Lomond is one of the largest property groups in the UK; with over 100 estate agency branches, 1200 employees, and 42,000 properties under its management.
They have grown massively in recent years, primarily though acquisitions of estate agents all over the UK. This has created challenges though – especially when it comes to marketing. How for instance do you standardise websites for 12+ brands across a group, while bringing in consistently high leads from all of them?
A key answer to that question is Leadoo!
We sat down with Sophie Meijer, Head of Communications at Lomond, to discuss how Leadoo has become an essential part of the Group’s lead generation strategy.
Getting Started With DJ Alexander 🏴
At the end of 2022, Lomond was evaluating conversational website tech for their landmark Scottish brand – DJ Alexander. You can read all about our results with that brand here – including a 159% increase in qualified website leads.
Ironically, Lomond were not even looking at conversational tech for lead generation originally. The bigger priority was reducing their customer service burden. In the month before Leadoo was implemented, DJ Alexander received a staggering 250,000 calls into their contact centre!
As Sophie explains: “with DJ Alexander, we initially wanted Leadoo to streamline and ease the pressure on Customer Service. But after the first couple of months of results, we realised it could be a major valuation and landlord lead generation tool for our entire group.”
“At the time, DJ Alexander was also the only brand that had our new website design. When we saw how well Leadoo performed with it, we knew we had to rapidly incorporate Leadoo into new website planning for all of our brands as standard.”
Due to the instant qualified lead spike, this was not exactly a hard sell. Sophie recalls: “when we presented DJ’s results at board level, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a demand for tech among the other partners in the group!”
Instant Lead Gen Success 🚀
That success was replicated almost immediately across the group. Across all 12 brands, on average there was a 48% increase in qualified website leads in the 3 months after went Leadoo live, compared to the 3 months prior.
This almost 50% increase in quarterly leads was also remarkably consistent across agents covering different areas of the country. Brighton-focused Brand Vaughan saw a 41% increase; while Hardisty and Co in Yorkshire was up 125%; and Matthews of Chester increased by 111%.
And it’s not just the quantity of leads. The ability to pre-qualify enquiries through Leadoo bots is generating higher quality leads and business efficiencies. Linley & Simpson, the largest brand within Lomond, have seen particularly notable benefits from implementing Leadoo tools. As Sophie explains:
“Their leads go into a business generation team, rather than to branch. So when you’ve got people whose job it is to go through every single lead, it makes their life so much easier that they can see the users full conversation history with a Leadoo bot. Especially all the questions around valuation, like numbers of bedrooms, age of the property, etc.”
This extra information the team can see from leads is powering tangibly higher win rates. Linley & Simpson’s enquiry close rate for property valuations went from 70% the year before Leadoo, to 82% now. So not only are they getting more enquiries, but they are closing them at a higher percentage.
Tangibly improving Customer Experience 🤝
Aside from this influx of qualified valuation and landlord leads, Sophie and the team have seen another major benefit from Leadoo – positive customer experiences.
As she explains, this was sometimes discovered indirectly: “we rolled out to John Shepherd with the view of specifically increasing valuation leads.”
“What we saw though, was that yes we were getting more qualified leads in, but we also noticeably reduced the number of support & tenant phone enquiries in a short space of time.”
This has tied into a wider business objective for the group – creating a positive phone culture. Which for Sophie and the team, is paramount:
“Across all of our businesses, we want to create a positive phone culture. Estate agency is about people. So we don’t want tech to replace our people. If you ring up, or go into one of our high street branches, we want you to have a positive experience with a member of staff – whatever your enquiry is.”
“But, if your staff are constantly answering phone calls, this becomes very difficult. On DJ Alexander for example, we received 250,000 phone calls the month before we implemented Leadoo. That’s unsustainable, especially if your goal is to have a positive phone culture.”
“Once we started with Leadoo, that number dropped by well over half immediately. Because people could answer their own questions, book their own viewings, or report their issues through the website instantly. A better experience for them, and obviously much easier for our staff to create a more positive phone culture by not being inundated with calls.”
The Future For Lomond ⏩
Lomond’s marketing operations have grown rapidly in the last couple of years. With Sophie and the team putting in place everything from new brand strategies, to website templates, to lead tracking systems for all brands within the group.
Particularly when it comes to lead generation though, Leadoo has been a truly transformative part of the puzzle. As Sophie explains:
“We are not reliant on Rightmove anymore for valuation enquiries. Every single one of our 12 brands now receive more enquiries through Leadoo, than through portals like Rightmove.”
Aside from lead generation, another massive success with Leadoo across the group has been to survey our landlords to gather invaluable feedback on their experience with our brands.
Many estate agencies only talk to landlords once a year, but Lomond use Leadoo bots as surveys for all their landlords throughout the year. These get far higher response rates than traditional email or message based surveys. As Sophie explains:
“This completely changed our mindset as a business. It’s been amazing to see our property management teams go from largely only talking to landlords when it’s time to renew for the year, or to handle and issues, to actively gauging their feedback every quarter. It’s all down to the tech we use. Every Lomond brand is now doing this. And this transformed customer engagement and retention has arguably been as important for us as the extra lead generation.”
As for any business growing and evolving so quickly, continued change and innovation is paramount. For Sophie, “the last two years have been incredible in terms of what we’ve been able to achieve with website performance across the group. But we’re not stopping now.”
“From Leadoo, the CS team of Helen, Gavin and Sofia could not have been more helpful with getting us quickly set up, integrated, and seeing improvements. Now though, our team members are increasingly hands-on with Leadoo as a platform and the data that comes from it. So even though the increase in leads has been fantastic, we are going to keep working together in the platform to drive new efficiencies and results.”
