In March of 2008, Reply! will launch a new platform that will make the process of buying a lead as efficient as it is today for an advertiser to buy clicks through Google or Yahoo. We believe it is time that advertisers go beyond the click and pay only for measurable results. That has always been the promise of online marketing, and we look forward to making that promise a reality for a larger number of advertisers on the web.

http://realtalk.realtowncommunities.com/SEO-LeadGeneration/

1. The price range search spread for “Homes” is only $25K. Works for car searching I suppose.

2. $17M in VC dough and countless focus groups has resulted in an overwhelming biz op…Homes & Autos online together at last (tap it ’til it goes dry fellas’). How did I miss this, it’s echoed throughout homes all over the world, “Honey, while were on this incredible site let’s buy a new car and a house to park it in. They make it so easy, let’s see what else we can buy from them”. One hint, people need pets too! Oops, adding pets is a bad idea. I just realized the “online person-to-pet compatability feature” had become commoditized when several companies began offering automated valuations.

3. I can understand having some site flow issues, but the content isn’t even there.

However, we all goof up a bit and I think we should collectively give Reply!/ ConnectWithaWife another chance. This new launch is gonna be great!

Can I start standing in line now to not be there in March?

Open Season!

The company seems to have completely moved 1 step backwards with this so called connectwithlife web site. The other site seemed to have direction and seemed to be on a good path.

Im not sure what these guys are doing but I don’t expect much from this new thing they are talking about. From what I understand they have pissed off nearly every agent in the country with their poor quality leads and direction less approach to this industry.

If connectwithlife.com is what I just visited then why should anyone believe that the industry will be “revolutioned” with their products. They can’t even walk in the same direction for 5 minutes and their current execution leaves a whole lot to be desired.

Besides there are plenty of lead exchanges online and they have the same effect on agents.

VCs should go back to the drawing board

“Jim” – Uhm, why in the world would I want to market my own website on this blog? The odds of a consumer interested in Phoenix real estate finding a link to my site in a comment on FoREM are astronomical. Trust me, I know who and where to market my site and this is no marketing attempt. I read Joel’s post, I went to the site, and I thought it was awful.

And I’d have no problem telling anyone from reply.com exactly what I think face-to-face. Maybe I’ll see someone from Reply at Connect next week and do just that.

Did you GO to that site Jim? Can you honestly tell me it is a well executed product?

Reply.com was founded in 2001 as a lead generation and performance-based marketing company. We launched Reply! Home Valuations in 2006 both as a payoff for our lead generation processes and to build a consumer destination offering proprietary home valuations and automotive research tools. After running our own real estate home valuation tool for 15 months, we realized the “valuations feature” had become commoditized when several companies began offering automated valuations.

When Yahoo, through a partnership with us, launched their meta-search solution (see http://realestate.yahoo.com/Homevalues), it became very clear that the solution was no longer a differentiator. Given the focus of our core business (lead generation), we decided that, rather than owning a system similar to what has already been developed by Zillow (and other great companies), we are better off making the solutions available through partnerships. As stated, our targeted focus continues to be on our core business, where we generate the majority of our revenue.

Our intent with ConnectWithLife is not to compete with Zillow, Cyberhomes, Trulia or Edmunds on offering the best consumer experience. The site was built as a payoff for a consumer that has generated a lead through our sites or our affiliated sites. In fact, no consumer will ever need to enter the site from the home page. They are directed to a customized page automatically generated on ConnectWithLife.com based on the lead they will generate. This is only one site in a portfolio of many sites that we own and operate and will probably never advertise.

Given that you are making and publishing assumptions about our financial performance without having access to our books, I find it valuable for your readers to know that as a performance-based online marketing company Reply! has a thriving, profitable and diversified lead generation business. We continue to make tremendous progress during arguably the worst mortgage and real estate downturn in years. Without hesitation, we are very proud of our tremendous achievements. Please note that in October 2007, Deloitte and Touche recognized Reply! as one of the Top 50 fastest growing technology media companies in Silicon Valley.

As our focus has always been performance-based marketing, we see a tremendous opportunity in the evolution from CPM to CPC to Cost-Per-Lead. Clearly a click does hold the same value as an intentful consumer who has provided a phone number and requested to be contacted by a merchant or a local service provider.

In March, Reply! will offer a platform that will make the process of buying a lead as efficient as it is today for a merchant to buy clicks through Google or Yahoo. We believe it is time that businesses go beyond the click and only pay for measurable results. That has always been the promise of online marketing and we look forward to making that promise a reality for a larger number of advertisers on the web.

I look forward to further discussions with you.

Brian Bowman
Chief Marketing Officer
Reply.com

Personally, I don’t know anyone who would disagree with what Joel posted. I looked at the site before Joel posted this and his assessment reflected mine perfectly. It may not be in depth reporting…but this is not the NY times or even Inman News. If you came here looking for either, you need to keep looking.

Also, I encourage you to not be anonymous. I assure you; no one will think you’re promoting yourself.