Surge Homes is a recognized innovator as a Houston new home builder. With much fanfare in late 2014, Surge Homes announced over 10 anticipated homesites around the Houston inner loop and surrounding areas. What makes Surge different is they ask customers what they want in a new home before breaking ground. Surge Homes gave their prospects a great voice to rate homesite locations, external renderings, floorplans, design finishes, and more. Surge used this valuable data to nurture customers with 1:1 messaging, measure what customers wanted in their homes, and prioritize homesites based on their popularity. This valuable business data not only maximizes Surge's revenues, but results in customer delight and high home values. All of Surge's custom website features were built in HubSpot and would not have been possible without the HubSpot expertise of LyntonWeb.
Building Rating Functionality in HubSpot
To build rating functionality using the HubSpot platform, we made use of custom form styling and form redirects. We created HTML elements that populated hidden HubSpot fields through jQuery events throughout the site to provide optimal styling and function. On the initial form, the redirect URL property of the form is updated on every rating entered to ensure the user is moved through ratings sequentially. After submitting this form, the user is sent to their highest rated property site. On property site pages, we used the HubSpot API to get and set the redirect to the user's next highest rated site.
All of the survey data is stored in HubSpot, but also syncs to a custom Salesforce object which included important information both for reporting needs and sales team access. LyntonWeb built a custom Salesforce integration using Scribe Online which processed the HubSpot data into Surge's custom Salesforce objects.
Building Login/Registration Functionality in HubSpot
Surge's website also included a user portal that allowed users to login/register on the website with their information. We used the client’s email address to pass along identity providing a “Your Favorites” area where the user could save properties in their portal they were interested in. With this feature users could subsequently login to add or remove properties in the process of making their home buying decision.
To help streamline the decision-making process, we eliminated the linear aspect of Surge's website and implemented a new property search feature that displays which properties meet a user’s search criteria. The new property site page makes use of a macro to customize the image slider as a more immediate response to updating the user’s property interests. On the property site page, the user can mark which property types and floorplans they may wish to explore for future home buying decisions through AJAX form submissions, which provides immediate confirmation of their decision and allows them to continue viewing the page they are on without a redirect.
Process Drives Technology
I've simplified some of the technical details here but I think the takeaway is that we listened to the vision Surge Homes had for selling properties online and then let that vision and process drive how we built out their site. We knew the benefits of HubSpot as a marketing automation platform but also didn't want to be limited by any technology. Through our technology and marketing efforts we were able to generate 2,557 leads for Surge Homes in 60 days with a 12.7% conversion rate.
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