Simple, Cost-Effective Ways to Produce Professional-Quality Marketing Materials

Simple, Cost-Effective Ways to Produce Professional-Quality Marketing Materials (continued)

Sharper Agent

Year Founded: 2002
Licensed users: 20,000 (source: company website as of April 24, 2008)
Types of products supported: flyers, brochures, virtual tours, newsletters, postcards, , greeting cards, gift items, and more
Integrated distribution options: print, download, web, email
Custom options: text, images and layout fully customizable
For more information: http://www.sharperagent.com

Summary: If Imprev is the Starbucks of turnkey real estate marketing providers, Sharper Agent is the Tully’s. It seems to have modeled its product offering after Imprev (which entered the market a couple of years before Sharper Agent). Based on user feedback as well as number of licensed users, Sharper Agent seems to be a distant second, with ease of use and quality of design being the primary areas of user dissatisfaction. When Sharper Agent wins, it’s because an agent uses Sharper Agent’s contact management features.

Description: At first blush, Sharper Agent looks a lot like Imprev. Both offer an online interface from which agents can access thousands of design templates for thing like flyers, virtual tours, brochures, emails, postcards, gift items, etc. Both charge an annual fee to access their systems, and although the fee is structured somewhat differently, it’s very comparable.

On closer look, there are a number of areas where Sharper Agent’s offering does not appear to be as strong:

Ease of use: Users on real estate discussion site Active Rain have said things like “Sharper Agent is hard to use” and “never got the hang of it.” Sharper Agent’s interface allows users to change layout and other items that most template providers would treat as fixed, and this seems to cause confusion rather than deliver convenience. Sharper Agent’s interface requires installation of an additional Adobe plug-in and only runs in Internet Explorer – it will not run in Firefox, Safari or other browsers.
Quality of design: Sharper Agent does not appear to have invested as much in design as a provider like Imprev. It tends to take a single design and then change a single element of it (i.e.: background color) and call the second option a separate design. Oftentimes, it will use fixed text and count the same design with different fixed text as two separate designs. For example, the exact same design will be used under a “Just Listed” heading and again under a “Just Sold” heading.

The primary functional difference between the two services is what Sharper Agent bills as an eCRM. This might be a little bit of an overstatement, but the system does allow upload of contacts and some automation of drip campaigns in print and email to that contact list. It is not a full-fledged CRM, and if that’s what you’re looking for, you may want to look at Top Producer or Salesforce.com, both of which are designed to track a sales prospect through the sales pipeline.

Sharper Agent also has some interesting products, including localized offerings such sports calendars. They offer stock content for newsletters, which can create some nice time-savings. They also have some stock materials in Spanish.

Bottom-line: If integration between your collateral and a basic contact management system is important to you, then this may be a good choice. Their 30-day free trial introductory offer automatically turns into an annual contract if it is not cancelled within that 30-day window, so be sure to evaluate the functionality carefully within those 30 days and make sure that it will meet your needs.

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