By: Stephen Joos
HouseFront brought the industry’s first property search service to SMS (Text messaging) earlier this year giving users access to over 100 million properties all on their cell phone. Last week, HouseFront launched HouseAds, our real estate advertising program giving real estate professionals the ability to advertise on text messages for the first time.
Text messaging is just making its entrance in the real estate market, but in other arenas, it is a formidable force. Premium SMS revenues (Sweepstakes, Contests, and Ringtones) generated $273 million in the first quarter of 2007 according to Telephia.
Mobile marketing is transitioning from a ‘soda pop’ entertainment factor to an efficient and effective method of communicating with customers. In a survey by Airwide Solutions, 75 percent of marketers reported mobile marketing response rates over 5 percent. 27 percent said they saw purchase rates of over 5 percent in campaigns.
SMS advertising with HouseAds consists of a 2-line message to the user along with a phone number.
Users can press ‘Send’ and their phone will call the number on the text message, instantly connecting an interested party to you. HouseAds utilizes a bidding model forgoing the old fashioned advertising model of contracts and monthly fees. Advertisers can geo-target their SMS ads by City, State, Zip, an Individual Property, or the Entire nation.
HouseAds SMS advertising can be used in multiple ways:
- Mortgage brokers can advertise their rates and promotions to users that are in the real estate market.
- Real Estate agents can utilize SMS advertising to look for sellers with a localized campaign (Looking to put this house on the market, Call Pat), or for buyers by advertising on properties that they are selling (I.E. To Schedule a showing, Call Pat)
- Anyone looking to connect with buyers and sellers can use HouseAds SMS marketing to effectively drive calls to their business. For example a cleaning service could advertise (Dirty House? We can clean it) with users one click away from contacting them.
With 236 million US wireless subscribers in 2006, and 18.7 billion text messages sent in the month of December 2006, now is the time to give mobile marketing for the real estate professional a good look.
More info on HouseAds SMS Advertising
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