effort on the agent’s part to streamline the process and send mailers out faster than ever before.”
For more information, visit www.QuantumDigital.com and http://www.longandfoster.com/.
