Solving the Marketing Challenge

SharperAgent’s new upgrade increases flexibility—and possibility—for Realtors

By Maria Patterson

In the real estate marketplace for roughly three years now, Denver-based SharperAgent has been turning more and more heads towards its unique, online marketing program for Realtors. Great graphics, ease of use and now—thanks to a recent upgrade to Sharper Agent 2.0—more flexibility than ever, is cementing the company’s position in the real estate marketing arena. The secret to the company’s growing popularity? A founder who knows exactly what Realtors and brokers want from marketing. How? Because he is one. Here, SharperAgent founder David Behrens tells why his company is so dead-on in providing Realtors with the marketing solution they want.

Maria Patterson: As a Realtor, what was your personal experience with marketing?
David Behrens: I’ve had my real estate license for 13 years. I was struggling with finding the best way to manage my client relations. I was trying to strike a balance between my sales and marketing efforts. When I was busy with sales, marketing was a low priority because I was chasing the commission. When I would close my transactions, I’d turn around and say, ‘Gosh, I have no one to work with’ and I’d turn on the marketing machine and start cold calling and door knocking. Out of those efforts, I’d land a client or two and then shut down my marketing efforts. I wasn’t generating the referral business I knew I deserved because I wasn’t keeping in touch. I wasn’t managing my client relationships effectively. I knew that if I could somehow perfect that system, I could give myself an automatic 30% raise.

MP: What were some of the alternatives you considered to solve the marketing/sales dilemma?
DB: I could have hired a personal assistant, I could have hired somebody to manage my relationships, I could outsource my marketing, or I could hire an in-house marketing person. But, in either event, I’m losing some control over the quality and content of the communication.

MP: So where did you first turn?
DB: I started looking at different software packages on the market. What I quickly found was that there were many different applications that I would need. At minimum: contact management software; e-mail marketing software; print design and direct mail software; and a solution to add content to my Web site. It also became real clear to me that lots of software meant lots of dollars. Those four pieces alone would cost thousands of dollars to get up and running. Secondly, I would also have to endure a huge learning curve for four completely different applications and I would have to deal with four different tech departments to get support. It also meant a huge lack of integration. I would have to key in the same data in multiple places. In addition to that, if I wanted to generate a snapshot of the overall effectiveness of my marketing, I would have to go into four different programs, extract the data and reconcile it into a document to get a comprehensive overview. It became real clear to me that this was not the path I wanted to take. I could not find something that was affordable, easy to use and that had a synergistic relationship between the different components.

MP: What was your next step then?
DB: I said, ‘I’m going to go ahead and build it myself.’ At the time, I was running a brokerage—I literally did not understand what a server was. I started sketching on a piece of paper what the screen shots could look like in a fantasy application that could do everything I wanted it to do… e-mail marketing, print design, direct mail fulfillment, database management, content provisioning for my Web site. I wanted it with each piece working in harmony with the other pieces. I wanted to be able to set up automatic campaigns. Most of all, I wanted it to be easy to use. I created a story board and took it to a software developer and asked, ‘Can you build this for me?’ What I was asking for was unprecedented. It would be a major endeavor to make this vision come to fruition so that’s when my vision became less personal and more business. I didn’t have the resources to put the action behind the vision. I began to look to other industry leaders and received investment capital and formed SharperAgent, LLC. Brian Wildermuth—who I knew from the title business for years—came in as president. This was an incredibly powerful combination. As the leaders of this company, who better could understand the industry? We had lived and breathed the real estate industry for a combined 27 years.

MP: How has SharperAgent grown since its inception? Roughly how many people are using your product?
DB: Growth is exponential and explosive—our user base has more than doubled year over year. We have more than 10,000 people using our online application. We are on track to double the number of users again this year.

MP: How do you differentiate yourselves in the real estate marketing arena?
DB: Most other companies have a core product offering, where it’s database management, transaction management, e-mail marketing or direct mail marketing. If you think of all marketing opportunities as a spectrum that goes from point A to point B, most companies fall in that spectrum somewhere. The difference with SharperAgent is that we are the spectrum. One of the things that Realtors have come to realize about SharperAgent is that we are not a technology product built by techies for Realtors; we are built by Realtors for Realtors. We’re extremely nimble. We are truly agent centric because we understand the agent perspective and their needs.

MP: Describe how SharperAgent serves as ‘the spectrum’ of marketing?
DB: The agent simply chooses a pre-designed piece from our extensive library, builds one using our templates or designs one with our desktop publishing tools. Once the piece is selected or created the agent chooses an action to take. They can print it right off a desktop printer, take it to a local printer or have us print it for them. Agents can choose to e-mail the same marketing piece to their contacts. Our e-mails don’t come across as links or attachments, they are converted to HTML and appear right in the recipients e-mail reader. You can send e-mails as you go or set them up as drip campaigns to take place in the future. The marketing material can even be posted to the agent’s Web site. You begin to see what I mean by flexibility and choice. But choice and flexibility don’t mean huge learning curves, you can do all of this with a few clicks of the mouse and it is easy. We’ve got a very strong engine but an engine isn’t enough. You need content, too. And our content is second to none in the industry. We have thousands of professionally designed pieces in the system including flyers, brochures, newsletters, tri-folds, greeting cards, just listed/sold cards and more. We go way beyond generic catch-all content like postcards reminding our clients to set their clocks back. We provide content that meets the demographic of the client. If you want to send out a postcard in October with a list of haunted houses in Denver, Colorado, we have it. It’s content that is meaningful and most likely to end up on the refrigerator at home or the corkboard at the office.

MP: Tell me what led to the creation of the SharperAgent 2.0 version?
DB: Two reasons. One, we are a consumer-centric company. With 10,000 Realtors out there, I listen to lots of feedback from those who are in the trenches battling to improve their marketing. We’re not technicians—we’re the brother in arms. 2.0 brings features and functionality that was the direct request from three years in the marketplace. For example, we used to have a choice of seven colors for fonts—now we have 70 colors. Also, with 2.0 we’ve gone from templates to templates on steroids. We’re able to appease the 75% of Realtors who liked the simplicity of what we had, but for those agents who want more advanced control over templates and more of a desktop publishing experience, they can click on Advanced Editor and have an unprecedented experience. They can now begin to resize and relocate photos and text boxes. They can add and remove text boxes and images within the template. They can even layout and design their own templates. The trick was to find the balance without alienating the basic user. The basic user can still use Easy Editor as in 1.0. But at the same time we wanted to capture the market share for those agents who are extremely comfortable with technology and wanted to take more control.

MP: What is one of the biggest business advantages of 2.0?
DB: E-mail reporting capabilities. With 2.0, whether you’re sending a single piece or a drip marketing campaign you can not only see what you sent and when you sent it, but who opened it and when they opened it down to the second. You can begin to refine the way you do marketing. Say I send out a newsletter each month. I look at my reports and notice that typically my newsletter is opened by 60% of my contacts. Then I notice that one of my newsletters was opened by 85% of my contacts. I’d better go see what I used for my e-mail subject line as it inspired more of my contacts to open the e-mail. I can apply what I learn to get more eyes on my marketing efforts in the future. I am no longer working in a black box. I can use reports to understand how to refine my efforts.

MP: What implications does 2.0 have for brokers?
DB: Brokers spend a lot of time building their brand and then they have rogue agents that are out there creating marketing materials using logos and branding that are not in line with the company vision. Brokers were getting concerned about preserving brand integrity. We decided that SharperAgent could not only provide them with a recruiting and retention tool, but a brand integrity preservation tool. In 1.0 our primary focus was selling to the individual agent. With 2.0 we are poised to help brokers who want to take their companies to the next level. We can provide customized sites that incorporate all of their existing marketing collateral and lock down the elements that brokers do not want agents to be able to manipulate. They can empower their agents to be more effective with their marketing and protect their brand all at the same time.

MP: How has 2.0 helped with custom Web development for brokers?
DB: About a year ago the demand from brokers wanting custom sites really started to grow. In 1.0 it could take 45 to 60 days to develop a brand new custom site. Now it takes a few weeks and we are ready to meet the demand. We’ve reduced custom site development time by 70%.

MP: Overall, do you think that agents are becoming more informed and comfortable with technology?
DB: The Realtors of tomorrow are moving forward and looking to build a career by utilizing technology. Not only does the consumer expect it, but it’s also an opportunity for the Realtor to differentiate themselves and have a competitive advantage. Technology gives you the ability to be the biggest and the best. For $30 a month the new agent can compete with the 20-year veteran without spending $3,000 and going through the learning curve.

MP: What are your future goals for the company?
DB: Our future goals are to continue to innovate and not innovate in the dark, but continue to keep the pulse of the market. The real estate industry is an industry that changes dramatically, not in 20-year cycles, but every few years. If we’re to stay on top of our game, we need to make sure we’re poised to reinvent ourselves and look to our users and listen to what they need so that we’re their number one source.