High quality real estate leads thanks to big data and artificial intelligence
Immowi developed a unique algorithm to increase the quality of online property leads. Anton De Clercq started two years ago on his own. Today he is active in five countries and dozens of large international project developers have already called on Immowi for more than 600 real estate projects. The start-up has just launched its new online platform and is now ready to break through internationally.
An estimated 40% of Flemish house hunters receive advertisements on Instagram Ads and Facebook Ads for real estate projects that lie far outside their field of interest or budget. Ghent-based start-up Immowi has found a solution to this problem. Using an algorithm they developed themselves, property sellers get in touch with the right prospective buyers faster. And with success: no fewer than 35% of the leads that reach real estate players through Immowi lead to an appointment. That is a lot more than with traditional online campaigns. The start-up has only been in existence for two years but is already active in five countries, hopes to reach €1 million in turnover this year and seems ready for an international breakthrough.
Everyone knows them: various spam ads for real estate projects that appear on your Facebook timeline or among Instagram feeds. They are often far outside your field of interest or completely irrelevant at the moment. An estimated 40% of Flemish house hunters have to deal with this: the type of house is not what they want, the house is not in the region they are looking for or the selling price does not fit the budget at all. As a result, the search for a new home does not go any smoother.
Immowi, a Ghent-based proptech company, has now developed a tool for this. Through data analysis and their unique algorithm, it helps property developers and estate agents to detect more precisely what house hunters or investors are looking for and through which channels they want to find their dream home. As soon as a prospective buyer indicates through his or her surfing behaviour what type of home he or she prefers, in which city it is ideally located and what budget he or she has, this comes on to the radar of project developers thanks to Immowi.
With all this information, they have a better view of their target group, and can advertise in a much more targeted and personal way or – if the prospective buyer gives permission – contact them immediately for an appointment. And with success: more than 35% of the leads that project developers receive from Immowi actually lead to an appointment.
“In Belgium, there are about 1,300 companies active in real estate. They all have the same goal: to sell their housing projects. But when it comes to online advertising, they often go wrong. They misjudge their target group and therefore shoot too much at random. We match the online surfing and clicking behaviour of a house hunter with the most important properties of a real estate project. Subsequently, this house hunter receives the personalised advertisements on the channels where he is most active”, explains Anton De Clercq, founder of Immowi.
Breakthrough
Barely one and a half years after its launch, Immowi works for 75 international project developers and has already helped put more than 600 residential projects in the spotlight. This makes the start-up a pioneer in generating real estate leads in our country. The ambition of founder De Clercq is great. He wants to exceed €1 million in turnover by 2021 and in the short term grow into one of the largest lead generators in Belgium and abroad. In order to add weight to these ambitions, the company is launching MyImmowi. This is the first fully automated lead generation platform for the real estate sector. Via an online dashboard, built-in automations, alerts and handy tips, project developers can manage and follow all incoming leads themselves.
“With this platform, we are focusing on the two most important areas in a real estate company: marketing and sales. Immowi is the first and immediately the largest data and software company in our country that brings both large and small property developers and estate agents more quickly into contact with the right buyers for their projects. We are the only player working with a CRM system developed in-house that uses built-in automation to actively search for new potential buyers,” says Anton De Clercq.
The start-up is active in Belgium, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal, and De Clercq is constantly analysing how Immowi can still grow internationally. To accelerate this growth, a capital round was recently launched with the financing advisors of The Harbour. The company will soon move into Buro 532, a coworking space in Ghent, and is constantly looking at ways to expand its team.