Background

RE/MAX Commercial Focus specializes in all of the major sectors of commercial real estate including retail, industrial, investment, office, land and multi-unit residential. RE/MAX Commercial Focus (RCF) turned to Loofah Communications, who in turn hired traffic, to design an HTML email guerrilla recruiting campaign that drip-marketed Toronto, ICI brokers via cost-effective, electronic communication collateral.

Design Goal and Objectives

• Educate the target market about the opportunities for autonomy, control, quality of life and personal/financial reward available at RCF;
• Position RCF as an elite member of the RE/MAX family of agents and build upon Neil Warshafsky’s (lead broker) excellent personal reputation
• Position RCF as THE place to work;
• Reposition RE/MAX International as a strong and viable commercial player;
• Launch a cost-effective ‘web centric’ recruiting campaign and develop ‘hot’ leads (ultimate goal to recruit 13-15 ICI agents in the Central Toronto location by the end of 2002); and, Create ‘buzz’ in the ICI community

Challenges

• Establish a compelling, hard-hitting, guerrilla recruiting campaign that would appeal to sophisticated, highly specialized, senior commercial real estate sales professionals.
• Cut through the clutter for those pressed for time (short attention spans), and address the mild to overt dissatisfaction with their existing remuneration package and the amount of support that brokers received.

Design Solution

traffic designed a series of 7 electronic and print postcards that raised awareness about RE/MAX Commercial Focus, and facilitated a receptive ear among the ICI brokers to hearing more about why they should make the move to RE/MAX Commercial Focus Inc.

A ‘web-centric’ marketing strategy – pushed key recruiting messages out to the ICI target group via HTML e-mail and pulled potential recruits via a ‘hotlink’ to a web site where they could request a confidential interview with the Broker/Owners.

Results

RE/MAX Commercial established the ‘buzz’ that they were looking for and the leads that would allow the Company to grow – all within the 90-day campaign. RE/MAX has now grown to 35 agents.

This successful campaign was recognized by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) with a 2002 Ovation Award of Merit for Communication Skills in the Division/Category: Electronic and Interactive Communications.