Renwick Congdon is the CEO and founder of Imprev Inc., a trend-setting marketing technologies company based in Seattle. He began his career in the 1980’s as a top-producing loan officer, helping the agents he worked with create personalized marketing fliers and eventually developing software to automate the process. A serial innovator, Congdon went on to write code for the PC and Mac desktop software program Flyerware, which instantly created personalized real estate flyers for agents and brokers.
In 2000, he built Imprev in his garage (literally!), and the company has flourished. Imprev designed the first Enterprise marketing technology solution for real estate brokerage firms, the first multilingual real estate marketing application, the first private-label Marketing Center for a leading franchise, and helped to pioneer MLS integration for automated, data enabled marketing materials. No real estate marketing technology corporation works with more agents or brokers.
An authority in the industry, Congdon speaks regularly on marketing trends and technology. He was an Inman News Innovator Award finalist in both 2004 and 2011, and he serves on the board of directors of the Seattle chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization, a network of more than 8,000 business owners in 40 countries. On this episode of the podcast, he speaks to the benefits of Imprev’s marketing automation, how they became the go-to platform for real estate franchisers, work-life balance and trends in real estate technology.
What’s Discussed:
-Why Imprev’s marketing automation platform works especially well for the real estate industry
-Real estate is the only industry where the salesperson is responsible for conceptualizing and creating the marketing as well as distributing it
-With Imprev, a listing automatically triggers the generation of a website, fliers, postcards, video, social media pushes, etc.
-Why Imprev invests in a very large QA team
-Having “too many testers” allows their customer service team to be very small (two people serving 260,000 agents)
-How establishing the ‘why’ of your business can improve work-life balance
-Imprev’s ‘why’ is to have a great place to work with a product they believe in, strong customer relationships
-Renwick’s regret re: not having a partner
-Some venture capitalists won’t invest if you don’t have partners
-Why it is better to let a customer go rather than adding services (i.e.: CMA, CRM) that don’t fit your business model
-Why ease of use is key in developing a platform
-The first time someone gets on the platform, they can use it
-The second time, they are comfortable
-The third time, they’re an expert
-The beauty of automation
-Find the agents that do something the best and codify their best practices for everyone
-Trends in real estate and real estate tech
-Taking one piece of data from a property and using it to pull valid information and market to a particular group
Resources Mentioned:
Project Upstream Thought Leader Survey
Results of Imprev’s Fall Thought Leader Survey 2016
Zillow Consumer Housing Trends Report
Connect with Renwick Congdon:
Learn More About Renwick Congdon:
Aloha and welcome to the inaugural episode of Listing Bits! Greg comes to you from Ko Olina, Hawaii, where he is attending Hawaii Life’s Worthshop 6, and chatting with real estate tech leader David Friedman.
Friedman describes himself as a Jewish kid from New York who went to engineering school during the dot-com boom. Interested in startups, he discovered that the real estate brokerage space lagged behind the curve in tech and set out to build a platform during the recession. That idea grew into the formation of
Boston Logic Technology Partners, Inc., an information technology firm whose mission is to help real estate brokerages grow faster by implementing their software and companion services.
As president of Boston Logic, Friedman leads the team in developing the company’s strategic vision. Working with investors, managers and clients, he is involved in the daily operations of the business including hiring, sales and fundraising. He is a metrics oriented sales manager, internet marketing strategist and coach with proven experience as an entrepreneur, growing a company from idea to profitability.
On this first episode of the podcast, Friedman talks about the rapid pace of innovation and growth in the real estate technology vertical, the future of Boston Logic and industry trends in big data and AI.
What’s Discussed:
Why chaos causes innovation
Why the real estate industry has been behind the curve in technology
The exponential growth of the real estate software realm
How advancements in technology have dramatically increased the pace of innovation
Why tech tools working together via data connectivity will be the next wave in the industry
The big investment Boston Logic secured from Providence Equity
How Boston Logic will employ the funds from Providence Equity’s backing
The traits of Boston Logic’s ideal client
Trends in real estate tech
Resources:
Connect with David Friedman: