Category Archives: Chappaqua

Touch me, feel me? | Cross River NY Real Estate

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You obsess on product, tweaking it to perfection.

You slave over your service, honing it to deliver a razor-sharp slice of delight.

You market your goods, crafting the most inviting offer.

You think you’ve nailed the customer experience.

Not so fast, Timmy.

No nutritional value

Jeff Smisek, United Airlines’ CEO, spoke at me from the screen. He labored on about the improvements his airline is undertaking just for me.

It was all talk.

Gate 16 had one electrical outlet — a droplet for the dozens of thirsty travelers in need of juice. Boarding was painfully slow. The cabin reeked of locker room sweat and mildew.

The onboard service ran out of real food by the time they reached my row. I was offered Pringles. I passed. They had the same nutritional value as the scuzz caked onto my seat.

The week prior I was on a Virgin flight. It was heaven. This week, I was in hell.

Virgin created heaven by attending to the simple things. Things they know turn us on. Things attainable by United — or any airline — if they reached high enough.

Brand vibes

Ever walk into a place and it just feels wrong? Think Rite Aid. Radio Shack. Payless Shoes. Toys R Us. Denny’s.

Each of these establishments offers the things you’ve entered to acquire. Yet something about the vibe is off. The way things are laid out or designed or the aura the store projects just doesn’t play to your sensibilities. Or to your desire to feel special as their customer.

Instead, you feel like a number. Part of a faceless herd.

Ever go somewhere you never wanted to leave? We all have. These are the places that attend to those little things that make us feel special. The details add up.

For example:

Whole Foods. You shop for more than food at this grocery store. You go to rediscover sustenance. Meet new brands. Local purveyors. Secure the finest ingredients. You leave with items that were never on your list.

Car2Go. It’s transportation, environmental commitment and personal convenience. Avis tried harder for 66 years. Car2Go is trying a lot harder. And they’re winning loyal fans wherever they go. They’ve simplified process and price and made it easy to be environmentally responsible. That feels good.

Four Seasons. Enter the front door. Serenity. Their service bar is high. And it’s consistent. You expect to feel good during your stay, and you leave happy.

Virgin. Their presence is an oasis in the middle of a harsh airport desert. Calm. Convenient. Designed for modern life. People wait at their gates to pass the time until their United flights board. Soaking up the good vibe.

We respond to the simple things these brands do. Time and time again.

Love your customer

Everyone wants unabashed loyalty from their customers. To get that, you’ve got love them in lots of little ways.

Some examples come to mind immediately:

Voice mail. You have an ambiguous, sterile or long message with endless menu options. Fix that. People call you because they want to speak to a person and get information. Make it easy. Personable. And to the point. No one wants to call a menu system so remove it if you can. A friendly, helpful voice that greets people every time and provides them the information or the direct line they need right away is a small thing that goes a long way to getting them to call you again.

Website. Busy websites stress visitors. The more choices, options, images and elements you place on a page, the more likely it is users will bounce or get frustrated trying to find the thing they came to the site for. I know about the pressure you’re under to place everything on the home page. Resist it. The simpler, cleaner and more user-focused the site its, the more of a calm, engaging and clear vibe it gives off. You can scream at the user, or whisper gently. Choose wisely.

Office space. Brokers: Spend a few grand sprucing up your office. Pop a coat of fresh color on the wall. Here’s another idea: Design some of your retail space like rooms in a home. A den. A Finished basement. A bedroom. A man cave. This could be a cool, feel-good environment for agents to meet with clients. Especially if these rooms are staged beautifully. Maybe a local furniture store or decorator could curate and design in exchange for free advertising. Make them want to come for a visit.

Aftercare. None of us do enough to service people post-sale. Asking customers for referrals or sending them holiday cards is OK. That’s touching them. But in a creepy sort of way. People yearn for something more meaningful than a touch. They yearn for value. Relevance. Starbucks sends me a coupon for a free drink on my birthday. That matters more to me than a Hallmark card. Conjure up something more meaningful than a turn your clock back this Sunday reminder. There are a million ideas here — too many for me to list.

Fun. Enjoyment. Happiness.

At Ikea, a color-coded path eases the ordeal of navigating thousands of products. Creatively orienting their goods inspires shoppers. Ikea makes shopping fun, which makes their customers feel good in the process. It’s the simple, singular difference between them and every other furniture manufacturer.

You will return.

Fun baked into functionality. Enjoyment at the beginning of the experience. Happiness when it concludes.

Here’s the thing to consider: The average customer in real estate doesn’t experience fun during the process. It’s clear why. Real estate is stressful. But so is flying and buying furniture — and Virgin and Ikea have taken aim right at that stress, resulting in amazing customer experiences.

While you ultimately can’t extract all the stress from the real estate transaction, you can address the simple things around it that determine how that stress is felt.

You feel me?

via inman.com

Why Small Business Is Making a Mess of Social Media | Cross River Real Estate

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Small business social media marketing fails to provide good ROI. Pic by davidz

“Does your small business have a social media marketing strategy that takes time and effort but fails to deliver a positive ROI (Return on Investment)?” Most small business Internet marketing campaigns are in the same boat!

If your business puts more time, effort and money into its social media than the returns warrant, then it’s time to take stock. Don’t be afraid to make bold changes regarding social media strategy.

Like any business activity, social marketing needs to provide some sort of return – there’s little point in wasting resources on it simply because that’s what everyone else is doing. This article will contrast the growth in social media with its poor returns, and discuss how you can get more for less from your Internet marketing budget.

Business & social media

According to a recent report by email marketing company Vertical Response, who surveyed 500 small businesses:

  • 90% of small businesses are on FaceBook
  • 70% are on Twitter
  • More than half have a blog
  • 25% spend 6- 10 hours a week on social media
  • One third of small business owners and managers wish they could spend less time on social media

The stats also indicate that the amount of time spent using social media is increasing each year. And, four times as many small businesses have increased their social marketing budget – as opposed to those who decreased it.

Doesn’t something strike you as odd about these figures? Businesses are increasing their engagement and spend on social media, while wishing they could do the opposite (spend less time on social media).

The only time any business owners wants to do something less, is when (s)he doesn’t feel like it is bringing in a tangible return.

So why is everyone jumping on the social media bandwagon?

I believe it is because:

Social media marketing is driven by small businesses’ fear of losing competitiveness.

Yes, building social influence is important, but the process of building social influence is not trivial. In addition, building social influence is not the core competency of small businesses, so the amount of effort that is wasted on ineffective Internet marketing is very high.

Ultimately, a poorly implemented and ineffective social marketing strategy is a waste of time and money.

Small business social media returns

Many small businesses are scared of losing competitiveness if they aren’t well represented on the popular social networks like FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. So they invest time and effort (and a bit of money) to grow their “social influence“.

To put this into perspective, according to the latest research report by Forrester:

“Social tactics are not meaningful sales drivers”

They arrived at this conclusion after analyzing the primary sales drivers for eCommerce and found that less than 1% was driven by social media.

Social media evangelists will point to the fact that social media offers many indirect and intangible benefits, and they are absolutely correct. But 1%, really?

Modifying your small business marketing strategy

I am not advocating that small business dumps social media marketing. But, I think someone has to put their hand up and ask why everyone is diverting resources into something that hasn’t been shown to provide great returns across the board for everyone (of course, there are plenty of individual examples of social media marketing success).

Given that the majority of all Internet traffic still originates with search and that mobile will outstrip PC Internet access in the next year or so, my advice for small businesses with limited budgets and resources for Internet marketing is to do the following:

  • Focus on building a high quality content based Web presence (i.e. a blog, whitepapers, video, podcasts, etc)
  • Integrate social media into your content creation (i.e. share buttons, tweet about new posts or interesting facts)
  • Ensure your content is accessible using responsive Web design

In other words, make your content a platform from which to engage socially and on whatever device your customers choose to browse with. It’s the content, the message, that will drive your social influence.

By focusing on creating high quality content, not only will you build a sustained source of high quality organic traffic from the search engines, you will also be in a position to build authority and trust that leads to social influence.

Once you have social influence, you are able to leverage it to drive business growth and sales.

Does your company have a successful social marketing strategy? What do you do that makes it more successful than other companies? Alternatively, do you feel like you are floundering when it comes to Internet marketing and social media? Share your marketing tips, ideas and experiences in the comments.

via socialmediatoday.com

The Fiscal Cliff’s Threat to National Security | Cross River Homes

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Both candidates for president of the United States are clearly mindful of the potential for a razor-close election next week. Mitt Romney has been talking more about his bipartisan credentials as governor of Massachusetts while President Barack Obama, out of the blue, said the automatic spending cuts set to take effect early next year “will not happen.”

This is contrary to many clear public statements from the president over the past year. Obama has repeatedly vowed to veto any legislation that would repeal the spending cuts if the deal does not include tax hikes on the wealthy.

But the president recently doubled down on his statement from the foreign policy presidential debate after his advisers tried to walk it back. Obama told the Des Moines Register, “I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain…which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the cost of health programs.”

[See a collection of political cartoons on the 2012 campaign.]

Many in Washington, including Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio, had long ago written off the likelihood of any sort of major deal. But there have been groups of policymakers meeting to craft the outlines of any-sized bargain to avert the impending fiscal cliff. In the Senate, a bipartisan group of eight senators led by Republican Lamar Alexander of Texas and Democrat Michael Bennet of Colorado has been talking about potential frameworks for a deal targeting up to $4 trillion in debt reduction over the next decade.

One popular point of departure has been the Bowles-Simpson report, recently touted by Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chris Van Hollen Maryland and Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona. One of the key tenets of their plan is a tax reform program that would lower rates while closing loopholes, thereby generating new revenues from the top income brackets while stimulating economic growth.

Despite this momentum for a deal, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, recently rejected this approach. He instead has called for tax rates upon the top two income brackets to be frozen in place after the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. This approach—coupled with his plan to increase capital gains taxes—is likely to be unwelcome among Republicans.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Congress.]

If Schumer’s position is the default Democratic starting point in negotiations, prospects for a deal look bleak. Speaker Boehner is not optimistic, recently calling a lame-duck grand bargain “difficult” and “probably not appropriate” given the large amount of retiring members who would have a disproportionate sway on the future of the country.

All of this signals that any solution to the fiscal cliff would be complicated. Congress has been dealing with the same set of problems since the near-government shutdown in the spring of 2011. The reality is that even if Congress were to pull off a miracle deal, the military is still largely on the hook for more spending cuts. As Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin has proposed, defense dollars will surely contribute yet again to any new compromise.

[See a collection of political cartoons on defense spending.]

What would prolong the damage is a messy muddle through the fiscal cliff, not fully addressing it or not going forward with it. If Congress, say, tries to buy Washington extra time to negotiate a bigger deal, the economy will linger under uncertainty and consumers and business will continue to show they lack confidence. Punting on the fiscal cliff only defers problems. It does not address the fundamentals of the size, role, and scope of federal spending and debt accumulation.

Worse yet is the possibility that elected officials could choose to deliberately go over the fiscal cliff and then try to patch up the damage after the fact. This would be especially problematic for the defense budget as those in uniform; defense civilians; and shipbuilding, aerospace, and defense manufacturers would all be affected; costs for programs would rise anyway and not save any money; and some projects deferred would become projects canceled regardless of action taken later.

A common denominator in all these scenarios is that averting the fiscal cliff does not mean that things would automatically improve. The only silver bullet remains a comprehensive debt reduction deal.

via usnews.com

The Real Estate Book updates marketing products website | Chappaqua Real Estate

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Real estate marketing platform The Real Estate Book has updated its online marketing tool, trebstore.com, to allow agents and brokers to target the brochures, postcards and flyers they create on the site to their contacts’ demographic characteristics and locations.

The three-year-old marketing hub, powered by communications company R.R. Donnelley and Sons Inc., allows users to access their listing photos and data from RealEstateBook.com, which has 1.5 million listings in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, and create marketing materials from them.

The service then charges users to have them printed and delivered or to download the digital file. Costs range from $0.61 per 6-by-9-inch mailed postcard to $2.05 per 11-by-17-inch mailed brochure. Users can download and print the pieces themselves at a subscription rate starting at $0.99 per download.

The service’s new targeting capabilities make it easy for real estate pros to maximize their marketing efforts, said Scott Dixon, CEO of NewPoint Media Group, parent company of The Real Estate Book.

Advertisers “can choose a specific area down to the subdivision level and then filter their list by household income, the amount of time the consumer has owned the home, for example,” Dixon said in a statement.

Sample design template on The Real Estate Book’s trebstore.com.

Trebstore.com also offers a broker product that allows brokers to create consistent branding for all of the pieces their agents send out using the site.

Last year, The Real Estate Book updated its website to make it mobile-optimized and released an iPhone app.

via inman.com

How to make the most of Google’s new approach to analytics | Chappaqua Realtor

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Google Analytics logoGoogle Analytics logo

Google Analytics is changing. And it is changing in very significant ways. It’s such a significant change that they’re taking the word “Google” out of the name and calling it Universal Analytics.

For those who find it valuable to understand the behavior of people online, Google Analytics has been the go-to analytics package for many years. The combination of tracking capabilities, reporting options and cost has been a three-pronged fork stuck into the side of any other tracking package out there.

Before anyone gets too excited about all this it’s worth noting that these changes are rolling out in beta to enterprise and premium customers. This means those who are dabbling in analytics won’t see these features in their free Google Analytics accounts for awhile, if at all.

The change to Google Analytics starts with a conceptual shift which then leads to significantly new reporting capabilities. Let’s do a quick overview of two of the bigger changes (there are quite a few more, but I will spare you from a discussion of some of the more esoteric subjects, such as using your own anonymous sessionization keys).

A conceptual shift from visits to visitors

One of the things that is hard for first time Web analytics users to wrap their heads around is the difference between a “visit” and a “visitor.” I sometimes joke that this is the hardest concept to understand in all of Web analytics. Let’s review.

A “visitor” is a unique machine accessing your website. Every individual machine that goes to your website increases your visitor count.

A “visit” occurs each time any machine accesses your website. Your visit count is increased whenever any machine shows up on your website. One “visitor” can generate multiple “visits.”

An example usually helps makes this clearer: If I use my laptop to go to your website, that will generate one visitor and one visit in your Google Analytics reports. If I use my laptop to go to your website once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once before I go to bed that will generate one visitor (my laptop) and three visits (morning, afternoon and before I go to bed).

Note that these things are discussed in terms of “machine” and not “person.” For example, if I visit your site from my iPhone, my iPad, my laptop and a computer at work that will generate four visitors (one for each device) and four visits.

A final, nerdy way to describe the relationship between visit and visitor is: a visit is attached to only one visitor, but a visitor can have many visits.

Why is it important to understand this? Well to make reports for understanding what people are doing on your site we need a sort of common denominator. Most businesses would like to use something closer to their actual customer (in this case “visitor”) as the common denominator across reports.

We want to know how many people clicked on an ad and then arrived on our website and did stuff. We’re not as happy with knowing how many visits resulted from people clicking and and then doing stuff on our site. It could be the same person clicking the ad over and over again, and that makes us anxious.

But for many years now the level of reporting that Google Analytics has given us has been different for visits and visitors. In fact, the reports available for visitors have really only been very high level stuff and not as useful for understanding specific things about our website. Google Analytics wasn’t alone in this — everyone in the analytics vendor space has had this issue.

The common denominator of Google Analytics is visits, not visitors.

The big change is that the newly renamed Universal Analytics will use visitors as the common denominator. This means that all of your reporting will align much better with how you view your business: something that helps customers.

Bullet list version of what this will mean for users of Universal Analytics:

  • The numbers in your Universal Analytics report will more closely align with the numbers in your CRM.
  • All of the measures you’ve been using so far to measure performance will look significantly larger than the new visitor-based versions.
  • Integrity of leadership will be tested with the opportunity to present small, more useful visitor-based numbers instead of larger, more vanity-based visit numbers.

What does “Universal” mean?

The new Universal Analytics will now accept data from other sources than just a Web page. Sure there have been ways to torture the Google tracker into different code bases before. But now there’s going to be an accepted and useful way.

This means all of the ways of distributing content and interactions digitally can now talk to Universal Analytics. For example, your call center can register interaction, or your CRM tool can register interaction.

This, like the switch to a visitor-centric reporting model, is a big deal. Up until now Google Analytics has been very useful for understanding a specific slice of your interactions with customers: starting after they heard about your site and arrived and ending as soon as they left or did the thing you wanted them to do on the Web. This has left a gaping hole of information about things people are doing before they get to your site and, even more importantly, what they do after they fill out the lead form or call you.

You’ll be able to import conversion data as well. So when your Web gal tells you about how many “conversions” the Web is generating, you won’t have to translate the difference between a Web conversion and someone that made it through your qualification systems and actually bought something.

This shift is really what the name change is about. It changes Google Analytics from a good but limited tool — a Web analysis tool — into a broader and more capable tool, a business analysis tool. This is the shift from Web intelligence to business intelligence. And that’s awesome.

The bullet list of what this stuff means:

  • Universal Analytics will be able to perform as a business analytics and reporting tool for customer behavior on platforms beyond the Web.
  • The difference in quality of interactions and leads from a variety of sources will no longer be opaque and will thus present a risk to some businesses (I’m looking at you social media gurus and garbage vendors).

The downside

You didn’t think this was going to be all unicorns and rainbows did you? Even though I’m a proponent of analytics tools like Google Analytics, there are always some trade-offs when major shifts like this happen.

You’ll need to add some tracking code to use Universal Analytics. I know. No one likes doing this. It’s always scary and confusing. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

The new code handles almost everything the Google Analytics code does. But one thing it doesn’t enable is Experiments nee Google website Optimizer. This is, of course, a crushing loss. I’m not sure if this is a short-term thing or not. But there are other great tools for A/B and multivariate testing.

My friends of the tinfoil hat persuasion will likely raise their eyebrow at the idea of Google knowing the deep dark secrets of how a business truly operates once people start uploading conversion data. I also expect a few privacy-related issues with the visitor-based reporting.

And, of course, Google Premium isn’t free. But it wasn’t free before these changes either.

The bottom line

For businesses that either already are or are working towards becoming more data-driven the adjustment in approach from Google Analytics to Universal Analytics will be very useful.

There will be some hiccups as the reporting style is changed from visit-based to visitor-based. These hiccups will provide an opportunity for leadership to demonstrate their value to the organization, analytics practitioners to demonstrate leadership or both.

A technology that increases your ability to observe customer behavior and increases the relevant data sets available for you to discover insights should result in better decision-making and results for you, your technology partners and your customers.

via inman.com

Strong new home sales brighten housing picture | Cross River Realtor

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Strong new home sales brighten housing picture

New housing construction is seen in Darnestown, Maryland, October 23, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

New U.S. single-family home sales surged in September to the highest level in nearly 2-1/2 years, further evidence the housing market recovery is gaining steam.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that new home sales increased 5.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted 389,000-unit annual rate — the fastest pace since April 2010, when sales were boosted by a tax credit for first-time home buyers.

Although sales in August were revised down to a 368,000-unit rate from the previously reported 373,000 units, the tenor of the report was relatively strong, with the median price of a new home rising 11.7 percent from a year ago.

The quickened pace in the housing sector is good news for the economy, but it remains one of the few bright spots.

“Housing is now a positive for the economy after years of being a drag, but it’s not enough to counteract the slowdown in manufacturing, which was the star,” said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, Ohio.

A second report showed only a modest pick-up in factory activity this month amid a darkening cloud of economic uncertainty at home and slower growth abroad.

The home sales data was the latest to show the housing market on the mend from its brutal collapse in 2006, which dragged the economy through its worst recession since the Great Depression.

Rising sales are pushing down the stock of unsold properties on the market, lifting prices and giving builders more confidence to take on new projects.

Demand for housing is being driven by a steady rise in the number of U.S. households, which had declined during the recession as financially strapped Americans moved in with family and friends. Modest job gains, increased job security and record low mortgage rates are encouraging many to seek home ownership.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has targeted housing as a channel to boost growth, announcing last month that it would buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month until the outlook for employment improved substantially.

The action helped push already low mortgage rates even lower. However, mortgage rates rose last week, dampening demand for loans to purchase homes during that period.

The Fed’s monetary policy committee on Wednesday stuck to its ultra accommodative stance even as it acknowledged that some parts of the economy, including the housing market, were looking a bit better.

MANUFACTURING SLUGGISH

While the Fed’s stimulus is supporting the consumption side of the economy, concerns about domestic fiscal policy and slowing global demand are hobbling the production side.

In a separate report, financial information firm Markit said its U.S. “flash,” or preliminary, Purchasing Managers Index for the manufacturing sector edged up to 51.3 this month from 51.1 in September. A reading above 50 indicates expansion.

A modest rise in output helped boost business conditions in the sector, which suffered its weakest quarter in three years during the July-to-September period.

But fewer orders from domestic clients and a fifth straight monthly decline in overseas demand for U.S. goods indicated manufacturing was acting as a drag on growth and employment, said Markit Chief Economist Chris Williamson.

“Purchasing managers report that the key to the ongoing weakness remains uncertainty among customers in export markets, notably Europe and Asia,” he said.

The slowdown in factory activity is largely the result of fears that the U.S. Congress might fail to avoid the automatic tax hikes and government spending cuts that will suck about $600 billion out of the economy next year.

The housing data, however, showed no signs yet that the so-called fiscal cliff has crossed the radar of ordinary Americans.

The inventory of new homes on the market remained near record lows in September, although some economists worry a pick-up in building activity could undercut the market if sales do not rise significantly further.

At September’s sales pace it would take 4.5 months to clear the new homes on the market, the fewest since October 2005 and down from 4.7 months in August.

Sales last month were up in three of the four regions. They tumbled 37.3 percent in the Midwest.

via reuters.com