CMAEON™ - Connected Market Enterprise On-Demand

Loreto Bay goes from the drawing board ‘start up’ to big business in 24 months:
10 people and $0 to $300 million in sales with the CMAEON Connected Market Enterprise On-Demand™ platform.

Loreto Bay had drawn the renderings of a $2 Billion resort on the Baja peninsula, from a small office in Victoria BC, Canada.  The idea was to turn eight miles of beach front property into an environmentally friendly, "Sustainable Development” community.  Under the direction of founder David Butterfield, the community would grace the shores of the Baja.

The project was literally still on the drawing board, when we met them,” says Tim Vasko, founder and Chief Strategy Officer of CMAEON™.  When they asked me "what do you do”, I said "we take companies like yours off of the idea board and bring them to the web - using our technology and support team. My answer was a bit tongue-in-cheek  I had only met David because we were negotiating to buy our CMAEON™ corporate offices in one of his developments.  But David, being a visionary, said "you’re on, we’ve got 10 people now, and we’ll have a hundred by the end of the year …let’s get started.”

The CMAEON™ team started by visiting Loreto’s brand new location in Scottsdale Arizona and sitting down with the two people in charge of coordinating their sales force  each had their own ideas of how things should be done, and their own contact management systems.  The sales force was comprised of elite real estate sales agents who all came from different backgrounds, and technology experience (Outlook, Act, Siebel).  They were there for one reason: the opportunity to sell a ton of real estate and make commissions in a new, very unique development.  The problem was that it wasn’t an easy sale to implement. 

The Loreto Bay Company were selling Mexican real estate through a trust, with very special mortgages or alternatively, for cash.  They needed to attract people to the site, get a deposit from potential buyers, before they traveled, process their travel payments, and then get them on the Alaska Airlines charter flights (there were no routes directly into Loreto at the time).

Loreto began with paper and interviews.  From Erin, the stubborn sales person who hated the idea of anything new for handling contacts, to JT (bursting with enthusiasm for anything to make his sales go better); CMAEON™ started with its process of examining what the company needed and what the sales force needed.  The next step was to look at marketing possibilities, from Google AdWords, to the off-line, and PR - where Loreto had hired one of the biggest agencies in the business.

What resulted was a ‘sale drip’ process that took each and every lead through the CMAEON Marketing Focus Filter™ system.  The sales process had to be on a common platform with the marketing direction of the company.  CMAEON™ had to help Loreto fill the pipe with leads quickly (to support their costly sales staff), and remain true to the brand image of Loreto’s sustainable development.  The technology had to control the process, and involve the administrative staff through all of the steps: from lead generation, to deposit, to travel, to the ultimate goal of selling a house priced between $200,000 and $500,000.

The first phase was wild and successful at the same time.  With all of the separate components team members worked like dogs to make happen:

I spent every day working with CMAEON™, perfecting the system.  I would get suggestions and comments from every side” said Carol, head of marketing and sales support.  "I had to take every suggestion and get with the CMAEON™ strategist to communicate the need.  CMAEON™ would come back with a new user screen that addressed everything from a color preference to an actual change in process.  It was a four month process, but by the time we had perfected the first round, we were all surprised to tally the results, $20million in new sales!”

The CMAEON Connected Market Space™ for Loreto Bay’s development was born.  With each iteration, CMAEON™ created new on-demand tools for Loreto Bay.  "We never gave them a generic solution – that wouldn’t have worked,” says Tim Vasko of CMAEON™.  "We looked at what Loreto was doing, predicted where they would be next, and delivered the tools they needed at the time - almost immediately (within a few weeks) so they could keep up their amazing sales pace.” 

As the Loreto Bay Company grew, CMAEON™ integrated Direct Mail, Public Relations, tracked extended Google AdWords campaigns, and customized and personalized their content for email marketing.  CMAEON™ added reports to pin point the optimal spending on marketing sources for leads and buyers.

At one point I received a call explaining that Prudential wanted to get into the game and start marketing Loreto to their prospects,” said Vasko. "I took it to our development team and we added the affiliate module system, to deliver the leads into the same process, and generate commission reports and stage results for the Prudential source.”

The affiliate system quickly became one of their most cost effective tools for converting leads to buyers.

When I joined Loreto Bay, the CMAEON™ system was already in full use.  I brought in a coordinated marketing program for the company who had already sold $100 million in real estate,” said Debra Stevens, VP Marketing for Loreto.  "The CMAEON™ group worked with our entire Agency network - providing detailed metrics and reports while constantly improving our outbound e-mail communications.  They even laid out the newsletters and before we had any graphics or copy resources in house.  It was great to have this resource.  They never slowed down or said it couldn’t be done, they just did it - and it was a great success!”

"I consider Loreto one of our greatest achievements to date,” says Tim Vasko.  "The challenge of keeping them going at the pace they were on, supporting over 50 GB of data per day.  The challenge was not only a technological and scalability challenge, but also a marketing and management challenge.  It worked so amazingly well for Loreto, I wonder why every developer on the planet doesn’t scrap their old sales strategy and get into a Connected Market Enterprise platform.  Given the groups we’re working with now, I suspect the most savvy will.”