On the 389th episode of Mail Right Show, Jonathan Denwood and Robert Newman reviewed Ylopo. Robert Newman is the founder and CEO of Inbound REM, an inbound marketing agency, and has had more than a decade of experience in the real estate search engine optimization field. Meanwhile, Jonathan Denwood is the founder and CEO of Mail Right, a platform combining various digital tools into one convenient, user-friendly package. This episode delves into Ylopo’s features, pricing, and what sets it apart, which is necessary for realtors to weigh the pros and cons before using Ylopo and find out if it’s the right tool for them.
What is Ylopo and its Services
Ylopo primarily concentrates on curation and does similar to what Zillow Premier offers, which is qualifying the lead to some extent. When Ylopo first started, they had Facebook marketing and were throwing people into a funnel behavioral marketing lead generation system, where you generate a lead from Facebook. They also had a system, including a verification process inside the lead part. They took low-quality leads and tried to filter them to give you leads that were better in quality.
In recent years, they have undergone significant changes. They’ve introduced PPC advertising, a method to find valuable potential customers. They’ve also incorporated a 21-step questionnaire on their websites to generate better leads. Additionally, they are currently testing an ISA service that handles calls to these leads. Essentially, they’re crafting a complete marketing journey for their clients, much like what realtors.com has achieved with their city opt-out feature.
Ylopo Continuously Improves its Features and Services
Ylopo constantly improves its services, and now it offers four types of leads and five or six different product and service categories. Ylopo is also working towards becoming the top and largest company for real estate marketing. They also have ideas to expand into related areas that they could excel in.
1. They let you have your website. If you leave Ylopo, they let you have your website and take it with you.
2. Content Management System. Ylopo’s content management system is easy to use and straightforward. However, there are better choices than Ylopo if you plan to create a lot of content for your website, whether it’s text, images, videos, or other types of content. Regardless, they’re improving the website’s speed since it’s built on Squarespace, and the system is a heavy load. However, they excel at creating attractive designs efficiently.
2. Automated Video and Slideshow. They have automated their video advert around their Facebook, especially their Facebook campaigns. As per the slideshow, they gather listings and pictures, and then combine them into a slideshow to generate a video. While encouraging real estate agents to make personalized videos is a good concept, it can be difficult. Instead, they’ve chosen an alternative approach that involves automation. This way, real estate agents can still achieve good outcomes without hassle.
3. RAIYA: Automated-Text Messaging. Ylopo has taken the best of what’s available from the most advanced marketing methods in the digital space. They’ve adapted these techniques for the real estate industry, which is notably progressive because many others aren’t using basic strategies like retargeting or behavioral marketing. That’s where those webhooks inside the search process come in that generate a marketing response from your tools. In Ylopo, it is called Raiya, an automated text messaging system. They added the finest search marketing, similar to what Zirple used to do. So, when you do X, Y occurs, guiding you to a page with listings, and then you can direct your clients there.
Difference Between Ylopo and Other Platforms
The difference between Ylopo and other platforms is that while they intend to charge more for all these new lead sources, they will not take a piece of your deal. And they still have the same back end. They also have a website, which is how their marketing functions, where they throw you into a search function, and that’s how they generate their leads.
Ylopo Continuously Improves its Features and Services
Ylopo constantly improves its services, and now it offers four types of leads and five or six different product and service categories. Ylopo is also working towards becoming the top and largest company for real estate marketing. They also have ideas to expand into related areas that they could excel in.
Ylopo is Costly
If you have the revenue, Ylopo is a good option. In Ylopo, a potential customer could receive numerous messages from agents using their services in a competitive metropolitan area. Additionally, it all comes down to balancing cost and what you gain. They might offer benefits, but the price can be relatively high if you use all their features.
They have a case study where someone has 300 accounts within an email account base. This person engaged in their services with a monthly budget of $2,000. Ylopo worked that email account base, yielding returns within approximately three months. The investment totaled $6,000, resulting in a favorable return on investment (ROI).
But how long could they keep it up? Can this person maintain a consistent commitment of $2,000 per month for a year or more, given that this effort essentially includes a remarketing initiative to reinvigorate engagement from an established email list? It’s worth noting that Ylopo is the most expensive yet the best in search marketing advertising campaigns. Their excellence is particularly prominent in this domain, although it’s important to acknowledge that they’re not the best at every marketing, but they are a leader in their category.
Cons of Ylopo
Ylopo is undeniably one of the largest companies in the real estate marketing sector in terms of customer volume. However, the data they use for their operations, specifically at a statistical level as shared by one of the owners, is considered by him to be oversold. This percentage stands at 25% of market penetration, which is remarkably high. In simpler terms, for every four search marketing outcomes in the market, one falls within the scope of what they perceive as excessive penetration. Moreover, they already observe this phenomenon in 20% of their markets. It implies that you encounter heightened competition uncomfortably. A 25% penetration rate is notably extreme. It appears they are forced into that category because they need to keep growing. So they’re going to keep penetrating the markets. However, this could lead to them oversaturating the market. And if they do, they might be excessively present in your market. Hence, you need to check and ask if you’re considering entering a market where many others are already operating. And also, because you’re investing a substantial amount each month – say two, three, or four thousand dollars – you’ll find yourself competing with two or three other individuals advising you that lead value disintegrates. Therefore, you must have extra plans and ways to address those who might feel that they’re seeing the same advertisement just around the corner from someone else. If you’re unlucky to be in a market where they are already quite present, there’s a chance that you might come across a situation where you don’t feel the marketing conditions are very favorable.
And last but not least is the idea of expense versus return, ownership versus control, and ownership versus handing the reins over to another company. Ylopo is trying to build the best culture and company inside the space, and the owners are super committed. However, on the other hand, the reality is that it’s a marketplace, and if someone came forward with a significantly high offer, they would sell the company. In essence, this means that, in the end, all businesses are potentially open for purchase.
Ylopo is Not Selling Their Company
99 % of the time, when a real estate marketing company gets bought by someone, it usually closes down the entire business, affecting real estate agents and experienced brokers working in the industry. The problem with this is when you finally have something functioning well. You become accustomed to it and invest time and company resources into learning and using the system effectively. Then, another person purchases it, and one of two things occurs. Firstly, it might turn into a situation where it’s like a ghost ship. All the individuals who cared about the results have left. Therefore, they stick with the same system. Inevitably, the results gradually deteriorate over time in such cases. In the worst-case scenario, which has happened numerous times in the real estate industry, someone buys or takes over a division, as seen with the acquisition of Bold Leads, and they end up shutting it down. A similar situation fitting this definition happened when Howard Tager sold TigerLead. He believed he was selling to someone who would keep the business running. With honest intentions, he approached an operating division of the purchasing company, hoping to keep working on Tiger Leads and make it grow. But things didn’t turn out as expected. The company that bought his business was itself acquired later on. Unfortunately, his project got neglected, and he left eventually.
With that, Ylopo is not selling the company, as they know the potential negative consequences of the possibility of being acquired. It might affect somebody’s opinion with a decent-sized budget and team, and trying to evaluate two companies and saying that they are open to being acquired is not favorably viewed. Theoretically, one might assume that somebody would keep the doors open and the things running. But that practice has not been the case in the real estate marketing space. This situation is also partly connected to some platforms purchased by mortgage firms not involved in their niche. For example, consider Fidelity National Mortgage, a mortgage bank that acquired two of the largest real estate marketing companies: Cink and TigerLeeds. The transition wasn’t entirely seamless, but that’s how it unfolded. So, acquisition after acquisition, for different reasons, led to the eventual decline of these businesses.
