The full story
MRI Real Estate Software (formally Rockend) is one of Australia’s leading property management software companies. At the forefront of real estate management systems for 40 years, today approximately 60% of all Australian rental properties, and 40% of strata lots, are managed using MRI software.
The real estate industry faces disruption from a number of quarters, and MRI is no exception. Yet MRI’s business vision remains unaltered: to create new value for real estate professionals.
And under the direction of Catherine Vissiere, Head of Marketing at MRI, the company is delivering a marketing strategy built on digital and social foundations designed to support business growth, extend and reposition the MRI brand, and nurture closer engagement with property managers.
As she points out, “We’re about helping real estate agents do less of the routine ‘rinse-and-repeat’ work that many remain shackled to, and more of the added-value selling, marketing and relationship management they joined the industry to do. Property managers often struggle to do this. Our role is to help them reset their value proposition. And in this disruptive market, we’re using technology to drive engagement, manage outcomes and measure program performance.”
Digivizer is a partner who strives to deliver greater customer value and ROI, continuously delivering innovation and all within a transparent, real-time data-driven platform.
The importance of data in strategy
Data defines MRI’s marketing. The company uses Digivizer to manage the performance of its digital marketing programs and works with Digivizer’s agency services team on content development, creative, community management and paid media management.
Catherine Vissiere again: “I first worked with Digivizer during my time at Microsoft, and decided to bring them on-board at Rockend as a strategic partner. I had seen first-hand the power of their innovative digital analytics platform and their pursuit of continuous, insights-driven programs that delivery growth. They are a company that is leading the digital marketing industry in their pursuit of innovation, working closely with their customers in generating value.”
Creating new value and empathy with property managers
MRI and Digivizer collaborate to create, publish, manage and monitor content that aligns this strategy for growth and leadership with the needs of the property managers who are MRI’s target audience.
MRI has built a new community around property managers, called Property Rockstars, migrating them from older solutions to a new cloud-based solution, and identifying and attracting new users. The intent is to deliver helpful, relevant content, showing a deep understanding and empathy for the property manager – and the data shows it’s working: MRI’s share of voice on social against competitors grew by 75%, with its nearest competitor at 14%.
People are talking about the company, and engaging with the brand more than ever. Followers have grown 39-40% growth across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. The Property RockStar community has over 1,500 property managers who share content and support with each other. Engagement is up by 65% . And video views have increased 13 times to over 624,000 views.
What’s more, the company can compare performance across all these platforms, and compare organic performance with paid: paid leads have more than tripled, with a 74% reduction in cost-per-lead, and a click-through-rate that is more than double Google benchmarks.
“We want to own new debates in an increasingly complex and competitive space, and share these discussions in context with our customers,” says Catherine. “They increasingly rely on us for expertise and insights – for example, sharing insights into how to manage difficult tenants or landlords, or providing support when property managers witness domestic violence in homes they manage. We want to form meaningful and sustainable relationships with them.”
The plan is built around a balanced mix of organic and paid media activity. Integral to both is identifying and working with advocates, communicating product updates, understanding and acting on feedback, and being clear about the content required to delight users and customers.
“One advantage with Digivizer is being able to connect our Google spend (which Digivizer manages) and Digivizer, meaning we can manage and track channel performance in paid search alongside social, in real-time,” says Catherine.
Rebuilding brand
MRI underwent a substantial rebrand, launching new online communities and merging others. Digivizer was instrumental in helping MRI with that work, and the ongoing management of overall channel growth, influencer and super-fan tracking and community engagement capabilities.
“Our partnership with Digivizer gives me the confidence of knowing precisely what content is working for us, why, and what can we do more of. We share a similar culture of experimentation which allows us to jointly innovate, and continuously look for improvement of the performance of our social communities, using Digivizer’s transparent, real-time, data-driven platform,” said Catherine.
“Overall we believe we are delivering helpful, relevant content, showing a deep understanding and empathy for the Property Manager which is working for us.”