For more than 40 years, Mid-America Real Estate Corporation has been a leader in Midwest retail real estate. Its marketing workflow didn't match that reputation, though. Listings took days to code, brokers were hard to find online, and buyer interest was scattered across inboxes and spreadsheets. Discover how Buildout gave Mid-America one connected system for marketing, lead flow, and CRM, and gave its brokers more time to spend with clients.
Having marketing, lead flow, and CRM processes all in one system actually frees up our brokers to spend more time prospecting new clients.
Before Buildout, getting a single listing to market was slow. "We actually had a team of administrators who worked with a third-party team that we had all the way out in Arizona, to code a listing," explains Olivia Palmer, Senior Marketing Director at Mid-America. "It would take a day or two to get that managed and up and ready to go. And once it was live, then it was on our brokers to distribute that URL that it would create."
The rest of the process was just as manual. Email blasts went out one at a time through Outlook, and buyer interest was tracked in inboxes and what Olivia calls "dead Excel spreadsheets."
The biggest cost was visibility. "If somebody searched for Mid-America 15 years ago, our name might have come up in the search results, but virtually none of our property listings," Olivia says.
"We have so many experts in the industry working for Mid-America, and it's what makes us great," she adds. "And it was really unfortunate for us that anybody searching to learn more about a broker or an opportunity in their area, it wouldn't be able to find it because we just didn't have any SEO strategy in place."
Mid-America didn't need another standalone tool. It needed its marketing, listings, contacts, and buyer interest connected in one place. Buildout brought all of that into a single platform, from publishing listings and sending e-blasts to managing confidentiality agreements and capturing leads automatically.
"Having an all-in-one system gives us a single source of truth," Olivia says. "We're able to pop open our platform and see the full snapshot of the deal process from A to Z. It allows us to work more efficiently and take more properties to market."
Automating the day-to-day work also changed how the firm staffs its teams. "With Buildout, we've been able to take a deeper look into how we structure our teams," Olivia explains. "And with Buildout automating a lot of our day-to-day tasks, we've been able to look into hiring more graphic design and marketing-based personnel."
What once took a day or two now takes minutes. "To get a listing live in Buildout, it takes me about ten minutes to get ready to go to market," Olivia says. At that pace, she can get as many as 50 properties live in a single day.
Mid-America's teams have moved from three administrators each to one marketing lead and one dedicated graphic designer, putting that budget toward marketing expertise instead of manual work. Its brokers and listings now show up in search, and buyer interest is captured automatically instead of being tracked by hand.
The biggest winners are the brokers. "Having marketing, lead flow and CRM processes all in one system actually frees up our brokers to spend more time on prospecting new clients," Olivia says.
Her advice to other firms is simple: "I would highly recommend switching to Buildout because it's an all-in-one software."
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