Delta Media Group adds website tracking to Lead Management system

Delta Media Group programmers have added new functionality to the 'Leads & Contacts' page of the lead management system on the DeltaNet.

The 'Request Source' category of the 'New Leads' and 'Processed Leads & Contacts' pages of the DeltaNet has long shown agents and admins if leads came from their website or another source - like a sign call, office visit, or magazine ad call - if the lead was manually entered into the lead management system.

Now, the 'Request Source' category will display specifically what kind of website the lead came from, whether the real estate company website or a real estate agent website.

The new 'Request Source' lead tracking functionality makes it easy for real estate agents to see if they are generating website leads themselves or the company is driving leads to their sites, and gives company admins the ability to follow how many leads the real estate company website is producing for agents.

Delta Media Group's real estate websites are integrated so real estate company website leads can automatically distribute to real estate agents, who receive instant notification of the lead via E-mail and text message (depending on the system the agent is using), and can quickly follow up with the customer about his or her specific request. 'Request Source' lead tracking can help agents and companies better understand their lead types for follow-up and strategic marketing initiatives.

Read More!

Just Released: New programming on the Open House V3 system

Delta Media Group launched the Open House V3 system for all real estate company websites today, and added a few updates to the system.

Real estate companies now have the ability to customize the message displayed when no open houses are found. The 'No Opens Verbiage' feature is located on the bottom of the 'Open House Preferences' tab on the DeltaNet Real Estate lead management system.

Located just above the 'No Open Verbiage' section is the 'Hide Filters' field, where real estate companies can now disable certain filter feeds on the public open house search form, including the 'zip code', 'neighborhood,' 'subdivision' and 'school district' fields.

When adjusting these fields on the DeltaNet, the adjustments will default to all open house forms.

Contact Delta Media Group for more information on the Open House V3 system and new programming, or for details on Delta Media Group's real estate website and lead management systems.

Read More!

Open House V3 now live for all real estate company websites

Delta Media Group has launched its new Open Houses Version 3 system for all real estate company websites.

Previously, the V3 system had been turned on for a majority of real estate company websites, but as of 12pm Eastern, it has been launched for all.

The new Open House system allows Delta Media Group to continue to make updates and advancements with the Open House system. If your real estate website previously did not use the new Open House system, click here for more info on how it works, or read more info on the history of the Open House systems here.

Delta Media Group has also releases some new updates with the Open House V3 system. Check back to Delta Media Group's blog for further details.

Read More!

Admin controls now available for Photo Portfolio, My Homefinder Offers systems

Yesterday, Delta Media Group released the new 'Photo Portfolio Offers' system on its real estate company websites and Upgrade real estate agent websites.

Today, Delta Media Group has released an administrative setting to give companies the ability to turn off the Photo Portfolio Offers and My Home Finder Offers prompts.

Admins can access this under the "Settings" tab of the "Leads & Contacts" section of the DeltaNet. The Photo Portfolio Offers and My Home Finder Offers are turned on by default. Admins can un-click the boxes next to their descriptions to turn them off.

The My Home Finder Offers and Photo Portfolio Offers systems were built to encourage real estate website visitors to create My Home Finder accounts on Delta Media Group websites. Both systems recently went live for all real estate company websites and agents using Upgrade real estate agent websites.

Contact Delta Media Group for more details.

Read More!

Delta Media group launches 'Photo Portfolio Offers' system

In recent weeks, Delta Media Group has taken several pro-active steps to help the agents and brokerages using our real estate websites to generate more leads and customer portfolios.

Today, Delta Media Group released its new 'Photo Portfolio Offers' system, which prompts real estate website visitors to create a My Home Finder portfolio account while sifting through listing photos.

The system is available to all real estate company websites, but only to agents using the Upgrade real estate agent website.

The Photo Portfolio Offers system is set up to encourage a website visitor to create a portfolio account and save the listing he is viewing the photos for. It prompts the Web visitor on every third listing he views photos of, on the third photo he views upon clicking to view more listing images.

Unlike the My Home Finder Offers system, released last week, the Photo Portfolio Offers system generates new account registrations as new leads for the respective real estate company or agent when a website visitor creates an account. This sends the lead through Delta Media Group's lead management system, thus following any pre-set lead distribution rules, like sending the listing agent an instant text message notification that she has a new lead in her lead management system.

When new leads come into the agent's Lead Management system, the "New Leads" page displays the customer's name, the date the lead came into the system, the lead request type, the lead request source, how old the lead is, and which agent the lead is assigned to.


The "Request Type" category specifies whether the lead is from the Photo Portfolio Offers system, or if it's another type of lead, like a showing request or E-mail lead.

The Photo Portfolio Offers system has operated in beta testing for the past few months on a real estate website, and has helped produce significant lead results for the real estate company.

Contact Delta Media Group for more information on the Photo Portfolio Offers system, or for details on Delta Media Group's real estate company websites, real estate agent websites, and real estate lead management systems.

Read More!

Existing home sales increase 2.4 percent in May

Existing home sales increased in May, marking the first time home sales have increased in consecutive months since September 2005.

The 2.4 percent increase in existing home sales is smaller than initially projected, though still shows that the real estate market is picking up. The unsold home supply also decreased by 3.5 percent to 3.80 million. The supply of unsold homes had not decreased in earlier months this year, even when home sales had increased.

USA Today carried the Reuters article on the increase in existing home sales, which noted:

"The National Association of Realtors said sales rose 2.4% to an annual rate of 4.77 million units from a downwardly revised 4.66 million pace in April. That compared to market forecasts for a 4.81 million-unit pace. However, sales increased for a second straight month in May."

Read the entire USA Today article here.

As noted in an earlier blog entry, pending home resales increased in April for the fourth time in five months.

Read More!

More legislation to help home buyers?

Delta Media Group recently blogged about a new legislative proposal that could increase the current first-time home buyer tax credit to $15,000, and lift the first-time home buyer and financial stipulations.

Today, USA Today is reporting that a handful of new home buyer tax credits have been proposed, potentially increasing the chance that another could be passed to help the real estate market.

The USA Today article mentions three proposals that could increase or extend the current credit, including:

• "A Senate bill to expand the tax credit to $15,000 for any home buyer regardless of income was introduced this month by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. It is co-sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn.
  'It would go a long way toward inducing trade-up buyers into the market,' says Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR.

• A House bill to keep the $8,000 credit in place until June 2010 and expand it to all home buyers was introduced last month by Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas. It also would provide a $3,000 credit to homeowners who refinance.

• Another bill in the House, introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, would extend the credit to all home buyers through 2010."

Have you experienced an influx in business due to the first-time home buyer tax credit? How do you feel these new proposals might help?

Check back to Delta Media Group's blog for more details on home buyer tax credit legislation.

Read More!

Several new DMG system updates on the table

If you haven't checked Delta Media Group's blog recently, you might have missed a few of the several updates we have made with our real estate website and lead management systems.

Delta Media Group will release several additional updates soon, I discovered in a recent meeting.

One such update will be to the Leads and Contacts dashboard on the DeltaNet of the real estate agent website. I don't have any details I can disclose now, but check back to Delta Media Group's blog for additional news coming soon.

Another is an updated version of the Atlas Search map. I have seen an early beta version of this, and I was very impressed.

Also, Delta Media Group should be releasing another new system update this week. Make sure and check back to the DMG blog for more details.

Read More!

Delta Media Group to attend the 2009 REALTORS Conference & Expo

We know it's still several months away, but Delta Media Group will attend the NAR's 2009 REALTORS Conference & Expo in San Diego.

If you're attending, plan on stopping by Delta Media Group's booth, #615. Click to view the 2009 REALTORS Conference floor plan. Delta Media Group will demo its real estate website and lead management systems, Search Engine Optimization services, and the several system updates it has released this year.

The conference begins Friday, November 13 at 4pm, and runs until Monday, November 16 at 2pm. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to speak at the General Session, and Reba McEntire is performing at the Celebrity Concert. Other speakers include: Liz Murray, Dr. Daniel Shapiro, Paul Martinelli, Tara Hunt and Sugar Ray Leonard.

View the 2009 REALTORS Conference & Expo website.

Read More!

New 'My Home Finder Offers' system released

The new 'My Home Finder Offers' system is now live for all real estate company websites and Upgraded real estate agent websites built by Delta Media Group.

Delta Media Group announced the My Home Finder Offers system upgrade last week. The system automatically prompts website visitors conducting a property search to create a portfolio on the real estate website. When a website visitor enters property search criteria, the system opens a modal window - a pseudo pop-up window that appears within the same browser and allows consumers to create a My Home Finder account or close the window to continue with their property search.

Those website visitors who create an account will be saved and appropriately distributed within the lead management system. Those who click to skip the registration will not be prompted again until the next time they return to the website to conduct a property search, or if they leave the window inactive for 30 minutes or more.

The new My Home Finder Offers pop-up is designed to help boost portfolio creations in a non-invasive way. Visitors to the real estate website can easily skip the registration, or register to receive all the benefits of creating a My Home Finder portfolio account.

Upon creating a My Home Finder account, agents and admins using Delta Media Group's lead management system can follow listings the website visitor viewed, and see his or her saved listings and property searches.

Contact Delta Media Group with questions about the My Home Finder Offers system.

The My Home Finder Offers upgrade is the second Delta Media Group has released this week. Yesterday, Delta Media Group launched the 'Share My Leads' system upgrade. Read more about 'Share My Leads' here.

Read More!

Delta Media Group releases 'Share My Leads' system

Delta Media Group just released its new Share My Leads system on all real estate agent websites.

The Share My Leads system is ideal for real estate agent teams. It allows agents to share leads, whether processed or unprocessed, with other agents within their company.

Share My Leads settings are located in the "Settings" tab of the "Leads & Contacts" section on the real estate agent DeltaNet lead management system. Agents can choose other agents they want to have access to their processed or unprocessed leads. The leads will appear on the other agent's DeltaNet "Leads" or "Contacts" pages, and list which agent the lead was initially assigned to.

To keep customers correctly assorted, Delta Media Group added an owner column on the right side of the Leads and Contacts databases. The column shows if the customer is one of the agent's own, or, if he/she is assigned to another agent, who he/she is assigned to.

Share My Leads was designed to help agents respond to leads and share customer information more quickly. In the past, agent teams had difficulty sharing customer information if the member of the team who received the lead was in meetings and could not follow up or pass the lead on to other agents until their schedule cleared.

Contact Delta Media Group for more details on the Share My Leads system.

Read More!

Real estate website traffic from Bing

A quick update from yesterday's blog entry about Bing...

I took a look at the stats of seven of the real estate website and lead management systems Delta Media Group builds for brokerages throughout the country, from large brokerages to small; from brokerages in the north, south, east, west and mid-western United States.

In each case, the real estate website was already receiving a portion of traffic from Bing. At best, Bing was the fifth-largest source of traffic for two brokerages over the past month. At worst, it was the 12th largest source of traffic. By comparison, Google was the top source of real estate website traffic to five of the seven brokerages, and the second largest source for the remaining two. That being said, Google drove, at best, 13.5 times more traffic to the real estate website than Bing, and at worst, 26.38 times more Web traffic.

Keep in mind that Bing has only existed for two weeks. Since these stats showed traffic for the past month, Bing is on course to, after one month, drive somewhere between 7.5-15 percent of the Web traffic that Google drove to the seven real estate websites I analyzed.

Obviously, Bing is not yet a significant player compared to Google. But in many cases, Bing drove more traffic to the real estate websites analyzed than did some of the largest real estate portals.

Bing should continue to become more popular, thus driving a larger chunk of traffic to real estate websites. It may not crack Google's dominance of the search engine industry, but search engines should continue to increase the amount of traffic they send to websites, particularly in the real estate industry.

If you're looking to improve your brokerage's real estate search engine optimization, Delta Media Group can help. Contact Delta Media Group for more information.

Read More!

Is Bing something you should worry about?

In case you haven't heard, two weeks ago Microsoft released their new Internet search engine, tagged "Bing."

While Bing is obviously a competitor to Google, Microsoft calls it a "decision engine" rather than a search engine. Either way, it's a way customers can potentially find your real estate website, thus making it important to your business.

The New York Post reported yesterday that Google co-founder Sergey Brin is "so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service."

Google currently draws 60 percent of online searches in the United States, and Bing is not expected to take a significant cut in that market share soon. But with all the buzz Microsoft's new platform is getting, it's certainly worth keeping in mind.

How can I rank in Bing?

If search engines are finding your real estate website, Bing should find it too. The essential theory of how Bing's algorithm works is the same as other search engines. But Bing obviously has its own unique differences, and those could significantly alter the search engine results on your real estate website. Thus, your website could be on the front page of a local real estate search on Google, but rank significantly lower on Bing, and vice versa.

It's really too early to tell exactly what Bing's algorithm searches for compared to Google and Yahoo's. But it's not too early to build good search engine results on Bing. If you're looking to improve your real estate search engine optimization, Delta Media Group has a new platform designed to help your company do just that. Contact Delta Media Group for more information.

Read More!

Homebuyer tax credit could still be expanded

The current $8,000 homebuyer tax credit could still be boosted to $15,000, if a U.S. Senator gets his way.

Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., introduced legislation yesterday that would beef up the current homebuyer tax credit if passed. The legislation would affect the credit in three major ways:

• It would increase the maximum tax credit from $8,000 to $15,000.
• It would apply to all homebuyers, instead of just first-time homebuyers.
• It would eliminate the current credit's income caps of $75,000 for an individual and $150,000 for a couple.

Isakson initially tried to push a $15,000 tax credit through for all homebuyers with President Obama's first economic stimulus bill. The bill was revised, and the tax credit was cut from $15,000 to $8,000, and restricted to only first-time homebuyers.

The National Association of Realtors endorsed Isakson's legislation yesterday. Read more about Isakson's first-time homebuyer legislation here.

Follow Delta Media Group's blog for the latest in real estate news and real estate website, lead management, search engine optimization and technology updates.

Read More!

Visit Delta Media Group's new Facebook Business Page

Delta Media Group now has a Facebook business page!

If you're on Facebook, click here to view Delta Media Group's Facebook business page, or become a Facebook Fan of Delta Media Group.

We'll keep our Facebook business page updated with breaking news and product releases about our real estate website and lead management systems, and also post pictures from real estate conferences, our headquarters, speaking engagements, and more.

Along with Delta Media Group's blog, our Facebook business page is a unique way to keep our current and potential customers and business partners updated with what's going on at Delta Media Group, and hear your feedback on how we can best serve the ever-changing real estate technology industry.

Contact Delta Media Group for more information on our real estate website and lead management systems.

Read More!