HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
FEATURED ARTICLE
as proximity marketing and mobile marketing become more accessible. Mail as a flat paper medium certainly has a shelf life but as long as the USPS is delivering mail it will exist in some format.” Copley explains that “your marketing should be a mutual reflection of your company and your prospective customer. That being said, even for tech companies, digital will not completely replace analog. If your customer responds well to mail, you need a strong direct mail campaign. If your customer drives around looking for property, signs are effective. And many buyers want to see a property before they buy, so the open house isn’t going anywhere. Many of these analog experiences will become seamless extensions of digital experiences, and vice versa.” The Alien Dreadnought There’s no doubt that the data revolution is about to change the world, as much as the smartphone and more. But the impact of new technologies is always complex and in the case of AI there are looming issues such as privacy, regulation, and security. But the biggest question of all, and surely the most visible, will be the jobs impact. Looking ahead, Tesla’s Elon Musk made an interesting remark last October in his company’s third-quarter earnings call. According to the transcript posted by Seeking Alpha, his goal in the future is to create an “alien dreadnought.”
Consumers, of course, are also AI drivers. If new technologies mean less paperwork and fewer hassles, if they mean lower costs — that’s great, bring it on. “As a customer I would love to get a call from my mortgage banker letting me know that without a shadow of a doubt I have enough equity in my home to get rid of my mortgage insurance (MI) or that based on my current FICO score I can get a better loan,” said Kutsishin of Sales Boomerang. “Or even more importantly, I would forever be grateful to the LO that calls me and tells me I am now qualified for the loan that I was denied for a few months earlier.” Will Traditional Technologies Survive? In fiscal year 2016 the Postal Service distributed almost 81 billion pieces of standard mail, what’s generally known as advertising mail. As it turns out, the largest users of direct mail are financial firms such as banks and credit unions. Speaking to eMarketer, Bob Dixon, Director of Product Technology Innovation for the Postal Service explains that
he’s not worried about the future of the mailbox.
“Mail is still the marketing channel with the highest response rate,” he said. “Without consumers receiving the mail, there is a $900 billion industry that ceases to exist.” If you think about it, mail is a “technology” and so are such things as real estate signs and open houses. So what happens to such traditional marketing approaches in the AI era? “These mediums will always be utilized in some fashion but they must become dynamic,” said Bartz of Monster Lead Group. “A real estate sign in the future may launch a virtual tour on your phone just by having a particular app, or in the vein of predictive analytics your phone may actually know you are looking for a home, the criteria for that home and then alert you when you pass a home with a sign.
“Open houses will still be useful,” he continued, “but the way they are marketed may significantly change
JUNE 2017
ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS • P8
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter