Foxtons has revealed that its self-built online home valuation tool is now the key way it drives vendor leads, rather than property portal enquiries or more traditional marketing techniques such as newspaper advertising.

During an interview with media company E-consultancy, its Head of Digital Marketing Chris Kelly also reveals other key parts of the company’s marketing strategy.

This includes a new online system that enables Kelly to see how many of its website visitors convert to an instruction, and that the company has spent two years developing its online valuation widget.

“As this is our primary lead generation tool, conversion rate is a metric we constantly look at and is an area where we’re always looking to improve,” says Kelly (left).

This is typical of Foxtons, which rather than buying in third party software and services for its website, develops them in-house.

He also reveals that Foxtons has completed a six-month overhaul of how it communicates with actual and prospective customers online, and that is has been spending considerable sums sending out online marketing campaigns over the past six months.

Foxtons audience

“We’ve started segmenting audiences, too, so understanding what type of content resonates with a particular audience is crucial,” he says.

“Digital communications has been an area that the real estate sector as a whole has been slow to pick up on [and] the brands that embrace new ways to talk to customers will be the ones that grow.”

Kelly has been at Foxtons since April this year following a varied career that has included time at Which? as well as insurance giant AIG, Pizza Express, Frankie & Benny’s and Crew Clothing.

Read the interview in full.