Newzips

After seeing first hand that homeowners who want to know the value of their homes are excellent prospects for real estate agents, this client envisioned a better system for capturing and following up on these leads. Metrix Systems brought his vision to life, completing ground-up development of a platform that lets Realtors easily create and manage their own home valuation websites—complete with managed ad campaigns and automated follow-ups.

NewZips is a home valuation website platform that makes it easy for real estate agents to capture and follow up on high-quality leads of potential home sellers in their areas.

Challenge

In 2013 NewZips’ CEO, Victor Poladian, who is also a Realtor, saw that one of the best ways to get new real estate listings for his own agency was by purchasing leads from an online home valuation company. In his experience, homeowners who want to know the value of their homes had proven to be excellent prospects. However, at $70 to $80 per lead, his lead acquisition fees were both unpredictable and high.

NewZips grew out of Victor’s conviction that there must be a better—and less expensive—way to get these leads. Instead of paying for each lead, Victor wanted to be able to affordably generate them himself. Envisioning a platform where a real estate agent could click a few buttons to quickly set up their own home valuation website and then use a fully managed Google AdWords program to drive homeowners there, he started sketching and outlining his ideas.

Solution

Once Victor had a clear idea of what he wanted to create he interviewed four development companies…and chose Metrix Systems. “I went with Metrix Systems because the initial meeting went so smoothly,” Victor explains. “I felt they understood where I was coming from. Plus, they said that the timing was great. They were about to finish a few projects, and would have some time to focus exclusively on NewZips.”

Victor was asked to create some story boards illustrating what he wanted, and then the team reconvened for a one-day meeting. “They took my detailed story boards and examples and ran with it,” Victor recalls. “The Metrix Systems team did a really good job of bringing my story boards to life. They gave me exactly what I wanted, and they did it in less than two-and-a-half months. The entire process was a piece of cake!”

Result

Metrix Systems built the entire NewZips.com platform from the ground up. Some of the features of NewZips that participants appreciate most include:

• Multiple options for easy landing page customization (no programming skills necessary)

• Immediate lead notifications

• Ability to co-brand your site with a lender

• Robust CRM system backend

• Automatic auto-responders

• Multiple agents can be associated with one account

• Customizable drip email campaigns

• And more...

As Victor discovered, when Metrix Systems commits to a project, their involvement continues far beyond the initial launch.

“When we launched the Beta site,” Victor notes, “we brought on 50 agents and got a lot of support tickets about things we hadn’t thought of. The MetrixSystems team came through, quickly addressing each one.”

This support is ongoing, as Metrix Systems continues to address support tickets and help roll out new features over time. For new features, Victor says, “I’ll sketch out what I’m looking for and they’ll take my idea, simplify it, make it even better than how I explained it, and make it work.”

All in all, the NewZips platform is a success. “Our customers love NewZips!” Victor states. “They invest $12,000 to $24,000 per year and get an ROI that’s five or ten times their investment. As a result we have a 62% retention rate, which is very high in the industry, and many clients who have been with us since day one back in 2013.”