Dear Valued Subscriber
Welcome to the SAHometraders Newsletter for February. The start of a calendar year usually shows an increase in activity in the property market - and this year was no different. Our web report for January showed that the SAHometraders sites had 234,577 visitors who viewed 1,564,065 pages against the 125,595 visitors who viewed 876,881 pages in December 2008. We also noted a 3% drop in foreign visitors to our site, which could possibly be contributed to the extremely weak economical conditions in the UK and America.
Locally, property prices keep slipping but its not all doom and gloom. The latest FNB Residential Property Barometer showed that the average time a property stayed on the market improved from 20 weeks to around 15 weeks, and the number of first-time buyers is up from 12% to 17%.
More good news is that the Reserve Bank has cut the interest rate by 100 basis points, bringing it down to 10.5%. Not only does this show confidence in the local property market but it will definitely take the pressure of mortgage payers, and help increase affordability for those looking to buy their first homes.
This newsletter contains:
- Updates on current activity,
- Information on our cutting-edge new features,
- Advice on technical issues.
At SAHometraders, our goal is to provide quality lead generation from our national site by meeting the demand for inventive forms of advertising with progressive online marketing ideas and state-of-the-art design features. If you have any queries regarding our various products or services, please don’t hesitate to contact us: sales@sahometraders.co.za
Yours in Online Marketing
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Click here to find out more about our
Marketing Services...
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| Subscriber Update |
Regional Sites Extend Your Reach |
At the moment SAHometraders has 20 Regional Sites including sites for all major cities including Pretoria, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, Nelspruit and Port Elizabeth. Other regions sites include popular residential suburbs in Gauteng like Sandton, Roodepoort, Krugersdorp, Randburg, Edenvale, Midrand and Alberton. Centurion will be added to this list soon. We also have sites for the various travel regions in South Africa including KwaZulu Natal’s North and South Coast, the Garden Route, the Overberg, the Winelands and the West Coast. This means that in addition to listing your various properties on the national site, they are listed dynamically on the relevant regional sites, targeting area specific search criteria on the search engines and making your product reach even more extensive.
Just one more way that SAHometraders is working for you!
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Dynamic Feeds = More Exposure |
When you list a property on SAHometraders, you take advantage of the many benefits of Internet Marketing, one of them being superior cost-effectiveness. Your property will also reach a far bigger audience than conventional advertising, while it will be available to view for a longer time than printed ads. With our dynamic feeds to PropertyGenie, Gravity and IOL Property, you reap all the rewards of using Internet Marketing – times three. PropertyGenie is an online property search portal, focusing mainly on residential property for sale in South Africa. They are currently charging a monthly subscription fee of R280. Gravity is South Africa’s first and only property search engine while IOL Property pulls all the online property ads as well as printed ads onto one site. These two sites are currently free, but we will notify should they start charging a monthly fee. SAHometraders (and all its regional sites), together with these 3 dynamic feeds will give your property the maximum exposure while you put in the minimum effort and time. Now that’s a great deal!
Should your agency wish to be included in the feed to PropertyGenie, please contact us or send an e-mail to support
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Introducing a New Partner |
As always, SAHometraders is proud to introduce you to an affiliate partner that we think would mutually benefit both our valued clients. This month we feature YesBookIt – a company designed specifically to meet the needs of Real Estate Holiday Letting Agents and Property Managers, helping them to streamline the booking processes by reducing emails and phone calls. With YesBookIt’s online availability and reservation system, your visitors can see instant availability and price, make bookings online 24/7 and pay deposits – all in one place. For more information For more information click here.
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We Welcome a New Addition to the Team |
SAHometraders would like to extend a warm welcome to the newest member of the SAHometraders family. Densi Mabote will be dealing with admin and support issues at our Johannesburg office. Contact her at adminjhb@sahometraders.co.za
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We Welcome Aboard |
With the challenging property market urging agents to be more pro-active in order to survive, it is vital that you take advantage of technology and in particular Internet Marketing. Multiple listings on the SAHometraders portal and affiliated sites provide extensive reach, but having your own website designed is the ultimate tool, allowing you to take advantage of the many benefits of Internet Marketing while you showcase your entire portfolio of property.
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SAHometraders would like to welcome the following new members on board:
- Treoc Letting Roodepoort
- Edenvale Properties
- Vibrant Properties
- ERA Centurion
- ERA Steer Blaauwberg
- Dormehl Property Group Parrow
- Dormehl Property Group Bellville
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- 08600Remax
- Brian Reed Properties
- Cottages and Mansions
- Grotto Bay Properties
- Nation Housing
- Dormehl Property Group Pretoria East
- Dormehl Property Group Waverly
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| New Features |
Get More From Your Enquiry Reports |
We have added yet another useful feature to our back office. To see how many enquiries an individual agent had, simply log into the back office and click on Reports. Select the date-range you want to check and then use the dropdown menu to select an agent. Click GO to view the report. The same can be done for types of properties. |
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Delete Featured Properties |
If you are the owner of a personalized, cost-effective site hosted by SAHometraders, you will be glad to know that you can now delete your featured properties from the list in the back office. Just log into the back office and scroll down to Featured Property Delete to do this. You can select a new Featured Property under Property Admin. It’s that easy… |
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Missing Out By Not Sending Brochures? |
Sending brochures is the ideal way to do the necessary e-mail marketing. It is quick, effortless and above all - FREE! Simply use your contacts to identify potential buyers, write a short message, and hit send. This is not the only use for brochures. It can also be used to thank sellers for their mandates while this also acts as a presentation of what their property looks like on our site. Once again - it is quick, easy and 100% FREE. |
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| Technical Issues |
What is Happening with the Server |
Since December we have been experiencing some problems with our server, which resulted in a slower response time when browsing any of our website, or while working in the back office. As soon as we diagnosed the problem we began putting systems/software in place to stop the errors that’s been causing the problem. We continue to monitor irregularities and errors caused by users entering the wrong data, and although this is an on-going process we believe that we have seen the back of these problems.
We have found that most issues arise when uploading or replacing images. This urged us to restrict the file size of an image to 100kb, which is more than adequate for the size of images displayed on our site. This will speed up the uploading process and save you costly bandwidth – thus saving your time and money.
To make this easy for you, we have created an easy-to-follow user guide with step-by-step instructions on how to resize/compress images to meet these restrictions. Please click here for a copy of the guide. |
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Don't Break the Chain |
Have you had the problem with images in the Gallery showing in the back office but not on the site? This might be because you deleted an image without replacing it with a new one – hence breaking the chain of images. If you delete the first or the last image in your gallery you won’t have a problem, but deleting an image that breaks the chain will cause your images to show in the back office but not on the website/s. Replacing images instead of deleting them will solve your problem. |
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| Marketing Services |
National Site: SA Hometraders has over 600 subscribers, marketing 35000 properties for sale, 4000 rentals and a selection of farms, businesses and commercial developments.
Database of Contacts: This database consists of past and potential clients with whom you wish to remain in regular contact. Ideally, the list should be expanded and updated on an ongoing basis.
Product Range:
- List Management
- Monthly/Quarterly Newsletter
- Electronic Signatures
- Newsflashes
- Various SMS Options
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We would be happy to design an appropriate package to suit your particular needs. Should you be in the process of setting up a similar arrangement elsewhere, please don’t hesitate to contact us for a competitive option.
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