Member News

September 05, 2014

Christopher Burnley has used people’s curiosity about their home’s value to drive growth at his direct mail marketing company and in the process propel a 571 percent increase in revenue over four years.

Burnley is the CEO of Corefact, which produces and mails materials for real estate brokers and mortgage organizations. The company recently shifted how it does business to focus on analytics-based marketing, which has allowed revenue to soar. In 2011, Corefact had $1.49 million in revenue. Burnley projects that by the end of 2014, Corefact will have $10 million in revenue.

The primary reason for Corefact’s newfound success has been narrowing the focus of the company. Prior to 2012, one of the major products offered by Corefact was website-building for realtors. This proved to be very labor-intensive because the sites needed to be licensed for the Multiple Listing Service, a nationwide database of real estate listings.

“The way those (licenses) are done is different in every county,” Burnley said. “You could only bring on clients where you had those MLS agreements. For us to go national, we’d have to integrate with 400 different MLS.”

Corefact made the decision to discontinue that service, and instead focus on their analytics-based marketing programs. Corefact’s direct mail options for real estate brokers stand out because its postcards, flyers and the like come with personalized key-codes for free home estimates. They also show maps of the neighborhood, with the recipients house highlighted, that note nearby real estate activity. By giving the homeowner a website to go to and code to use, the idea is to give a way to follow up beyond just calling the broker.

Stephan Marshal, a real estate broker for Coldwell Banker based in Burlingame, has used Corefact to handle his direct mail marketing for five years. He said the gains were slow at first, but increased exponentially.

“It took about a year and a half until I had one piece of business from (Corefact’s mailers),” he said. “But once I started getting some returns, my business doubled twice in two years and most of it is because of Corefact.”

Direct mail marketing is seen as important for real estate brokers because it helps keep their name in people’s minds as the person to call when they want to sell their home.

“It gives you the opportunity to interact without harassing someone,” Marshal said. “You have to be consistent. If you offer some sort of service to them, they’re more likely to follow through. Corefact offers a no-obligation opportunity to go online and check the value of their home.”

When people go online to check the value of their home, that gives the real estate broker a lead they can follow up on. “I tried a couple of random companies before Corefact,” Marshal said. “None of them had the added activity of capturing leads.”

The focus on direct mail has also allowed Corefact to expand nationally where they couldn’t before.

“We were a very small company and we were trying to do too much,” Burnley said. “We were trying to take on the world and we weren’t equipped to do it. We had a lot of products, but they were mediocre.”

According to Burnley, most of Corefact’s competition comes from “Mom and Pop” operations across the country and two larger companies, Xpressdocs and QuantumDigital. In addition to being the only one offering the digital tie-ins, Corefact makes a name for itself by being very responsive and quick to move.

Jason Sewald, a sales associate for Pacific Union, has also used Corefact for five years and noted their quick turnaround time for orders.

“If I give them an order at 10 a.m. on Friday, they’re able to have it in the mail system by Monday, which is pretty impressive.”

HQ: Hayward

Founded: 2005

2011 revenue: $1.49 million

2012 revenue: $2.68 million

2013 revenue: $5.1 million

2014 projected revenue: $10 million

Employees: 40

Founder: Christopher Burnley

What it does: Creates direct mail marketing materials for real estate brokers and mortgage companies

Website: corefact.com