Park Co Realtors Score Big With Location Aware Mobile Campaign

Park Company Realtors have taken the next step with mobile marketing, adding a very creative and user friendly location aware mobile campaign. By simply texting PARK to 59559, a location aware service determines what property you are standing by and sends you information on the listing you are at as well as the 5 closest properties for sale listed in MLS.

Read on for the process their marketing department took to arrive at their current campaign.

First, they looked at existing metrics. They found that the majority of their property inquiries came from phone calls, and most of them originated from the real estate sign that was outside listed properties. In fact, in 2010, 63% of their phone calls came in from their real estate signs.

Based on the amount of telephone traffic they were seeing, in fall of 2009 they decided to launch a SMS campaign on their signs. Every sign now had a code that you could send in via text, and the system would respond with information about the listing, such as price, number of baths, bedrooms, etc. The campaign was a huge success, generating over 1800 inquires in 2010 (average of 150 property inquires per month).

Based on that success, they again upgraded their system. Now, instead of a unique code for each house, there is one standard code for every listing that makes the process significantly easier on the user. According to their blog:

Now it is simply, text PARK to 59559. Once you do that, one of two things will happen.

1) If you have a Droid or and iPhone and your GPS is enabled, the system automatically figures out where you are at or…

2) If you do not have GPS on your phone, it will ask you to provide the house number and/or street.

Once the system figures out where you are, it sends you information on the listing you are at AND the 5 closest properties for sale (not just Park Co. listings, but all MLS listings)! Talk about shopping a neighborhood (and you probably didn’t even make it to the end of the street!)

There is actually a little more to it than that - the response text actually redirects smartphone users to a location aware mobile web site - but it is still very intuitive. In addition to providing instant feedback to the consumer, this is also a lead generation tool. The blog advertises that once you use the system, a Park Company agent will call you to see if you have any additional questions. While the followup is good, they are entering some uncharted waters. Because it is a live person calling and not an automated dialer, they are most likely not in violation of the TCPA. But there are certain user expectations when you send a text message, and I am not convinced that consumers will be expecting a phone call. Looking at the (obviously photoshopped) graphic on the blog, there is nothing on the sign that indicates that someone will call, nor is there anything in the response text or mobile web site.

This is the only negative thing I could find about an otherwise brilliant campaign, and something as simple as a disclaimer on the real estate sign would fix any problems I have with it. Overall, this is a very good mobile campaign, and Park Company deserves kudos.