Established in 1947, Cutler Real Estate was founded by Al Cutler and is now co-owned and operated by Jay Cutler, Jim Camp, and Andy Camp. A consistent industry leader, Cutler Real Estate was Delta Media Group's first-ever partner in 1999 and one of the first brokerages to utilize the Internet. 25 years later, the partnership is still going strong. 

"Being there from day one, you can imagine what real estate websites looked like in 1999, right at the beginning of the Internet age," says Andy. "We've seen the evolution of the Internet and digital partners like Delta Media that have helped residential brokers be relevant and be front and center with consumers."

The team at Cutler Real Estate is proud of their long-lived collaborative partnership with Delta Media Group. They feel that this relationship has greatly benefitted both parties throughout the years. 

"We are very proud to have been there from the beginning and have had a collaborative working relationship with Mike Minard and his team over the years," mentions Andy. "Cutler has been very generous in that collaborative relationship, and that collaboration only works when you have a partner who's open to feedback and learning and growing. And we feel very proud that other Delta customers have been able to benefit from some of the early innovations that we were able to suggest."

A Great Real Estate Website Offers Simplicity

As an early adopter of real estate technology, Cutler Real Estate has seen the value real estate websites bring to growing a brand and driving business. They also understand what makes a website work and what doesn't. 

According to Andy, the key to a great real estate website is simplicity. 

"I think that particularly in residential real estate, there is a propensity to make things too complicated," he explains. "And ultimately, any real estate website has to be easy to use and consumer-minded. If it's too complicated, there are too many bells and whistles, and that distraction impacts the user experience."

Andy believes Delta Media Group is skilled at streamlining technology, making it simple for users.

"I think Delta has done an amazing job over the years at creating a streamlined approach to connect consumers with their clients' real estate resources, ultimately the properties that they have for sale," he says.

Suzi Stepanovich, Cutler Real Estate's E-Commerce Manager, also believes that Delta Media Group's websites offer an exceptional user experience. 

"They are quick to load, easy to navigate, and clean," she says. "Those are the things that are important to me. Those are the things that are important to a consumer. As a consumer myself, if a website I'm visiting doesn't match those criteria, I'm leaving. I think Delta does a great job at helping facilitate these things."

Using SEO and Other Methods to Drive Organic Traffic

Cutler Real Estate has not only seen the value a user-friendly real estate website brings but also the value of having the right SEO strategy. As a partner, they have greatly benefited from Delta Media Group's SEO services, seeing substantial results in organic search and web traffic. 

"We're seeing 70 to 80% of our traffic on average is organic traffic," says Suzi. "The market landing pages have been great, property search, just the property address showing up in Google on that first page, that's what we're used to. That's what we expect. That's been fantastic. The lead conversion, so our new listing signups are showing requests. Emails contacting us are 85% resulting from organic search."

Another strategy they have at Cutler Real Estate for driving organic web traffic is through their "What's my Home Worth" pages. These pages, which can be featured on any agent site, offer a valuable and reliable AVM tool that draws in prospective buyers who are thinking about selling and provides agents with an easy way to learn more about them and get in touch. 

"We're seeing a lot of success utilizing our agents' 'What's my Home Worth' pages?" says Ryan Maurer, Cutler Real Estate's Chief Marketing Officer. "This has been something that we've known is one of the most important things that the public wants to be informed about and really may not understand as in-depth as we do what has happened in the market over the last two and a half, three plus years with the big swings and equity in people's homes and so on."

They additionally use email and other marketing materials to drive web traffic at Cutler Real Estate.

"From a marketing side, we have taken a unique approach and coached the agents on how to utilize email, direct mail, digital marketing, whatever it may be, to drive that traffic back," explains Ryan. "All of this is continuing to push and push and drive more and more traffic back to our website."

Another strategy they have had throughout the time they have been working with Delta Media Group is to ensure that whatever they are doing online to do the same thing offline. The use of QR codes is one example of how they work offline to drive traffic online.

"One of the things that we've focused on over the last 25 years working with Delta is anything that we do online, we do offline, and vice versa," says Andy. "The QR code strategy is probably the best example of that. COVID single-handedly resurrected QR codes and made that a true point-of-sale marketing strategy in real estate. And we've been able to come up with some very novel offline marketing techniques that can drive traffic back online."

Andy additionally mentions how wonderful it is to have access to their website analytics and be able to track where the traffic on their website is coming from. 

"The analytics that we're able to gather gives great information back to our agents on the return on investment of individual offline to online marketing strategies and the kind of traffic that we're able to impact driving back to the website," he says.

Amplifying the User Experience With an All-in-One Platform

While the front end of the website provides an excellent user experience, they deeply appreciate that it is part of an all-in-one interface, enabling them to amplify the experience and streamline their tools and processes. 

"We love having an ecosystem per se, where our marketing department, our e-commerce department, and everything draws into that web platform," says Andy. "So it's not just a standalone website. It is something that we've worked with one partner for so long that we're able to streamline our processes and streamline our tools, and amplify and maximize the value of the brokerage platform as a whole, as opposed to having disparate parts that the agency either has to cobble together themselves or feel like they have to go outside of the brokerage platform to go seek solutions that their broker is not providing."

Ryan feels that having an all-in-one platform in DeltaNET® that works at a leadership level and for their teams and agents is incredible.

"I honestly think the value of an all-in-one, it's just amazing," he says. "We work at a broker level, at a leadership level. We coach, train, support, and partner with amazing agents and teams. And to be able to bring them into an all-in-one system and help them understand why it simplifies their life, and why it works so well is just an extraordinary thing. And once they get it, they get it."

Pointing to the back-end tools DeltaNET provides, such as My Customer for Life, Ryan and the rest of the team at Cutler Real Estate recognize the value of automation.

"The automation, the set and forget it back-end part of it, the My Customer for Life falls into one of those, I think we all agree that has just been an absolute home run," he says. "Our agents get behind it; they're excited for it to go out. They're excited to see what articles are up and coming, and it's just such a nice value-add that is presented to their clients on their behalf that they don't have to worry about."

They have seen high adoption of DeltaNET from their agents at Cutler Real Estate and one of the reasons they attribute to this is the ability of each user to customize the website and the platform. They know that this is unique to working with Delta as this is a feature very few other providers can offer.

"I think that is one of the reasons why we have what I would say is such a high velocity and such a high user rate and adoption rate among our agents in the company, because there is that ability to customize and extend their brand throughout the web platform, it's almost impossible with any other web provider to be able to give that kind of customization to individual REALTORS® in a residential brokerage."

Suzi believes that one of the best aspects of DeltaNET is that all of the technology works together, simultaneously helping them, their customers, and their agents. This also allows them to launch faster than if they were doing everything alone.

"It's just so beneficial not only within the platform, but also amongst us to marry technology and marketing together and to see that all come to fruition in one platform and benefit our customers, our agents, and ourselves," she says. "We can piggyback off of so many things when we're conversing with one of our agents and be able to launch much quicker than if we were trying to do these things on our own."

Looking Forward to Further Customization With DeltaNET® 7

Cutler Real Estate will soon be making the switch to the newest version of the all-in-one platform released in 2023, DeltaNET® 7. While there are many new features and improvements they are looking forward to with the new platform, they are particularly excited about the personalization. 

"The personalization, the UI, and the user interface have a complete facelift," says Ryan. "They can go in and rename these things. The DeltaNET is so customizable and easy to use. All the agents run their business differently, so it is great to be able to customize their platform so the tools they use are front and center and they can hide the rest. And I would put Delta up against anybody that would allow that kind of customization on a broker level, let alone an agent level. I think it is just phenomenal. That is what I'm most excited about."

Ryan is also personally excited about the "dark mode" feature. He says, "If anyone knows me, they know I love dark mode, and I think that's one of the coolest features of it."

Finally, he is excited that it is so mobile-friendly, allowing agents to perform even more of their everyday tasks from their phones or other mobile devices, making them even more productive.

"They can so easily and remotely use it on their phones as they're going about their day-to-day, executing anything from property ecards to turning on Home Finder Reports or Market Watch Reports."

25 Years is Only the Start

Cutler Real Estate's 25-year partnership with Delta Media Group represents a mutual commitment to excellence and innovation. Through strategies like SEO optimization, offline-to-online marketing integration, and utilizing DeltaNET's comprehensive tools, they have not only stayed ahead of the curve but amplified their brand and streamlined their operations. As they eagerly anticipate transitioning to DeltaNET 7, they foresee further customization and enhancements that will empower their agents and continue to elevate industry standards.

To learn more about Cutler Real Estate, visit their website, www.cutlerhomes.com.