[January 23, 2007]

Sage Software Announces Real Estate CRM Product Available

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Sage Software (News - Alert) has announced a marketing partnership with Real Estate Promoter, a vendor of search engine marketing technology and lead capturing services, to offer real estate professionals the ACT! by Sage Premium for Real Estate contact and customer management product with Real Estate Promoter's online lead conversion services.

The products, now being offered together as a discounted bundle by Real Estate Promoter, are described by Sage officials as able to "enable higher volume online lead capturing and efficient sales opportunity management for real estate agents and brokers."

"Whether in fast or slow markets, real estate agents need easy access to customer information as well as support to efficiently find leads and turn them into sales," said Joe Bergera, ACT! senior vice president and general manager.

Real Estate Promoter's search engine marketing and lead capturing services are designed to generate Web site placement and qualified traffic via the top 20 search portals including Yahoo, Google (News - Alert) and MSN, where evidently one finds "highly-targeted, early-market home buyer and seller leads for agents."

Real Estate Promoter also offers Hybrid Website services that allow agents to promote themselves in their local marketplace and market their services online.

Visitor-to-lead conversion rates on the Real Estate Promoter Hybrid Websites range from 12 to 18 percent, according to the company's own estimates.

Earlier this month Sage announced that Design North, Inc., a brand strategy and design firm, adopted ACT! by Sage Premium for Workgroups to "manage its ongoing direct marketing campaigns and provide employees with historical information regarding key contacts and customer relationships," according to Sage officials.

Design North officials are hoping that automating marketing activities such as targeted mailings and follow-up activity scheduling can cut operational time from several hours to a few minutes each.

Lee Sucharda, president, Design North, said after a marketing activity is entered in ACT!, "follow-up activities are automatically scheduled for each of our team members ensuring that we are communicating with clients and prospects on a regular basis."

Prior to implementing ACT!, Design North’s client and prospect information was stored in an outdated database and miscellaneous employee files.

Last fall Sage announced the acquisition of intellectual property from VerticalFalls Software, Inc., a financial services industry solution provider based in Reston, Virginia, that will enable Sage Software to deliver what company officials are calling "a compliance and document tracking" product based on its ACT! by Sage product.

The new offering will be engineered to "meet the specialized needs of financial services organizations," company officials say.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market, as well as an overview on the future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO EAST, January 23–26, 2007. See you in sunny Ft. Lauderdale!