Congratulations to Mitch Ribak of Tropical Realty in Suntree, Florida for submitting the winning video to this year’s Agent Appreciation Campaign video contest in October.

Watch the winning video!

As the winner of ‘Best Agent Video 2008′, Mitch will receive a “Max package” filled with orange gorilla goodies, plus a Flip Ultra camcorder as prizes.

Mitch provided insight to one of the Agent Appreciation Campaign’s collateral giveaways, 50 Reason’s to Use a Buyer’s Agent.  It’s the perfect tool to give to home buyers who may be wondering why they should use an agent to buy a home.

Another collateral item was a white paper, titled, “9 Ways to Increase Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty“. Please let me know if you are interested in either and I’ll forward you the PDF/s.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the video contest.

We look forward to next year’s campaign!

Thousands of real estate professionals descended upon the HomeGain booth to learn about HomeGain.

On Saturday and Sunday Mitch Ribak and Joe Ferrara participated in our “Meet the Experts” program.

Joe gave blogging tips to visitors to the HomeGain booth and Mitch talked about how to use HomeGain’s Buyerlink in connection with capturing and converting leads.

From Friday until Monday, Realtors lined up to win their own Max and to pick up a Max button.

We will have a complete report on NAR later this week.

Here is Max hanging around on Friday afternoon waiting for the show to begin!

What were your thoughts about the NAR Convention & Expo this year in Orlando, Florida?

Louis Cammarosano

This weekend at the NAR Expo 2008 in Orlando, Florida, you will have a chance to meet two of the stars from the HomeGain Blog AND from HomeGain’s Ask The Experts Live Real Estate Forum, in person — Mitch Ribak and Joseph Ferrara!

Visit the HomeGain booth #3231 on Saturday and Sunday to meet them and discuss business strategies.

From 10am-NOON on both days, Mitch Ribak of Tropical Realty in Suntree, FL, will be available to speak with you about strategies to improve how you capture leads, managing leads, and converting more leads into clients — on both agent and broker levels.  Mitch will spotlight BuyerLink as well as his successful products, 100 MPH Software and eHomes Realty Network.

From 2pm-4pm, Joseph Ferrara of Sellsius Real Estate Blog will give advice for how to build a successful real estate blog, promote yourself on social networking sites and increase your online presence.  Joseph was just named by Inman News as one of 25 Most Influential Real Estate Bloggers list for 2008.

Their time and advice is FREE to booth visitors so make sure to stop by and learn some valuable advice from two guys who really know their stuff!

Let us know you are coming by emailing me at blog@homegain.com.  Also, if you are a HomeGain customer who is planning to come by our booth, you can RSVP for your FREE GIFT now by emailing me in advance.

We look forward to seeing you there!

We’re pleased to announce our 2008-2009 Advisors Group and welcome our latest member, Mike Farmer.

Over the past year, since the Advisors group was initiated, we have received invaluable insight into our real estate products. By continuing to meet with this influential group of agents and brokers, we will be further enabled to focus on bringing improved customer service as well as enhancements to our marketing solutions that we provide to other real estate professionals.

Advisors have also recognized the exclusive group as an opportunity to network with each other, brainstorm and strategize.

As the 13th member of the HomeGain Advisors Group, Mike will join the original 12 members from the 2007-2008 Advisors, which includes: Continue reading this post

As a guy who does search engine marketing, I believe in testing. I test a lot.

During a typical week, I will visit quite a few real estate websites. This past week, I took the opportunity while visiting them to “Mystery Shop” 50 of them. I was not mystery shopping to see who had the prettiest website or the coolest interface, or the most search criteria.

I was simply registering with my name, phone number and email address to see who called me back first. This post is a BASIC report of what I found.

(Note: I am going to do a more detailed study on many more sites in about 2 months for publication – if you would like a copy of that study, shoot me an email! – it should be out in December / January and I would be happy to share it with you. It is going to not only include how quickly people responded, but HUNDREDS of examples of their responses as well).

Out of the 50 real estate websites that I registered for, I did not receive a callback or contact at all on 27 of them. (I was STUNNED at that one.) Nine of them called me back within two hours. By the end of 24 hours Continue reading this post

Last week we kicked off the Lives of the Realtors series. So far we have heard from two amazing individuals, Ryan Ward and Mitch Ribak.

Later this week we will be publishing the past life of Phoenix Real Estate Guy, Jay Thompson.

Jay has had an interesting background prior to becoming a successful Realtor and one of the country’s top bloggers.

We will also be launching a new series about Realtors – A Day in the Life.
In the new series we will ask Realtors to talk about their current day to day practices, business philosophies, work habits, office set up and other daily items that make up a Realtors’ life.

Stay tuned, better yet, subscribe to the HomeGain Real Estate Blog.

Louis Cammarosano

Continue reading this post