In the dynamic world of real estate, where every listing and every client interaction counts, efficiency and consistency are paramount. Edina Realty, the top real estate sales company in the Midwest for over two decades, has continually sought innovative ways to streamline its marketing efforts while maintaining the highest standards of quality and service. Recently, they’ve made significant strides in this endeavor with the introduction of their automated digital agent assistant called Emma, powered by Inside Real Estate’s (IRE) CORE Listing Machine (CLM) and Design Center. (More information about Emma is at the bottom of this article.)
At the heart of Edina Realty’s success lies a commitment to excellence and a deep understanding of the market they serve. With 2,300 Realtors spread across 75 offices and a remarkable track record of 18,000 transaction sides and $7.4 billion in sales volume in 2023, Edina Realty stands as a beacon of real estate professionalism in Minnesota, Western Wisconsin, and South Dakota. It takes a lot of marketing automation to produce this level of success.
I jumped on a spotlight webinar with Edina Realty to hear first-hand how they are accomplishing so much with Emma.
Webinar Panel
Ken Katschke – SVP Product at Inside Real Estate
David Schmid – VP Product Development at Edina Realty
Shannon Bodick – Marketing Manager at Edina Realty
Sara Parks – Graphic Designer at Edina Realty
The cornerstone of their latest marketing initiative is the integration of Inside Real Estate’s CORE Listing Machine and Design Center six months ago. This powerful duo offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to automate and streamline the marketing process, ensuring brand consistency and saving valuable time for agents and staff alike.
One of the key advantages of Emma is its seamless integration with Edina Realty’s existing systems and workflows. By consolidating marketing efforts within the KV CORE platform, agents can now effortlessly create, customize, and deploy marketing materials directly from their CRM. This integration not only simplifies the process, but also enhances agent satisfaction and adoption rates over other solutions that require agents to SSO into another product. Edina did retain an SSO connection for print; they are connected to Xpressdocs – a long time partner of Edina that the agents love for the combination of price, quality, and distribution functionality.
Brand consistency is another area where Edina Realty shines. With a dedicated team of marketing professionals overseeing the process, they ensure that all materials adhere to the company’s branding guidelines, from colors and fonts, to sizes and layouts. This meticulous attention to detail not only reinforces the Edina Realty brand but also instills confidence in clients and prospects alike. Generally, the Edina brand carries the Red theme, but they also support a black theme for their luxury Exceptional Properties.
The flexibility offered by the CORE Listing Machine allows for customization at scale. While automated marketing packages are generated for common listing statuses such as “Coming Soon,” “New Listing,” “Open House,” “Price Reduction,” and “Sold,” agents have the freedom to create custom materials tailored to their specific needs. This balance between automation and customization empowers agents to market their listings effectively, while maintaining a personal touch.
Edina believes that marketing support through Emma is a center of excellence for the brand. They maintain a core team at the home office, but enable individual agent support at the branch level with marketing coordinators, office administrator, and sales coordinator. At the branch level, they can log into an agent’s account and support unique marketing customization. Branches also have a library for local events.
Beyond its internal benefits, Emma serves as a powerful recruiting tool. By showcasing the company’s cutting-edge marketing capabilities, they attract top talent looking to elevate their game in the competitive real estate landscape. Additionally, the program’s integration with recruiting presentations (CORE Present) and enterprise-wide marketing efforts further enhances its value proposition.
Looking ahead, Edina Realty remains committed to innovation and excellence in real estate marketing. With plans to expand analytics capabilities and further optimize agent adoption rates, they are poised to maintain their position as a market leader for years to come. Today, overall adoption rates are 60%.
Emma represents an iconic standard in real estate marketing, combining automation, customization, and brand consistency to deliver unparalleled results. By leveraging the power of Inside Real Estate’s CORE Listing Machine and Design Center, they have unlocked new levels of efficiency and effectiveness, setting a new standard for the industry. A significant issue with marketing centers industry-wide is loading and programming the marketing materials. The bulk of this work can be performed by the marketing staff at the branches or the home office, but some automated templates need to be programmed by the design team at IRE. Edina reports that turn around is a day or two for rush orders, and always less than 2 weeks.
There is a paradigm shift emerging in real estate. For decades, brokerage firms would not partner with tech vendors who were providing services to strong competitors. The classic example of that was Booj, who would only offer their product to one, non-franchise firm in any market. Today, firms are realizing that being differentiated with your tech vendor is less important than the product features and functionality. Success comes from engaging with the product, getting staff buy in, and modifying the tools to reflect your business systems and brand. There are 400,000 users on KV Core today, but each broker can really make it their own. The old adage is true, skills are not measured by the tools you have, it’s how you use them.
A few last notes about Edina that I could not easily squeeze into this article. They recognize that 5% of consumers in their market are Hispanic. In 2024 and beyond, look to expand marketing in Spanish. The marketing team really loves the ability to unpublish certain content – like seasonal content in their libraries.
About Emma
Emma Rovick was the founder of Edina Realty. Please take a moment to read her story, and celebrate another great Women of America whose success came from real estate.
If you want to listen to the full webinar – visit this link.
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