Facebook
X
Pinterest
Copy Link
Healthy Work Culture: A Must-Have for Today’s Brokerages
By Sophia Stilwell, Customer Support Specialist at MoxiWorks
Brokerage culture: it’s a phrase we all hear but do we really know what it is or how to create the best brokerage culture around? In order to cultivate the best brokerage culture possible, we need to know what it is and how to create it because great culture is what agents are looking for when hunting for that perfect fit. Without a great brokerage culture, agents have little reason to stick around and stay loyal to their brokerages. After all, who wants to work somewhere they don’t feel appreciated by?
What is brokerage culture?
If you look it up, you will probably read some article telling you how it’s the environment at a certain brokerage, but really, it’s much more than that! Brokerage culture is the personality of all those who work there! It’s the bloodline that ties the brokerage to its agents and it’s what keeps top agents who have so many other recruiting offers to choose from where they are. It’s your motto, your ethics, and your values.
How do you create the strongest brokerage culture?
Brokerage culture starts with the owner, someone who had a dream and made it happen. Think of them as the head of a family. Of course, to be a parent, you need kids, or in our case agents, who the parents help to be better and accomplish their goals. Brokerage owners hire agents to help them grow their family and as they do, they grow and cultivate that unique brokerage culture. This is why it’s so important to not only have a strong brokerage culture to begin with – good values, strong goals, and supportive and respectful work environment – but to also make sure that the agents being brought in are just as driven to uphold and improve that culture.
Getting to know an agent in an interview is a great way to learn if they will be a good fit for the brokerage culture you are trying to attain. Asking questions such as, “What are you looking for in your next job?” and “How do you motivate yourself to be successful?” and “What are your goals in your career?” can all be a great way to learn if the candidate is a good fit for your brokerage.
Finding the perfect agents is a great first step in achieving world-class brokerage culture, but you can’t stop there, after all, a parent’s job isn’t done when they take the baby home from the hospital. Introducing your agents to a strong brokerage culture right away is a key to letting them know they made the right choice! Little things like giving out New Agent Starter Packs helps get agents excited about their new brokerage. These Starter Packs can include all the helpful things like Wi-Fi and MoxiWorks passwords, brokerage swag, and anything else you would like to include to help them get started on the right foot!
Employing your brokerage culture and helping it to grow is a full-time job. You have to work at it to ensure you have the best in town and going that extra step can make all the difference. Now that you have hand-picked the perfect agents, you’ll want to make sure that you and they are upholding the culture you have worked to achieve. Things like brokerage manifestos, measuring employee engagement, or even having a moment of silence for your competitors who your agent beat for a listing can make a big difference in the eyes of agents and give them more incentive to stay and help your brokerage grow.
Find out more tips for recruiting and retention at your brokerage here.
How Instagram Ads Will Win You More Listings
By Jessie Trapp, Marketing Coordinator
As a real estate pro, you know that getting eyes on your listings is an absolute must. You publish ads for your listings on Facebook, post about them on Twitter, and maybe even spread the word about them through local newspapers or monthly Neighborhood News updates. You feel confident that you’re covering all your bases and taking the necessary steps to generate the leads you need for your business to thrive.
The catch? You could be reaching significantly more people and boosting your business in a major way, without adding any additional tasks to your already bustling list of to-dos.
While it may be newer to the game than many of its social media powerhouse siblings (aka Facebook), Instagram is essentially the real estate industry’s newly discovered better half. It’s time that you learn it, embrace it, and most importantly – use the channel to win more business and expand your reach like never before.
Here’s how Instagram will win you more listings:
Visual.
To start, Instagram’s entire user experience was developed to optimize users’ ability to absorb visual-heavy content. That means that when you post a listing photo or an advertisement for your business, viewers may be more likely to notice it as they are using the app than they may be on other channels simply because the UI was specifically built for image consumption.
Engagement.
According to Hootsuite, brands see 10x higher engagement rates on Instagram than they do on Facebook. While this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll generate significantly more immediate business from Instagram than Facebook, it does point toward Instagram being a powerful tool when it comes to generating engagement through your ads and strengthening your brand recognition, which will help promote consistent lead generation in the long-run.
Reach.
More than 500 million people log onto Instagram every single day. That’s a LOT of users, and although your ads obviously won’t reach the entire audience all at once, the platform expands your access to a larger pool of people and audiences both inside, and very far outside of, your sphere.
On-the-go friendly.
Not all buyers have significant amounts of time to dedicate to browsing the internet in search of the perfect home. That’s why you need to cover your bases and make it available to them in as many channels as possible to increase your chances of getting their attention and ultimately, winning a listing. Instagram is a very mobile friendly app, making it a given that your ads will be largely consumed while on the go.
Ready to start advertising on Instagram? The Promote feature within MoxiMarketing allows you to advertise on Facebook and Instagram at the very same time, meaning you get much more bang for your buck without putting any strain on your workflow. Start expanding your reach with Instagram ads today.
MoxiWorks Upgrades their MoxiEngage CRM, Delivering Email Marketing to Clients for Free
SEATTLE, February 19, 2019 – MoxiWorks, a leading real estate technology company, has just announced that they’ve expanded their email marketing functionalities for free for all of their MoxiEngage CRM clients. On top of the Neighborhood News monthly email function that their clients all know and love, MoxiEngage now enables full email marketing, including drip campaigns, for all agents.
The feature is unique – built to be as sophisticated or as simple as needed for any given agent. “The email drip campaign and integration from Moxi is exactly what we needed. A powerful automated campaign system that retains brokerage content compliance controls and is extremely simple to use… Thank you Moxi team,” said Jason Crawford, COO of Intero SoCal.
It also allows for the brokerage to easily build a library of beautifully branded templates and campaigns for their agents, from farming and sphere marketing, to lead nurturing and beyond. Bryan Link, Product Manager at MoxiWorks said, “Our goal was to bring email campaigns, the most time and cost-effective way for agents to stay in flow with their sphere, right into the CRM they use every day. It is a crucial, yet often overlooked part of an agent’s business and we felt it was a core component in helping an agent win more business.”
These email campaigns will help agents stay in touch with their existing spheres and engage with new leads by delivering valuable, relevant content with easy-to-use email marketing. It will automatically add the right clients to the right campaigns with applicable campaign triggers. Agents will be able to schedule email campaigns for one-off touches or set up drip campaigns for long-term nurturing.
“Our products are constantly evolving. We never leave any of our products behind and we always want to be pushing ourselves to provide the very best technology that we can to the industry,’” said York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks. “In choosing MoxiWorks, our brokerage clients know that they’re investing in a growing product. This new CRM feature means that they’re providing more value to their agents at no additional cost.”
Agents that currently use the powerful MoxiEngage CRM tool enjoy 54% more business, on average. You can learn more about the new email campaigns CRM feature from MoxiWorks here.
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for large residential real estate brokerages that serves over 72 brokerages and 120,000 agents nationwide that account for more than 13% of the transactions in the U.S. MoxiWorks’ integrated tools are centered on sphere methodology that increases agents’ repeat and referral business by 54%, while lowering overall technology, training, and support costs for the brokerage. The open platform known as the MoxiCloud has tools from more than 40 partners that plug and play to create unique brokerage solutions. MoxiWorks also powers the LeadingRE Cloud. Find more information at moxiworks.com.
###
For more information on this topic and other press inquiries at MoxiWorks, please contact Tiana Baur at tiana@moxiworks.com.
How Brokerages Save Money While Connecting with Agent Spheres
By Bryn Yasui, Customer Support Specialist at MoxiWorks
Most people don’t realize that an agent needs to wear multiple hats every day in their position. You are your own accountant, a superior negotiator, and an expert salesperson all within one role. Selling homes is an ambitious feat to take on with so many responsibilities to be successful at the end of the day. One driving component of the real estate industry will never lose its value — connectivity. A successful real estate agent thrives off of strong customer relations.
Every agent has their own sphere of influence that stretches its branches further and further, growing their network. With those agent spheres of influence, how can you not only nurture and expand your agent sphere but take it to the next level while saving precious time and money? We’ve got you covered.
A new way to connect with agent spheres.
At MoxiWorks, we are continuously ideating ways to improve our agents’ business in the most cost effective and timely way possible. Before an agent even begins to show listings and make sales, they are reaching out to all of their contacts for any potential homebuyers — an extremely time-consuming task that most agents can’t afford to fit into their hectic schedules. We would like to introduce Publish to you if you aren’t already utilizing the enormous potential it has to offer.
With Publish, you can not only preserve those connections but increase them faster than ever. The good news is that users of MoxiPresent already have access to Publish in their MoxiWorks account. You are literally only a few clicks away from being at the forefront of expanding your agent sphere like never before.
The power of Publish.
At no additional cost, Publish can help agents, brokers, and office managers increase their relevance with little to no effort required. The good news is users of MoxiPresent and MoxiEngage already have this feature at their fingertips. We have integrated the capabilities of Publish in your CMA tool, MoxiPresent, and your CRM, MoxiEngage to make it as user-friendly, modern, and dynamic for your business.
Deliver engaging 360-degree virtual tours via Matterport and MoxiPresent to dazzle potential buyers. Make lasting impressions to synchronized members of your agent sphere in MoxiEngage with regularly automated personalized messages. Hyper-localize your community with invites to house showings, social mingles, or client appreciation events in the area. Publish is the secret advantage tool that instantly turns agents into master marketers.
Like staying in touch with a friend, regular communication is the name of the game for real estate success. Say goodbye to spending hours sending individual holiday wishes, greeting cards, and newsletters to clients. Through Publish, you can modify the way you reach out to clients and potential leads while saving your valuable time.
“Publish was at the inception pretty pure: give brokerages a way to push that content out to agents and for agents to push it out to their contacts. We wanted to automate it so it was easier for them,” said Jillian Igarashi, Director of Project Management.
Ways to stay connected with agent spheres.
Say you are an agent part of a multi-state brokerage who is selling listings for another neighborhood you’re not acquainted with. This new program also gives office managers and admin who know those specific areas better than anyone else the ability to tailor and contribute their local knowledge to boost your sales.
Although Publish gives power to office admin and brokers in your business endeavors, it doesn’t have to be that way. We understand that real estate agents are their own bosses and they still have that authority with Publish.
“The sky’s the limit and whatever the brokerage wants to push out to the agents, they now can. They can access a consumer database they weren’t able to before,” Igarashi said. “Consumer database was very private before but now office managers and brokerages can create and offer their own values, brand, knowledge, contacts, campaigns to the agents and they have the choice of saying yes or no to it.”
What differentiates Publish from other online automated marketing tools out there is the interactive experience that follows from a typical email. With our other powerful programs meshed into Publish, you can go above and beyond with the way you communicate to your agent sphere.
Want to see for yourself how beneficial Publish could be for your brokerage today? Contact your Account Manager at your brokerage for more information or visit our blog to find out more information on Publish.
MoxiWorks Signs New Partner, LiveBy to the MoxiCloud Open Platform
SEATTLE, February 12, 2019 – MoxiWorks, a leading real estate technology company, has just partnered with LiveBy, who connects real estate professionals with homebuyers through hyper-local data and unique content. LiveBy joins the MoxiCloud open platform, which allows brokerages to create a customized, integrated tech stack that provides them with an end-to-end solution.
LiveBy makes it easy for brokerages to launch hyper-local content on their existing websites. Their data and content become part of the site to help drive search engine optimization (or SEO) and engagement. LiveBy also allows for brokerages to tap into a new kind of “neighborhood lead,” capturing potential sellers and buyers 12, 24, or 48 months earlier in their search process.
“The larger portals will never understand a market like the local brands do. Real estate brokerages and their agents know the area best, and LiveBy helps them prove it!” said Cory Scott, LiveBy CEO. “Zip code data is not hyper-local, and consumers do not want to simply understand the radius around an address. They want to learn about and track activity in a particular neighborhood. LiveBy allows for true, up-to-date insights at a micro level and can deliver on any scale of vision.”
LiveBy supports local data and unique content for all 50 U.S. States, Canada, Bahamas and Cayman Islands. Their coverage includes access to the largest proprietary library of neighborhood boundaries, along with cities, subdivisions, school districts, zip codes and more. Companies can also create custom boundaries on the fly and offer insights that have never been seen.
“We’re so excited to add LiveBy to the MoxiCloud! Hyper-local content is now expected by consumers, so having this solution in a brokerage’s tech stack is only getting more and more important,” said Kylah Searing, Director of Integrations and Partnerships at MoxiWorks. “Having the ability to quickly add neighborhood pages as standalone or to existing sites is really slick. Adding these to a brokerage site was faster than anything I’ve ever seen! The content is really engaging as well, and I know consumers will love it.”
LiveBy will integrate into the MoxiCloud open platform, joining over 40 best-in-class tools and services. The flexibility provided by the MoxiCloud open platform is what MoxiWorks attributes their single-digit client turnover rate to. This open platform model encourages brokerages to innovate and adopt powerful tools, such as LiveBy.
About LiveBy
LiveBy is an all-inclusive local data company that works with 200 of the top real estate brokerages across North America, 4 of the leading networks/franchises and 118,000 agents. LiveBy is passionate about empowering Real Estate Professionals with tools to help buyers and sellers discover and track neighborhoods. They are dedicated to streamlining the home search by removing all ambiguity around location. By leveraging LiveBy, real estate websites drive robust, real-time local content that increase SEO and provide an amazing search experience. For more information about LiveBy, please visit liveby.com.
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for large residential real estate brokerages that serves over 72 brokerages and 120,000 agents nationwide that account for more than 13% of the transactions in the U.S. MoxiWorks’ integrated tools are centered on sphere methodology that increases agents’ repeat and referral business by 54%, while lowering overall technology, training, and support costs for the brokerage. The open platform known as the MoxiCloud has tools from more than 40 partners that plug and play to create unique brokerage solutions. MoxiWorks also powers the LeadingRE Cloud. Find more information at moxiworks.com.
###
For more information on this topic and other press inquiries at MoxiWorks, please contact Tiana Baur at tiana@moxiworks.com.
News: RE/MAX Select launches its new tech ‘HUB’
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE. RE/MAX Select has been building outs its suite of technology tools over the past few months, recently partnering with MoxiWorks to adopt its CRM and listing tool, MoxiPresent.
REAL Trends 500: MoxiWorks Clients Make the Prominent List
We’re so excited to congratulate all of our clients that made the REAL Trends 500 list this year! For those that haven’t heard about it before, the REAL Trends 500 is “an independently verified compilation of the nation’s leading residential real estate companies. In 2017 the 500 largest residential real estate brokerage firms in the nation closed over 3.2 million residential sales transactions.”
Here’s a look at our clients that snagged a spot on the REAL Trends 500 list:
500 Largest Brokerages in the U.S. – Ranked by closed sales volume
In the Top 10, four (40%) are our clients, including:
– NRT LLC
– Hanna Holdings
– Pacific Union International
– William Raveis Real Estate, Mortgage, and Insurance
In the Top 100 category, 15 (15%) are our clients, including:
– @properties
– Ebby Halliday Real Estate, Inc.
– Crye-Leike Realtors
– Sereno Group
– Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Rand Realty
– Paragon Real Estate Group
– Zephyr Real Estate
– Michael Saunders & Company
– Realty Austin
– Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty
– Lyon Real Estate
In the Top 500, 24 (5%) of our clients made the list, including:
– Windermere Homes & Estates
– Kinlin Grover, Page Taft & Randall Realtors
– Intero Real Estate Services – East Bay
– Chase International Real Estate
– Willis Allen Real Estate
– Intero Real Estate Services – So Cal
– Podley Properties
– Phyllis Browning Company
– Coldwell Banker Kappel Gateway Realty
500 Largest Brokerages in the U.S. – Ranked by closed transaction sides
In the Top 10, two (20%) are our clients, including:
– Hanna Holdings
– Crye-Leike Realtors
In the Top 100 category, nine (9%) are our clients, including:
– William Raveis Real Estate
– Ebby Halliday
– @properties
– Pacific Union International
– Lyon Real Estate
– Realty Austin
– Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Rand Realty
In the Top 500, 18 (4%) of our clients made the list, including:
– Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty
– Kinlin Grover, Page Taft & Randall Realtors
– Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Reliance Partners
– Sereno Group
– Windermere Homes & Estates
– Chase International Real Estate
– Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty
– RE/MAX Select
– john greene Realtor
Congrats to all of these amazing companies! It’s a pleasure to work with you and evolve real estate technology together. We can’t wait to see what the future has in store for each and every one of you!
The Best Instagram Advertising Hacks
By Jessie Trapp, Marketing Coordinator
Facebook is an essential part of any modern business’ content marketing strategy, everyone knows that – it’s why we created an entire product, Promote, dedicated to making advertising on it a breeze. However, there’s now another social media powerhouse that’s completely changing the advertising strategy, and you bet we’re stepping up our game to help you wow your clients on it too.
That runner up is the one and only, Instagram.
Before you write Instagram off as a channel solely utilized by millennials to flaunt their outfit of the day (OOTD) or post copious amounts of dog pics and inspirational quotes, think again.
According to Hootsuite, here are a few need-to-knows about the game changer that is Instagram:
- 500 million people use Instagram every day
- Over 80% of accounts on Instagram follow a business
- 71% of businesses use Instagram
- 99% of the top 100 brands are on Instagram
- Users like 4.2 billion posts per day
- 95 million posts per day
- 400 million stories per day
Clearly, this channel is a massive hub for content, and it’s time for you to get in on the action.
The latest MoxiMarketing update makes advertising on Instagram easy. In fact, if you’re already using the Promote tool to advertise on Facebook, you don’t have to change anything you’re doing in order to advertise on Instagram, we’ll take care of that for you.
You read that right – when you publish ads through Promote, you’ll now be advertising on both Facebook AND Instagram. And all you have to do is follow the same three simple steps that make Promote the prized child of your technology tools. In the less than five minutes that it takes to create an ad through Promote, you’ll be growing your sphere, generating leads, and winning more listings by publishing your ads across two of the largest audiences on the web, directly from your MoxiWorks account.
So now you’re ready to reach the Instagram audience with your killer ads. Here are a few quick reminders for making your ads as wow-worthy as possible:
Pretty pictures wanted.
Ads are visual, and the more visually appealing your images and videos are, the more likely they are to spark interest among their viewers. The more interest, the more likely they are to like, comment, share, and click on your ads.
It’s essential that your pictures are crisp, clear, and relevant. Need to brush up on your photography basics? We have what you need.
On-the-go friendly.
Many social media users use it while on the go, meaning you need to make your posts quick and easy to read. Make sure you’re only putting info in the ads that’s absolutely essential. No fluff, just the important stuff.
Say cheese.
It’s been found that Instagram pics that feature faces get 38% more likes than those without. When promoting your real estate services, consider including a nice picture of you smiling to catch people’s
attention and put a face to your name.
Haven’t used Promote to ease your workflow and up your tech-savviness game? Yeah, you’re going to want to add that to this week’s to-do list. Get started here.
Giveaway alert! We’re running a Valentine’s Day special. For every ad you run through your MoxiWorks account, you’re entered to win a cruise for two to the Bahamas! Click here to enter to win.
Episode 2: Matthew Ferrara, Philospher, Speaker, Writer, and major source of real estate inspiration
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More
In this episode of the REAL with MoxiWorks podcast our own Georgia Perez, VP of Business Development and Product Evangelism at MoxiWorks picks the brain of the brilliant Matthew Ferrara, philosopher, speaker, writer, and major source of inspiration for the real estate industry. In this episode of REAL with MoxiWorks podcast, listen in to hear these real estate diehards dig deep into what brokerages and agents look for in technology today, and contemplate the role that tech plays in the modern real estate agent’s workflow.
NPS Score: How Our Clients Think We Measure Up
By Nathan Losch, Tech Support Team Lead
What does a dream vacation look like to you? In the summer of 2016, I took my dream vacation, traveling all over Spain for three months. I saw La Alhambra in Granada, the Prado Museum in Madrid, La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, hiked along the coast line, and ate delicious meals while conversing with fantastic people. It was an amazing trip, with just one exception.
Being an impromptu type of person, I did not plan my hotel arrangements ahead of time. There were days where I didn’t know where I would be sleeping that night. This led to a wide variety of hotels, hostels, and host families gracing me with their hospitality. Many of them were amazing, but there were a few that I would not choose to go back to.
I wasn’t completely lazy in choosing my accommodations. I looked at the pictures of the places online and made sure all of the basic requirements for what I needed were included. Looking back on my experience, the places I enjoyed vs the places I disliked were similar in many ways. The one major difference was that the good ones had better service.
My favorite accommodation from the trip was in Madrid. Not only did I get a bed, breakfast, and somebody to give me a key at my arrival, but the hostel provided other services as well. Every morning, one of the employees gave a free guided walking tour of the city. This helped me so much with understanding Madrid, with its labyrinthian layout and its fascinating history. This paved the way for me to better enjoy the statues I saw around town, the artwork in museums, and many of the conversational references made by the locals. Without this guided tour, my overall Madrid experience wouldn’t have been as strong.
Contrast that experience with my experience in San Sebastian. I arrived at the hostel, got my key and a map, and was told “Welcome to San Sebastian!” I didn’t have any context of the town’s history or its layout, and wandered around aimlessly. San Sebastian was pretty, but I didn’t enjoy myself there nearly as much as I did in Madrid, especially after the initial novelty of exploration wore off.
You may be asking, “Okay Nathan, you went to Spain. Good for you. Why does this matter?” The answer is that getting good service and quality assistance can drastically improve your experience with something, whether it be traveling in a foreign country or working with real estate technology. Just as I rave to all my friends about Madrid in large part due to the service provided by the hostel, MoxiWorks’ customers rave about MoxiWorks in large part because of the service our Support team provides.
One of the metrics we track at MoxiWorks is the Net Promoter score. The NPS score asks, “How likely are you to recommend MoxiWorks to a friend or colleague?” Responses are sorted into three categories: promoter, neutral, and detractor. The percentage of detractors is subtracted from the percentage of promoters, and that gives you your NPS score. Anything above 50 is seen as outstanding, and MoxiWorks has been consistently sitting at an NPS score of 60.
How have we managed this? Sure our products look nice and are useful for agents, but we also are equipped to help out when needed. Are your listings appearing out of order on your presentation? Our support team can help you out! Do you need help setting up Neighborhood News or Listing Announcements? We’re eager to assist! Having trouble getting your custom domain to redirect to your website? We’re pros at getting this turned around!
I maximized my experience traveling in Madrid by having access to a local expert who could show me the ins and outs of the town. Agents can maximize their experience within MoxiWorks by using our local experts, the MoxiWorks support team.
