This article was updated on January 13, 2026 with an up-to-date FAQ section.
Today we are speaking with a true expert in all things sales and marketing in the real estate industry. Stuart Leo has spent several years in marketing roles inside the real estate industry in Asia Pacific. Today he is helping real estate companies approach digitization through a combination of strategic advice, Salesforce technologies such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud and SalesWings, as well as implementation services. He’s founder of Blirt, a digital transformation agency that is working with clients such as digEcor, Villa House or the Australian Government.
SalesWings: Stuart, you spent 15+ years in property development and are an expert in marketing “high consideration purchases”; what did you learn during that phase, and what made you go out and found “Blirt”?
Stuart Leo: Now that’s a big question! Fundamentally, property has global principles that need to be executed within local markets. The drivers to buying a home or a place to work are very similar all around the world – we’re all humans with very similar drivers and connections to place. However, what that looks like locally can be very different in product, expression of buying experience and price.
The most important thing to get right is the customer experience. That’s never changed, even in hyper digital environments, ‘people still buy things from people’. How technology and communications can equip and empower that is exciting and always changing. Today we live in a world where small teams get the same if not more than what big enterprise groups would spend years developing.
SalesWings: What defines the real estate environment from a marketing perspective? What makes it special?
Stuart Leo: It is the largest and most emotional purchase the majority of us tend to ever make. That’s exciting. Not only that, property and property ownership is still the most successful way of building financial wealth for everyday people all over the world. What other industry can make that claim? That’s pretty special.
SalesWings: Would you consider real estate being rather a first or last mover when it comes to leveraging technology, and how can they gain competitive advantage in today’s fast paced business environment?
Stuart Leo: As a general guide, I think the real estate industry has in the past been a mid to slow mover on technology. In almost every country in the world we still buy with pens and paper with almost half of properties being sold by lifting your hand at an auction.
The deep emotional experience and sheer size of the transaction create a level of risk that means the buying process is highly regulated. However, this is changing and I think we’re seeing changes accelerating. Personalisation, customisation, deep intelligence on buyers, simplicity of purchase, ability to search, design, build and transact faster, easier and smarter is now picking up pace.
SalesWings: Where should real estate companies who are looking to digitize their processes begin? Let’s first talk about “concept” and “process”, less technology choices…
Stuart Leo: Start with the customer and the journey the customer needs to go on and how you can remove friction in the customer journey by using technology to make it easier to buy or by making your employees smarter in the selling process.
Think of each step in the journey like a cog in a machine. Content is like the oil in this engine. It’s content empowered by technology that draws or pushes customers through a journey in order to reach a goal. As for content, creativity is the limit and it should facilitate the decision making and position a real estate company as a trusted advisor. Brochures, legal advice, interviews, research, and so on.
Figure the journeys out, identify how to remove roadblocks and hey presto…. You’re 80% ahead of the general market already.
(interview continues below)
SalesWings: Where are some “behavioral customer journeys” that a real estate company should digitize? Why do you recommend Salesforce Marketing Cloud to do that and what could a digital journey look like from a customer’s perspective, say, for a customer who’s embarking on a long buying cycle?
Stuart Leo: Let’s take a first home buyer persona:
- Strong desire for home
- Do not yet have a finance approvals for mortgages from a bank
- Have never bought a home before
- Want to buy land and build their dream home.
This buyer is probably the best definition of ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’. Therefore, education, awareness and expectation management is key.
The problem with this buyer persona is they could easily switch from one brand to another as they have zero brand loyalty from a previous purchase but require a large level of education.
It’s the education of this buyer that is the opportunity. Most developers or agents ignore this fact as they want a quick sale. Not too many developers want to spend large amounts of time hand holding only to see the customer switch at the last minute to a competitive offer.
This is where a behavioural journey could be very powerful to build brand engagement, salesperson connection but reduce a lot of risk in the time spent educating. Marketing Cloud offers various solutions, including the partner add-on SalesWings for behavioral lead tracking.
Here’s a possible journey at a high level that could help to demonstrate the example:
>> Customer downloads the “Guide to buying your first home” from a website. On the form customer identifies:
- Buying time frame as 6 – 12 months
- Does not have finance approval
- 3+ bedrooms
- Budget set as ‘don’t know’
That’s quite a bit of data on a new prospect but a decent sales person may not want to spend too much time with them yet as they would not consider them qualified for a sales process.
Step 1: “Thank you” email and link to resource as the CTA.
- Increase lead score
- Alert sales development team a new lead is in the funnel with a task assignment for review and phone call qualification with 2 hours.
- If no answer on first call, set new task for follow up within 24 hrs and send direct to step 2.
- If phone call achieved, qualify and recommend next steps of finance approval to set a budget, send email go to Step 2.
- Lead score increased on data collected (predictive, and or rule based)
Step 2: Finance appraisal offer sent to prospect advising how to determine a buying budget.
- If customer clicks email but does not complete application, remind SMS and redirect to application.
- If customer completes, update CRM with new lead score increase and sales person notification.
- Wait 72 hours
Step 3: Email to customer to ask to update desired budget based on finance approval
- Customer completes update form and budget meets ideal client budget for developer.
- Lead scoring increased, status changed on CRM record, sales development team assign to agents for a sales process.
- Customer complets update form and budget is not sufficient to buy.
- Customer score is decreased, CRM records updated and sales development team notified.
Step 4: Customers not yet qualified are added to a retargeting campaign to maintain brand trust, emails are sent every 2 weeks with guides and resources on saving for a deposit, the buying process and what products are available. Lead scores are increased, decreased based on engagement levels.
SalesWings: Embedding and replicating intelligence marketing processes within Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Marketing Cloud has been one of your specializations; why Salesforce?
Stuart Leo: Salesforce works for small business through to enterprise. Furthermore, it provides a great eco-system with powerful compatible solutions such as the B2B Studio with lead scoring for Salesforce and Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
As a developable platform that can be adapted to any customer journey, there is no other platform that allows organisations to build a custom operating system for a business quite like Salesforce. That’s why it’s our preferred tool for customer management. Furthermore their platform approach makes it a future proof technology choice; Salesforce is offering solutions across the board from CRM (Sales Cloud), service management (Service Cloud), data analytics (Datorama) or last but not least marketing (Salesforce Marketing Cloud)
[Note: Visit this link for an introduction to Salesforce Marketing Cloud].
SalesWings: Last but not least; tell us a bit more about you. What does Stuart do when he switches off his computer?
Stuart Leo: Oh, tons! I’m a husband, Dad to three kids on the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland Australia. I fish, swim or Jet Ski with kids and love nothing better than exploring our local region with the family.
SalesWings: Thanks again for these incredible insights, Stuart! And where and how can real estate marketing professionals get in touch with you for advice and support?
Stuart Leo: Easiest is to get in touch with me on Linkedin or through our website. Feel free as well to follow our digital transformation podcast The Digital Transformation Show for some great insights from opinion leaders.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Where should I start in my real estate marketing automation strategy?
- Can you recommend some best practices for teams using Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
- Is it possible to run B2B and B2C marketing automation at the same time?
- How can I automate outreach effectively, considering our long buying cycles?
- How do I track my leads’ activity?
- Where does lead scoring fit into the picture?
- What KPIs prove real estate marketing automation ROI?
Where should I start in my real estate marketing automation strategy?
Begin by mapping your buyer journeys, identifying friction, and prioritizing automations that remove effort for prospects and agents.
Start with a clear persona (e.g., first-home buyer), define key moments (finance pre-approval, shortlist, site visit), and set data requirements to personalize content. You can then build a minimum viable journey (capture, educate, qualify) and iterate based on engagement and conversion signals. Pair automation with content that answers “I don’t know what I don’t know” questions common in property decisions.
Tip: pilot one development or region first, then templatize for scale.
Can you recommend some best practices for teams using Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Leverage Journey Builder for cross-channel orchestration, Email/SMS Studios for messaging, and CRM data to personalize real-estate-specific journeys.
Orchestrate welcomes, finance nudges, and appointment follow-ups with behavioral branches and wait steps. Sales Cloud fields (budget, timeline, preferred property type) can be synced to tailor content and handoffs. Partner apps for advanced scoring and engagement insights help you to prioritize outreach. For a sector example, review a real-estate case showcasing education-to-qualification workflows that shorten time to sales readiness.
Tip: start with one end-to-end journey template, then clone for each development. Here’s a real-life example you can draw inspiration from!
Is it possible to run B2B and B2C marketing automation at the same time?
Yes; build distinct data models, journeys, and content tracks while sharing a common platform and governance.
Developers, channel partners, and institutional buyers require different qualification criteria and value propositions than home buyers or investors. Separate journeys prevent message dilution and improve deliverability, while shared governance preserves data quality, branding, and reporting consistency. Establish clear routing logic (domain, form source, role) to place contacts into the right audience stream from day one.
Tip: audit whether running split platforms is hurting ROI and operations.
How can I automate outreach effectively, considering our long buying cycles?
Use progressive education journeys that mix email, SMS, retargeting, and salesperson prompts, guided by intent signals and time-based checkpoints.
Long cycles need staged content: financing basics, product comparisons, timeline planning, and trust-building social proof. When prospects stall (e.g., clicked finance guide but abandoned application), trigger reminders and surface qualified leads to sales when budgets or behaviors meet thresholds. Automations should adapt as prospects move from research to selection to transaction, keeping your brand present without overwhelming them.
Tip: set a quarterly content refresh cadence to keep nurture streams relevant.
How do I track my leads’ activity?
Centralize lead tracking in your CRM, tag every touchpoint, and use behavioral data to enrich profiles and trigger journeys.
Connect forms, portals, ads, and on-site actions so each interaction updates a single contact record. Track micro-conversions (downloads, repeat listings views, calculator usage) and attribute them to campaigns. This data can then be used to segment by intent and lifecycle stage, not just demographics. Create alerts for high-value behaviors (e.g., viewing the same floor plan multiple times) so sales can act promptly.
Tip: standardize UTM conventions and naming for clean multi-channel attribution.
Where does lead scoring fit into the picture?
Combine demographic fit and behavioral engagement to score leads, then route by threshold to sales, nurture, or recycling.
Assign points for profile fit (budget range, bedroom count, location) and for actions (guide downloads, finance steps, repeat visits). Negative scoring can be implemented for disqualifiers like insufficient budget or long timelines. Revisit thresholds quarterly to align with inventory and market conditions. Ultimately, you’ll want to start simple with rules, then layer predictive scoring as data volume grows.
Tip: publish your scoring model internally so marketing and sales share the same definitions.
What KPIs prove real estate marketing automation ROI?
Track marketing-qualified leads, sales acceptance rates, appointment set rate, cost per qualified visit, and lead-to-contract velocity.
Add content engagement depth (i.e. finance tool completion), list growth quality, and retargeting efficiency to understand full-funnel impact. Tie opportunities and contracts back to originating journeys to quantify revenue influence, not just last-click. Monitor unsubscribe and spam complaint rates to protect sender reputation while scaling automation.
Tip: create a dashboard segmented by development/project to spotlight where journeys need optimization.
About Stuart Leo and Blirt
Stuart is founder and CEO of the digital transformation advisory company Blirt in Ausralia. Before founding Blirt he spent years in leading digital marketing positions.
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