New sales and marketing processes enabled growth

In new construction, project financing is often conditional on at least half of the apartments being pre-booked before the construction even starts. This gives the financier a practical guarantee that there is interest in the project and that the financial risks are manageable. The aim is to get the public excited and dreaming about a project that is only a few months away from being built at the time of booking. In addition to dreaming, potential buyers must also be able to commit to a relatively large financial investment. After all, buying a home is the biggest purchase of a lifetime for many families.

Westpro lacked a way to demonstrate the link between marketing activities and succesful sales. Blink Helsinki worked with Westpro to create a new data-driven model where the effectiveness of different measures and channels can be seen more or less in real time. Now Westpro reaches the right people at the right time. In addition, different buyer personas can be served in a personalised way.

"In the same property, we can have a family with children, a pensioner or an investor, all of whom are buying an apartment for different reasons. Therefore, the communication and service models must also be different for different target audiences." says Suvi Lukjanov of Westpro.

Identifying a specific persona and determining their position in the buyer's journey, based on a web visitor's behavior, allows for a more personalized approach. Despite the fact that the service is largely automated and relies on pre-defined treatment models, each potential customer can still receive tailored experience.

"The technology chosen was HubSpot, which enables data-driven marketing to be done efficiently. Leads can be captured better and nurtured in an automated way so that Westpro is always relevant and present at the right moment throughout the months-long buying process." says Antti Tolonen, Managing Director of Blink Helsinki.

The new approach allows valuable leads to be identified at an early stage. Leads can be more accurately qualified and nurtured in an automated way further down the buying process. This allows sales to focus on serving the highest potential customers.

"This has been a really exciting case. The product and the goals set are wonderfully concrete and tangible. The apartments have to sell. It's great to see how people can be inspired and activated in something as big as buying a home," says Antti Tolonen.

"Sales predictability and efficiency have improved dramatically. In addition, marketing is now based on factual information. We can see directly which channels or measures are working and which are not," Lukjanov adds:

"As a change from before, the benefits of marketing actions taken are now cumulative for future measures thanks to HubSpot CRM, which was implemented during the project.  We may have a potential buyer who, for one reason or another, decides not to buy the apartment on offer. However, the same person may have a home purchase in mind for one of our other construction projects. This person stays in the loop with CRM, and we can use automation to identify when they will be active again."

The first property to benefit from the new operating model in its marketing and sales was Portus - a residential building that went on sale at the beginning of the year 2018 in Verkkosaarenranta, Helsinki.

"50% of the available units were reserved in just 7 days, which is an unprecedented result when you consider that the price per square metre of the apartments for sale is significantly higher than average," says Tolonen.

"And of course all this meant significant changes for us internally. The work has become much more efficient, which is reflected not only in the most obvious financial benefits but also in increased motivation at work," says Suvi Lukjanov.

By monitoring the effectiveness of the different channels in real time, we were able to shift marketing efforts to those channels that were most effective. This allowed us to achieve an input-output ratio of more than 80 times higher than before!