Cushman & Wakefield is the world’s largest privately held real estate services firm. The company operates nearly 100 owned and alliance offices in the United States with access to more than 12,000 employees globally. Cushman & Wakefield’s brokerage and services professionals are the most trusted in the industry, typically involved in the largest, most complex assignments in major business centres. They offer expertise in all aspects of real estate – from buying, selling, financing, leasing, managing and valuing properties, to providing strategic planning, research, portfolio analysis, site selection and space location assistance, among many other consulting services.
Cushman & Wakefield had migrated to a new CMS platform for its online offering. It was therefore crucial that its marketing agency, Concep understood this technology. This migration caused Cushman & Wakefield to rethink its strategy around access to information. Previously, the business had given its valuable content and information for free to anyone who wanted access. Part of the challenge was in how to get customers to understand the value inherent in previously freely available information and to reposition Cushman & Wakefield as thought leaders.
Delivering knowledge
Concep developed a global communications strategy to drive users to register at Cushman & Wakefield’s newly developed Knowledge Center. The marketing agency also developed a microsite featuring examples of content that mirrored some of what is within the Knowledge Center. The microsite was designed to be highly search friendly, including linking, meta-tagging and keyword density. Both the microsite and the email template were designed by Concep to create a seamless and consistent brand journey from initial click-through through to final registration and advancement into the Knowledge Center.
This was a global campaign that encompassed various regional components. Content within the Knowledge Center and microsite is English language, yet emails could be customised to the local language without compromising global brand identity.
The campaign strategy identified processes for deepening customer relationships. To support long sales cycles, Concep identified the most effective means in terms of both channel and frequency – of delivering content on an ongoing basis to the target audiences. A key challenge in developing this element of the campaign strategy was effective measurement and conversion tracking.
Results
The campaign’s first month in November 2007 generated 6701 new registrations, of which 75 per cent have signed up to receive email communications. New registrations averaged 119 per day. The email campaign ran globally, across Asia, the Americas and EMEA. In the three months (September through to November 2007) since the launch of the Knowledge Center there has been an 86 per cent increase documents downloaded. This provides Cushman & Wakefield with a strong base from which to grow customer relationships, to gain greater audience insight, to develop more sophisticated communication strategies to manage high value, long sales cycles.
Concep is now aiming for a fully segmented database. There is also a focus on extending the campaign offline, to engage with numerous existing touch points that constitute Cushman & Wakefield’s marketing mix. An example would be to utilise presence within high value publications such as American Express Centurion Black.
