Sept. 19, 2007 –Saratoga, Calif. – Alain Pinel Realtors (APR) has formed an exclusive, online partnership with Trulia.com, the first of its kind in the United States. This alliance is in-step with APR’s tradition of marketing leadership through technology, announced President and COO Larry Knapp.
According to Trulia representatives, the affiliation with APR is likely the first of many such relationships Trulia hopes to form in numerous markets across the country, with mid and large-scale brokerage firms specializing in residential real estate sales.
A residential real estate services firm, Alain Pinel Realtors is one of the largest, privately-held companies of its kind in the United States with 26 Northern California locations, some 1,300 real estate agents and annual sales volume of approximately $7 billion. APR was one of the first real estate companies in the country to have a website when apr.com was launched in late 1994.
APR & Trulia
With the Trulia commitment, Alain Pinel Realtors has taken online residential real estate marketing to the next level with a corporate-sponsored and supported, online advertising vehicle that is the first of its kind. Since Trulia’s inception, individual real estate agents have posted their listings on trulia.com and paid for enhancements to their postings.
Alain Pinel Realtors and Trulia have agreed to a new format of individual marketing and branding that features personalized banner advertisements in the sidebar of Trulia’s web pages, as well as highlighting all of APR agents’ listings.
By striking a company-wide pact with Trulia in which APR agents can opt in and out of using the online marketing service, Alain Pinel Realtors is the first company to organize and sponsor the marketing of homes for sale online and to offer the service to all of its sales professionals. By doing so and because of the promised volume of business to Trulia, the realty firm’s agents receive a significant discount for online marketing with Trulia.
How it Works
When a prospective homebuyer types a city into Trulia’s search field, APR listings appear in the “Featured Listings” section at the top of the page, and APR agent banner ads appear in the right sidebar of the webpage. The agents that opt-in to the program are divided equally and then rotated evenly through Trulia’s website, based on the cities that they purchased.
Tracking, Measurement and Results
Officially launched in early August, about 800 APR sales professionals signed up to advertise themselves on Trulia’s website. To help agents track their Trulia campaigns, APR provides agents a subscription to VisiStat™. VisiStat™ is an effective, real-time viewer tracking service allowing agents to maximize and visualize their marketing efforts. Important features include ad campaign management, keyword analysis, comprehensive, geographic mapping capability and interactive visitor reports. By tracking online activity and marketing results through VisiStat™, the benefit to agents and their clients is significant; agent/advertisers are able to track the effectiveness of their marketing investments and directly connect to interested home buyers or their representatives.
The combined tools for promoting homes for sale (listings) and tracking have produced results. Homes that are featured and listed on Trulia’s website increase visitors to agent listings by 200-to-400 percent, according to Trulia’s Manager of Strategic Partnerships, Alejandro Foung. Moreover, featured homes that are clicked on by visiting consumers convert to sales 50 percent more often, based on Trulia’s experience with the real estate industry.
Agent Discounts
Agents pay for their Trulia banner advertisements on a per-impression basis, while APR covers the cost of placing the agents’ listings onto trulia.com. APR also pays for the VisiStat™ service and offers corporate marketing-coordination support at no cost to its agents. APR agents receive a significant discount on Trulia’s posted rates.
APR acquired a sizable number of total impressions from Trulia for the first year and set maximum budgets for each city in which APR agents work. With nine Northern California counties being served by APR agents, the online marketing covers many regional cities. Total cost per city is determined by page views for that city. For example, an individual agent may pay more for a banner ad in Berkeley with 11,000 page views, versus an ad on the Capitola listing page, which may only get 100 page views.
About Alain Pinel Realtors
Founded by Paul Hulme in 1990, Alain Pinel Realtors has 26 prestigious and luxurious residential real estate offices in Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. For the second consecutive year, Alain Pinel Realtors was voted by San Jose Mercury News readers as the Best Full-Service Broker and as the Best Broker for Luxury Homes. Alain Pinel is ranked among the top 10 largest real estate firms nationally with 2006 sales volume of $6.71 billion and an average sales price per transaction side of $1.14 million. Alain Pinel Realtors is a founding member of Luxury Portfolio, an operating unit of The Leading Real Estate Companies of the World (formerly RELO). APR has a joint venture partnership in the mortgage lending institution, Private Mortgage Advisors, which is an affiliate of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. For a complete listing of Alain Pinel Realtors offices, services and agents, please visit our website at apr.com or call 408-741-1111.
