Karen was kind enough to let us interview her about her successes with Real Pro Platinum (click for a recording). In the interview, she gave examples of her marketing, which many attendees found really interesting.

"We have been happy Real Pro clients for years now, but Platinum has taken our Internet marketing and lead tracking to a new level.

"We can now track and distribute leads much easier, help our team members take control of their business, and have consumer friendly sites. We no longer use our archaic spreadsheets to track our leads: we can now do that on our Real Pro site. We dropped two other websites (including one custom site) due to the comprehensive nature of Real Pro Platinum. This system saves time, money and helps us sell more homes."

Todd Buckley & Karen Jolley ,
The Buckley Jolley Real Estate Team, Brighton, MI

June 15th, 2010, Jason wrote to inform us:

"We received a total of 768 CMA requests on a mailing of 62,000. Not bad percentages. That was the last week in February and we have had 6 appointments 2 listings and one closed deal."

Earlier this winter, Jason wrote:

"The update is that I received a total of 677 CMA requests and they still trickle in daily. I have set 4 appointments but as we all know these type of leads take real time."

Check out Jason's website:

http://www.oneilrealtors.com/

As Dan Kennedy says - it's all about using the marketing triangle: the right message to the right market in the right media, and I would add, at the right time.

Here's what the the postcard looked like:

I recommend checking out his blog. Rob posts some fantastic tips for real estate technology - both hardware and software.

"Real Pro Gold has been an invaluable tool for my company. The interface is simple to use and allows for extensive customization of our website without being overly complicated. The tools Real Pro Gold provides give us a means to stay in front of customers in a personal manner without spending a lot of time behind a computer. With the tracking tools I can see how my site is performing in an easy to understand format and Real Pro's outstanding customer service team is always very responsive to my needs. The search engines love our website which means more traffic and more leads! I can't imagine my business without our Real Pro website."

Rob Janson
Marketing & Technology
John Jones Real Estate
Murfreesboro, TN

www.JohnCJones.com

RISMEDIA, January 26, 2010—Rob Levy, broker and team leader of The Rob Levy Team at Prudential Northwest Properties in Portland, Oregon, can answer without hesitation when asked what his key to 22-year success in the real estate industry has been: technology. Here, Levy shares the specifics of how he remains successful as the industry—and technology—continues to evolve.

Rob Levy
Broker
The Rob Levy Team
Prudential Northwest Properties

www.roblevy.com

Maria Patterson: You’ve been a number-one Prudential agent in the Portland Oregon area several times over the course of your career and attribute technology to much of your success. What is one of your most significant technology practices?

Rob Levy: Using a tablet PC and an air card. This allows you to sign listing agreements at the client’s home or wherever you happen to be and upload the listing to the MLS immediately, or have buyers sign offers onsite, and this also allows you to have a life. For example, on New Year’s Eve an offer came in by fax and I was out of town but I was able to get it sent and signed from where I was. A tablet PC allows you to do more in less time.

MP: Why did you form an agent team?
RL: I’m married with three boys and I’m a very driven guy and a hard worker. I realized I was ignoring my family, so I got some help with marketing so that I could concentrate on getting out in front of people. That made me more efficient and helped me get even more business…and then I was back in the same mess. Working with buyers takes the most amount of time, so I hired my first buyers agent at that point. Today, I have three full-time buyers agents, one assistant, and one business manager.

MP: What is your biggest source of new business today?
RL: Even though we do a super job of working with our past clients and their referrals, in the last year more than half our leads came from the Internet.

MP: What’s your key to generating so many leads?
RL: We use a Real Pro Systems stealth site in addition to our regular site. RobLevy.com is great for people that know me, but if you’re moving to Portland, you’re going to search for a site where you can get data about the area. That’s why we also have a stealth site, portlandmls.net. People are far more likely to fill out a form on that site than they would be to go to my main site. And the proof is in the pudding—98.6% of all my new internetbusiness comes from the stealth site. In the old days, 22 years ago, my job was to market Rob because I had all the data. Now all the data is out there, so let’s give them the data and then market Rob.

MP: How do you manage your Internet leads?
RL: We use Real Pro Systems Platinum to track all the leads that come in through the stealth sites. I can tell from this system who’s viewing listings and even see what houses they are looking at and how many times they have looked at a particular house for example. At that point, I would generate Real Pro’s CRM system to start e-mailing this lead with information on the Portland market and information on me so I can gently start selling myself. The system allows me to know when to differentiate between leads and prospects and start to convert a lead to a prospect. This has been a real boon for us, we now focus only on the prospects, and not on the leads, we let the system do that for us.

MP: How does technology facilitate real estate transactions?

Read more at: http://rismedia.com/2010-01-25/turning-technology-into-business/

About Rob Levy
Rob has been the number 1 ranked agent by sales volume in the Portland, OR area; voted Realtor of the Year by members of the Million Dollar Club of the Portland Association of Realtors, and is a Star Power "Star," among other accolades he's received. Rob is well-recognized for his sage advice on technology for real estate agents.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.

Are you looking for listings? One of our Gold level clients, Jason O'Neil, located in a tough real estate market in Florida, used a postcard from our marketing library and had tremendous results! Here is his email below.

"Real Pro,
Just a note to let you know that I have received 313 Seller CMA requests in just over 24 hours! I inserted the card into a local newspaper that gets direct mailed to a portion of my county. Total cost was just under $4K. 

I know you love to hear the stories! In fact, this is way too many to efficiently handle.

I trust that all is well. 

Jason"

Yes! We love success stories from our clients!  Check out Jason's website:

http://www.oneilrealtors.com/

Action: Used a postcard template from our marketing gallery to create a newspaper insert.

Results: 314 Seller CMA requests for Jason to provide in the first 24 Hrs. (definitely more will follow)

Cost: Just under $4K

Business problem: Too much business to handle!

Here's what it looked like:

INSPIRATION FOR TODAY:

YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS!

Walk into a totally dark room. What do you see? "Absolutely nothing," you say. Now, turn on the light. Where did the darkness go? Really - where is it now? Hopefully you will agree that darkness cannot exist in the face of light.

During a lifetime, we experience many types of "darkness." It may appear in the form of discouragement, fear, hopelessness, grief, ignorance, or poverty. Yet, in every case, there is a "light" in which such darkness cannot exist.

Fear, for example, cannot exist in the face of courage. Education denies ignorance any chance of survival. Grief disappears in the presence of peace-of-mind. Discouragement ceases when hope prevails. Wealth denies poverty its chance.

No matter what form darkness takes, it cannot exist when faced with its opposite. That also means we have the ability to send darkness on its way at any point in time. No matter how overwhelming the darkness appears, it is our thoughts and our minds that ultimately control the outcome. How powerful is that?

In the words of several favorite authors: "Think you can, think you can't, either way you're right." "Your life is what your thoughts make of it." "We are what we think about all day long." Finally, in the words of Tom Bodett, from one of his Motel 6 commercials: "We'll leave the light on for you!"

Here's an excerpt:

...Lately, agents considering our solutions have reported that a couple of competitors selling what used to be more expensive systems are now offering to waive the setup fees entirely. Naturally, these agents have then asked us to also waive our setup fee. While you can’t blame them for trying, our answer is “no.” Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but thanks to the loyal support of our agents we are doing quite well, and we have a sustainable business model."

We aren't taking any shortcuts on customer service. "Nothing short of extraordinary..." a client writes us. Read on:

"Hi Gwyneth,

Let me say that my experience with Real Pro Systems and the creation of my new website has been nothing short of extraordinary.

The training and customer support is outstanding.  RPS is constantly on the cutting edge and evolving.  I look forward to the new enhancements forthcoming."

Tim

Caine O'Brien continues in his blog post:

...If you are considering doing business with us, we ask you to think about how important it is for your vendor to be available, reliable, and sustainable. And if you are tempted by dramatically reduced fees from another provider, ask yourself where that money is coming from. It is very likely coming out of the development department, the production department, or the service department. And that could cost you a lot more down the road.

Real Pro Systems isn’t the cheapest nor the most expensive solution out there; we just offer the best value by far. It seems to be working."

"Best Investment that I've Ever Made"

Real Pro Systems is the best investment that I've ever made in my real estate business!!! The system is complete, and allows you to stay in touch with your database with ease!!! I wish that I would have uses this system when I started nine years ago. There really is no expense in marketing if the return outweighs the... investment, and the return here is much more than I've ever expected.

Customer service is awesome as well. Most companies ask you to email them...not Real Pro. I speak to Kristi anytime I have questions, and she is always on top of things. Joel is the same way. Unbelievable!!!

Thanks Real Pro Systems for all you've done for my business. The name of your company couldn't be more fitting...your whole package is Real Professional!!!

Thanks again.
Darren James
Denham Springs, LA
www.Agent225.com

After a webinar we hosted to share the updates in Gold 3.0, we received the following comment.

"I love you. thank you so much!!!!!!!! You mentioned several times yesterday in the webinar that you value our business and it shows from how you treat us and improve your products. Thank you!"

Sara D.
San Diego, CA

Leads in Two Weeks

"Gina and I launched her new Real Pro site two weeks ago and are very pleased with the site to date. Our leads started coming in this week. 

"I'm so glad I made the switch...If I can be of help to you in telling anyone about how easily my conversion went (for me anyway), and if they are looking at a new site, they should not be lured by anything “free”, and how great the support is after one signs up for the site, I would be most happy to do so.

Thanks again,

Lisa Bieri 

Perspective on RPS From a Search Engine Optimization Expert

Real Pro Gold comes with your own integrated agent blog.  No need to go out and purchase or create a separate blogging system -- you can turn on your own blog with a click of a mouse.  Use your blog to establish your local expertise, personalize your business and enhance your search engine optimization. 

How Does Blogging Help My SEO? Search engines are continually looking for new content to index and one of the fastest ways to add unique, fresh content to your site is by using an integrated blog.  The more often search engines find new content on your site, the faster they will come back next time and the higher the ranking in the search results.  Blogging is a fast, easy way to help you with your organic search rankings.

Site Map Submission Service We submit your website’s site map to the search engines after each blog post.  We submit to MSN live, Google, Google blogs, Ask.com and Yahoo! 

Blog Directory Pinging Service In addition to submitting your site map we also send out an electronic signal, or ping to several blog directories to let them know you have a new blog post to index.  We ping:  Ping-o-Matic, Feedburner, Technorati, Weblogs and Twingly.

Need Help with What to Write? We know that coming up with things to write about on your blog can be almost as challenging as writing the blog itself; which is why we have included a list of 100 topics to blog about build right into the Real Pro Gold admin panel. 

 Do You Tweet? Since Twitter has become more popular as an online social networking tool in the real estate industry, we thought it would be nice to integrate your blog and your Twitter account. Just click a box and your new posts will be posted to your Twitter account. 

"Best decision for my real estate business"

"I’m LOVING my website!  It has been a great tool in my business!  THANKS!!!"

Connie Kroll

Realtor

Century 21 Northland

www.TraverseAreaHomeSource.com

• Adding more Web 2.0 functionality such as more RSS feeds, social networking integration
• Saving time expediting data entry: listings, export leads to Top Producer
• Niche stealth sites to "fish where the fish are," as Rob Levy puts it 
• Further custom SEO tools
• New pre-formatted custom page layouts

Real Pro Gold 3.2 – Release Notes

by Joe Lininger 19. March 2009 08:24

Read more in our blog.

In your RPS control panel, under "Other Resources," click the third party resources link and fill-out your twitter details.  You will notice that we have preformatted your Twitter updates to go out with your blog title, and a tiny url to bring people back to your site. 

Once you save your twitter account info, you're all set.  View the video below to see how easy it is to update twitter through your blog.