Engel & Völkers, a luxury brand that operates in dozens of countries around the world, announced Friday the launch of its new high-tech marketing platform for all of its American agents.
The company is calling the new tool MaX, and in a statement described it as “a proprietary business intelligence platform that acts as a personal marketing strategist for each real estate advisor in the brand’s Americas network.” The platform specifically allows agents to build campaigns in minutes, then offers guidance on which medium to focus on. For example, the system will indicate whether an agent should focus on print marketing, social media, portals, mailers or other media.
Anthony Hitt
Engel & Völkers Americas refers to its agents as “advisors,” and in a statement President and CEO Anthony Hitt explained “marketing is an essential part of every advisor’s business.”
“However, with so many different marketing tools, platforms and channels, it can be difficult to know which one will work best for any given advisor, listing any given home, in any given market,” Hitt continued. “MaX has turned a process that often felt arbitrary or based on chance into a science. Our advisors now have access to the data-backed intelligence they need to build the most effective marketing plans for their brand and the individual listings they represent.”
When they begin using the platform, Engel & Völkers advisors will answer a short series of questions about their market, target clientele and listings. The MaX system them analyzes “millions of data points on market information, home sales data, demographic trends, and consumer behavior,” the statement explains. The system can then use that data to create a unique marketing campaign for potentially every property in the U.S.
The platform can be used to market properties or to target buyers.
“We’re thrilled to unleash this power to our network, and in doing so, help to further elevate their businesses,” Hitt added.
MaX is integrated as an app in Engel & Völkers’ proprietary technology suite, World IPS. The company’s advisors do not have to pay anything to use MaX.
Better, smarter marketing platforms have been a popular and growing frontier in the real estate world in recent years. Last month, for example, Sotheby’s International Realty — which like Engel & Völkers leans toward the higher end of price spectrum — launched its own platform, which it calls Design Vault. In other cases, tech startups such as Curaytor have built custom platforms that agents from any company can use.
The growth of these platforms is perhaps no surprise, given that some in the industry have argued top agents will spend far more than their peers on marketing. In other words, marketing remains a pivotal part of the real estate experience, particularly for high-performing agents.
In Engel & Völkers case, the company’s own tech team built MaX, and the platform uses, among other things, data the company collected by doing its own studies.
Katelyn Castellano
According to Katelyn Castellano, Engel & Völkers’ senior vice president of marketing, that data is a key part of the platform.
“In analyzing a proprietary blend of both internal and external data points,” Castellano said, “MaX determines the most influential marketing strategy for every advisor in every market based on their goals, home price points and their targeted audience and provides education to help them execute on it.”
