Estate Agents - The Next Big Mobile Advertisers?

• Posted: Friday, November 28, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Mobile Advertisers, Mobile Advertising

Over the past year, it seems that more and more start-ups are offering SMS/MMS based solutions targeted at real estate professionals. All of these solutions have the same basic guiding principles. Companies such as Gumiyo, CellAHouse and Cellyspace all offer such services.

The idea is that it as consumer walks past a house with a “For Sale” sign on it, they would like to receive instant information about that property. And that is where SMS/MMS comes in. These companies add a comment on the “for Sale” sign stating that if you want to receive more information about that house, then you can text the short code provided.

You then receive a message from the estate agent with the details of the property, the price, as well as contact information for the estate agent. But where this technology is particularly suited to the real estate sector is that you can include pictures in the MMS, thus effectively creating a virtual tour of the property.

The SMS short code can also be inserted on other forms of advertising such as TV and print.

According to Shuki Lehavi, CEO of Gumiyo, “We’re seeing tremendous interest from the real estate sector for our mobile marketing services. Real estate pros are the ultimate self-promoters and they are fearless when it comes to trying new technologies that can help give them an advertising edge. By adding their Gumiyo Go Code keyword and MLS IDs to signs and ads, they instantly increase the power for those signs and ads to generate opportunistic leads.”

The move towards mobile marketing for realators could be accelerated by web applications such as the one from Cellyspace that allow estate agents to set up mobile advertising campaigns for each house they have for sale. The application will take estate agents through a step-by-step guide to creating an MMS campaign. This includes uploading and editing images, adding text, slides, video and audio to the MMS.

You then get the option of making your MMS public or keeping it private until you are ready. Once you are ready to continue you need to set up the keycode that your potential customers will need to text in order to receive your MMS.

Then all that is required of you is that you promote your keycode and people will start receiving the MMS with all the information on your property.

According to the co-founder of Cellyspace, Richard Eicher, “We use a ‘Pay for Performance’ model so realtors set their own promotional goals and only pay per message delivered. Market feedback indicates that reaching 100 live prospects for $20.00 is a very good investment.” [MobiAdNews]

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