After 14 years in leadership functions developing and servicing proprietary credit card programs for national and regional retailers, I was offered an extraordinary position—to become the Corporate Vice President of Marketing for a strong, regional real estate firm, DeWolfe New England.
At the time, it was the only publicly traded real estate company and had home buying, home selling, mortgage, insurance and corporate relocation divisions—all owned and operated. The company had grown to 48 office locations operating in the higher end markets of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut with 1000 agents.
DeWolfe was growing—but not at a rate that was acceptable to senior management and to the board of directors. Specifically, the real estate division was performing well, but the other divisions were not experiencing the same level of growth. The agents as independent contractors were not proactively offering their clients the other DeWolfe services.
DeWolfe had a challenge—how to grow the other businesses as well as the real estate division. There had been prior marketing leaders with direct real estate experience, but most focused on marketing the agent and the real estate division, and did not have success in building the other business units. An additional challenge was the consumers perception of the real estate industry. There was an overall dissatisfaction rate north of 75%—and it had been that way for years. The public just did not trust real estate companies or their agents. There was no perceived differentiation in the industry—when asked, consumers stated that the only difference they knew was one of brand affiliation via the logo. With no brand differentiation and a distrust of the industry, the result was pressure on pricing. By 1996, what had been the standard of a 7% commission rate on the sale of a property had dropped to a national average of 5.7% - and it was continuing to decline.
I joined and developed a new brand strategy—one that focused on the consumer. Connecting with the consumer on an emotional level was the cornerstone of our brand position—completely unique to the industry. We changed the public name to DEWOLFE (in support of a growth strategy beyond New England) and marketed our USP of multiple services with the tagline ONE STOP AND YOU’RE HOME. The campaign was supported by short stories designed to inform the public of all of our services, presented in a visual format that was completely singular.
It is fair to say that the first 2 years in the company were spent overcoming the objections of our internal audience, who had for years been told by “leading industry experts” that the agent needed to be the focus of all advertising and marketing. Our approach was opposite of all that they had been taught, but critical to counteract the reputation with the public.
In addition to our USP, we also shifted our tactics, and reallocated financial resources away from unproductive media. Over time, we added brand TV spots, direct mail, catalogs and event marketing to the mix, as well as a very robust website and digital marketing. Our websites included the first integration of the 11 MLS’s in our markets, the first display of property addresses, maps and directions, the first online mortgage application (through Fannie Mae) and many other features.
In 2000, we launched full motion video, a revolutionary online tool that provided our website users with complete external and internal videos of the properties we offered for sale. In the first 18 months of this offering, we filmed over 10,000 homes. Many thought that this was not prudent, as most consumers did not have broadband in their homes. However, we knew that our site traffic was strongest Mondays and Fridays—from people accessing our site from their work desktops. For those who were accessing our sites from other than broadband, we provided still images of our homes. Our site was so successful that we had more traffic than the national real estate site, Realtor.com.
In time, we engaged the services of Forbes Consulting Group to do qualitative research for our company. Their findings validated our USP. For those clients who used more than one of our services, our overall satisfaction scores increased. The more services they used, the higher the scores. And, we had changed the public perception of DeWolfe as a real estate company to one that offered all of the homeownership services.
Those who engaged DeWolfe to sell their homes received the benefit of state-of-the art presentation tools, as well as a company USP designed to attract buyers. Our agents had consumers approach them to understand our offerings, which resulted in the number of transactions per agent double the national and local average. And, our agents became advocates of our other services without additional incentives—RESPA was respected and in tact.
Our growth was both organic and through many acquisitions of smaller firms throughout New England. The marketing of DeWolfe—and all of the tools available to our agents—was a tremendous advantage with regards to the integration of these organizations. With rare exception, the employees and agents of the other firms considered the sale to DeWolfe to be a great advantage, and resulted in very high agent retention.
In 2002, DeWolfe was sold to NRT, Inc. At the time of the sale, we had grown to 150 offices and 3000 agents, and had expanded into Maine and Rhode Island. Our mortgage and insurance businesses had grown both in volume and as a percent to total business. Our overall (top line business) increased from $2.9 billion to $8.8 billion—and our rate of commission held steady while the national rate declined to 5.2%.
Throughout all of the changes—the shift in USP, the initial internal objections, the change in media tactics, and the growth into new markets—I was part of an extraordinary team that worked together to achieve our company objectives. It was at DeWolfe that I had what would later become a commonplace relationship—Marketing & IT joining forces to present new tools and media to the public, as well as the internal audience. I had a tremendous marketing team—one that was talented, worked hard and enjoyed contributing to the success of the company. And, I was able to engage with an advertising firm that was willing to go beyond the typical and provide us with exceptional brand work.
DEWOLFE DIRECT
In 2000, the COO of DeWolfe created a select group of 4 people to develop a new business model, and I was honored to be included in the group. The goal was to enter a new market with the purpose of offering a completely new residential real estate model to the public. If successful, this model would be the basis for growth outside of the New England market. As a team, we developed a model that focused on providing exceptional service and the use of a proprietary technology platform tracking all phases of the home buying and home selling process for all services offered. Our marketing included the tagline THE HOME REVOLUTION and included expanded digital marketing utilizing a unique relationship with AOL, banner advertising, email marketing and enhanced features on the DeWolfe Direct website. The fee structure was altered, and real estate agents were hired as employees instead of independent contractors. The division—DeWolfe Direct—was launched on Cape Cod in November of 2001.
10 months after the launch, it was announced that NRT would acquire The DeWolfe Companies, including DeWolfe Direct.