Sendside Networks Blog

Beautiful Sales Automation Communications

2010-08-04T15:55:21Z

I've been building some training Packages for our sales automation clients and I have to say, they're some really beautiful communications.

Don't you wish your sales and marketing emails looked like this?

Once you get the hang of how the peices fit together and get your noggin around the fact that you can actually send any content using one of the different tab tipes (Text Editor Tabs for HTML that's built in the editor, Web Page Tabs for embedding any URL or web page, and File Tabs for showing document inside a tab) you can do some incredible things that provide real business value.

Not only do they look great, but you can see when they're opened and what content's being read. If you're using a CRM you can track all of that information all the way through to sales. It's no wonder that we have clients whose close rates have jumped by as much as 500% within three months of implementing Sendside into their sales process. Yowza!

If you're already a sales automation and acceleration client of Sendside that's using Packages, you'll be recieving the Package above shortly.

Real Estate Sales Acceleration & Automation

2010-06-09T14:50:42Z

Elite Destination Homes began using the Sendside platform for sales acceleration and automation and increased their lead conversions by 500% in two months.

Elite is a luxury fractional home ownership company that has luxury homes around the Caribbean, Europe, Mexico and the US. They offer a high-value and high-cost luxury product and have the need to communicate with potential customers in a very consumer-friendly and interactive way.

Elite's previous sales methodology had them converting somewhere around 4% of the sales touches that their inside sales team was making. Not terrible, but they were spending a huge amount of time following up with uninterested buyers. They knew they could do better if they had access to the right information at the right time in the sales process.

To say that their deployment of Sendside was a success would be the understatement of the year. Since implementing Sendside, Elite's closing rate has jumped from 4% to almost 20%, a 500% increase in sales!

So, considering the elite ROI; from 4 % to 18 - 20 % conversion jump within 30 days... and the fact that they would have needed to bump a five person call team to 25 people (at 4 % conversion) to match the output of the 5 people with packages...

Here are a few of the quotes that Elite Destination Homes provided to us for a case study we're doing for the real estate sales industry.

We have been using Sendside for two months now and globally it has been a smashing success for all! We have cut costs in materials, replacing printed materials with Sendside packages, and made the job of selling much less time consuming by replacing random calls with timely ones

We are able to see what the client is spending the most time on in advance of our conversations and mold the pitch to take advantage of the insights given to us by the software. Very Cool!

The most dramatic effect has been in our “Stay in touch” campaign We no longer call the 20 or 30 people a day necessary to stay ahead of this task. We simply “Sendside” all of them and call the ones that choose to engage. This frees us up to work on new business development and marketing.

We're calling this one a win.

Integrating Sales Automation & Salesforce

2010-06-08T21:45:51Z

Sendside's integration with Salesforce means that your entire inside sales force or even your channel parthers using salesforce.com can use Senside's sales automation tools.

The integration is really slick. The only point where someone would even need to login to a Sendside account is during the creation of the Package, since Salesforce can't support the UI around creating the types of multi-dimensional content that Packages support.

Sendside's integration allows inside sales, marketing or even channel partners to access and send interactive, multi-dimensional communications from inside salesforce and have instant access to open and read activity analytics across individual messages, or the entire sales team.

Transaction Management for Title Companies

2010-05-30T03:52:00Z

When you're creating strategic marketing and sales messaging there's nothing as effective as puting a personal video pitch inside a 1 to 1 personal communication.

Here's a particularly good video that our partner Greenfolders put together for the title and escrow business for a Package they're building.

Transaction Management has been a broken promise for most title companies, but that's going to change with the integration of Sendside and Greenfolders.

Fractional Ownership and Real Estate Sales Automation

2010-05-27T13:51:24Z

Elite Destination Homes is a fractional ownership company that has fantastic luxury homes around the world.

Elite Destination Homes fractional ownership expertise makes owning, selling, renting, managing and traveling to a vacation home easy. Their sales and marketing teams have just started using Sendside's amazing sales automation and acceleration tools to increase the time that their sales team actually spends selling, and eliminate all of the wasted time they were spending.

Here's part of an email that I was copied on;

We have been using Sendside for just over a month. The effects have been dramatic to say the least. In our sales department we have cut down the workload on our staff by sending out packages to cold leads and only contacting the ones that engage. The real success story lives in our rental management business. Sendside has been a major part of improving our lead to sale conversion from 4% to 18% and in some markets over 20%. There is no question in my mind that we are getting to clients faster and with a better looking presentation. Thanks to Eric and all the staff at Sendside for being patient with our company in the trial stages.

Mark Stevens
Elite Destination Homes

It's fantastic when an organization is smart enough to take control of their sales and marketing in a way that makes a difference. A 400 to 500% increase in lead to sale conversion? Woot!

Sendside Has 3 New Resellers: FlyIron, Crystal Systems, and Pierce Group

2010-05-27T02:51:31Z

We've just added three new Sendside Resellers to the lineup; FlyIron, Crystal Systems and Pierce Group.

These resellers have deep knowledge in a number of verticals including sales automation and acceleration, higher education and real estate. We're glad to announce their addition to the Sendside team. Here they are.

Based in Salt Lake City and founded in 2010, FlyIron develops content marketing solutions for high-consideration products, especially in the education and B2B technology sectors. The focus is on content distribution in order to help people choose one option over another yielding better conversion rates.

Pierce Group specializes in the design, sales and marketing of fractional resort real estate developments with a focus on improving efficiency in the fractional sales process. Visit PierceGroupLLC.com/core-services and view a slideshow of their proprietary Clearview Sales System™. Pierce Group has consulted on projects in Florida, Flagstaff, Chicago, Cabo, Idaho and Israel.

Crystal Systems Group was founded in 1996 to provide premiere consulting services in IT and Sales. With over 50 years of combined, seasoned business experience, Crystal Systems Group has helped a wide range of small businesses and large multi-national corporations implement new systems, optimize sales forces and grow revenues.

Online Government: File & Document Delivery

2010-05-17T19:39:29Z

It would seem that moving needed sources of information, and securely delivering files and documents online is actually catching on, at least for Americans.

In fact, 61 percent of adults looked for information or made transactions on a government Web site in the last year, while almost a third employed social media like social networking sites, blogs, text messaging, e-mail or online video to get government info.

Additionaly, of internet users, more than 80 percent engaged in at least one transaction on a government site last year, with almost 40 percent making five or more transactions — like researching government data, renewing licenses and paying fines.

Traditional complaints about bureaucratic inefficiency seem allayed online: 79 percent of all users were able to achieve most or all of what they wanted to accomplish on the last government site they visited.

Whites were more likely to be politically active online, for instance, by joining groups that seek to influence politics or posting comments about policy issues, African-Americans and Hispanics tended to have more favorable views about the necessity of government outreach through social media.

From the Pew report:

As government agencies at all levels bring their services online, Americans are turning in large numbers to government websites to access information and services. Fully 82% of internet users (representing 61% of all American adults) looked for information or completed a transaction on a government website in the twelve months preceding this survey. Some of the specific government website activities in which Americans take part include:

48% of internet users have looked for information about a public policy or issue online with their local, state or federal government

46% have looked up what services a government agency provides

41% have downloaded government forms

35% have researched official government documents or statistics

33% have renewed a driver’s license or auto registration

30% have gotten recreational or tourist information from a government agency

25% have gotten advice or information from a government agency about a health or safety issue

23% have gotten information about or applied for government benefits

19% have gotten information about how to apply for a government job

15% have paid a fine, such as a parking ticket

11% have applied for a recreational license, such as a fishing or hunting license

Sendside, Greenfolders & Transaction Management

2010-05-13T14:48:42Z

Part of the Sendside team spent most of the day down at Greenfolders HQ discussing how Greenfolders and Sendside provide absolutely jawdropping capabilities around what the real estate title and escrow community call Transaction Managment.

Greenfolders has this video overview that details how their system works.

In effect, Greenfolders provides a robust back end or internal system to manage content that's directly related to a transaction, especially those that are paper intensive like real estate title transactions or treasury managment. Greenfolders handles all of the content that used to be printed (and for a title transaction that can be 300 pages) electronically, but with exactly the same work flow that title companies currently use. The benefit to any title company is that they can manage everything electronically which makes every transaction and employee more efficient.

In the real estate title industry the main players also operatate some secured websites that they describe as 'transaction portals' or 'transaction managment' and are designed to allow authorized parties to the transaction (buyer, seller, agents, lenders, etc.) to access information and documents online. All of these systems are propriatary and closed of course.

This works poorly for a single transaction and even less well for a real estate agent, title officer or lender who has multiple transactions to manage or deal with. It forces them to have multiple accounts so they can access all of these systems, and there's no residual benefit at all. This may explain while adoption is abysmal. It's like building a telephone that only dials one number and only works for 30 days.

Since this is a space in which Greenfolders has real domain expertise, they're intimately familiar with all of the shortcomings of the current system and how little these transaction management portals benefit anyone who works in title managment or needs access to multiple title transactions.

So, you can imagine Greenfolders excitement when they discovered Sendside a few months ago and realized that we had this entire 'external communication' platform that Greenfolders could tie into to communicate with all of the transactions parties outside of any company firewall securely and easily.

The Greenfolders/Sendside combo is absolutely awe-inspiring for those who understand the needs that paper-intensive, transaction focused organizations have to work efficiently inside the organization, and communicate externally at the same time.

Sendside eliminates all of these propriatary 'transaction portals' and replaces it with an easy-to-use communication platform that aggregates all of this information in one place. Now, a real estate agent who used to have to log in to 15 different sites, can manage all of this information in one inbox. The same goes for lenders, buyers, sellers, home inspectors, lawyers, and whoever else needs access to the information. And, it's always available to everyone who needs it. It's simply a much better way.

Transaction management is in for a re-do.

Real Estate & Escrow Transactions

2010-05-11T19:34:59Z

Real estate transactions used to be the province of faxes, ink and paper mail, but now this shift in communication power allows all parties in a real estate transaction (buyer, seller, lender, real estate agent, settlement office, etc.) the tools to send and receive transaction communications, approvals, authorizations and even signatures from any where... instantly. Sendside's fully integrated real estate and title company application suite enables all parties to monitor the entire closing process and remove all of the wasted time and expense from slow, paper-based communications.

Title Companies

Title and escrow companies are forced to use paper documents, ink signatures, overnight mail. The result? Huge amounts of slow, inefficient paper that slow real estate transactions down and cost everyone money and time.

Sendside's Network For Real Estate Transactions

Sendside allows all parties to communicate electronically as easily as email.

Paperless office document generation and imaging.
Custom workflows, triggers and actions.
Digital Forms, approvals, notifications and eSignatures.
Anywhere-everywhere access.

The new standard in title company client services.

Now, instead of forcing a title companies clients to cope with a never-ending river of paper mail that they have to manage, title companies can deliver everything electronically, already tagged, categorized and securely stored.

Streamlined title and closing processes.

Sendside provides secure, real-time integration with your existing work-flows and software. Sendside's title company management suite includes interactive forms, eSignatures, secure messaging and document delivery, Packages and integrations with your existing back-end applications. The result? Automated processes that take you to the next generation of title transactions.

Meet every security and compliance need.

Sendside communications easily meet compliance mandates for GLBA and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) as well as for electronic storage and archive (SEC Rule 204-2), electronic records (SEC 270 and 275), third-party access to those records (SEC 17a-4), along with FINRA regulations (2210) and FRCP rules.

Sendside & Greenfolders

2010-05-11T19:34:06Z

Sendside is now integrating with Greenfolders to provide a comprehensive real estate transaction solution for title companies.

Sendside integrates seamlessly with Greenfolders to provide a completely paperless environment and instant work-flows for title and escrow companies, allowing them to create a completely paperless environment inside their organization, and electronically communicate with all parties to a transaction.

The GreenFolders for Title and Escrow template was designed for title people by title people. Every activity that a title office conducts on a paper file can be completed in GreenFolders—only faster and without getting out of a chair. From the initial creation of the file to the final clearing and policy production, GreenFolders can handle every task without ever producing a sheet of paper.

Here are some of the features that are specific to the GreenFolders Title and Escrow:

Title chain sheet
Easily connects with your Title and Escrow database to access production data in real time
Pre-configured Title and Escrow document type lists
Title and Escrow "order sheet" reference data fields and forms
Title file separators (or "tabs") to organize file content
Title order file status values to manage work flow and work load
Industry-specific document annotation tool palette
User groups, roles, and file access settings (such as title, escrow, accounting) typical of Title and Escrow offices

GreenFolders empowers your people to work without paper. Literally every task you can do in a paper environment you can do in GreenFolders. GreenFolders is not your data production system, it is the production system for your files. Not only will GreenFolders cut down on your paper bill, but also it will make your people more effective.

Sendside's integration will allow title and escrow companies to really benefit from the efficiencies and speed that technology allows, while maintaining all of the security, control and compliance they need.