Agent’s fury after seven members of ‘staff’ get touting letter from EweMove

| Rosalind Renshaw

An agent has complained strongly after a ‘touting’ letter was sent to seven members of his staff at work seeking to recruit them to EweMove.

The letter from EweMove’s Glenn Ackroyd headed ‘private and confidential’ was sent personally to seven named people at Buckinghams in Virginia Water, Surrey.

However, none of the names is known to Buckinghams’ director Alex Juddery, with not one of them being on his staff, and all the letters simply went to him as a result.

Juddery said: “I do not for a moment think this company is targeting myself as a business owner to move across to Ewemove, but what they are trying to do is directly tout my staff.

“Fortunately in this case it was a horrendous failure on Ewemove’s behalf, since the names on all seven letters are names I have never heard of which makes one wonder about the quality of their own marketing staff.

“Since this is the same company that in the last week or so has been sending email marketing to estate agents with phrases along the lines of ‘only stupid estate agents should ignore this’ – surely one of the most arrogant marketing approaches I have seen for some time – one should not be surprised.

“I don’t know whether other agents would feel the same, but frankly I think this level of bottom feeding should be made public within the industry.”

The letter tells recipients that they could “dramatically transform your earning power as an estate agent”.

It asks five questions, which cast significant doubt on the high street agency model and feeds on any fears that employees might have about their own futures.

  1. As an estate agent do you believe that our industry is heading in the wrong direction?
  2. Are you worried whether traditional agents will survive the threat from low cost online rivals?
  3. Do you fear that your career will go the same way as the 60,000 Blockbuster employees who lost their jobs after the arrival of Netflix?
  4. Are you battling harder and harder for every instruction?
  5. Are you struggling to meet targets and maintain commission fee levels?

The letter continues: “If you’ve answered ‘Yes’ to three or more of the above questions then your fears are pretty much the same as most agents.”

It adds that there is “a very real chance that traditional, office-based estate agents will suffer the same fate” as Woolworth.

The letter is part of a campaign to recruit experienced estate agents into the EweMove network, and Glenn Ackroyd yesterday defended it, saying that “competitive marketing in the real world plays a large role in any business committed to investing in it”.

However, a spokesperson said Ackroyd understood that the “approach can be unpalatable to some”.

The spokesperson went on: “Whilst the EweMove team knew that writing to agents at work would be unpopular, it has had a positive unintended consequence, with lots of estate agency owners – including ones with multi-branches – approach them requesting to re-brand under the EweMove model, attend upcoming webinars and ask for franchise packs.

“In marketing terms, the letter has been very successful.

“The team recognises that it might not be welcome to some, but they see it as being no different to an estate agent writing to a vendor who has a house on the market with another agent. While the agent may not like it, if the customer is happy and the current agent is doing a good job, there should be nothing to worry about.”

EweMove was acquired last year by The Property Franchise Group, which also owns the traditional high street Martin & Co and Xperience brands.

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50 Comments

  1. AgentV
    January 13, 2017 at 06:59

    Clearly a wolf in sheeps clothing.

    Report
  2. RealAgent
    January 13, 2017 at 07:14

    I think EweMove would do better writing to the employees of banks or building societies nearing retirement as let’s face it, very few, if any of their franchisees are actually estate agents!!

    Report
  3. salred66625
    January 13, 2017 at 07:15

    Ewe must be joking!!!!

    Report
  4. JWVW
    January 13, 2017 at 07:26

    Virginia Water has some of the most expensive property in the Country outside London. Trying to nick staff from Buckinghams is like asking a seasoned Bentley salesman to sells clapped out old Nissans. Know your market. EweMove clearly don’t.

    Report
    1. BerksSurreyAgent
      January 13, 2017 at 09:24

      Well said sir! Do I assume you may be a couple of doors down???

      Report
    2. femaleagent88
      January 13, 2017 at 10:13

      Goes to show the quality of thier research! :’D

      Report
  5. Typhoon
    January 13, 2017 at 07:31

    But like some of our customers respond to touting,it works in a fashion. Sadly arrogance has an effect on some.

    However what people should ask themselves before jumping to his farm, is how will he treat/ respect them if they do.

     

     

    Report
  6. IndAgent
    January 13, 2017 at 07:37

    I’m not surprised that he’s furious. The man is selling without backing up the claim, and where challenged on a different site flipped it round to state £100k of sales, not net profit.

    Glenn – what is the highest net profit one of your franchises has made in their last year? Be the bigger man and tell us the actual figure. This might be a more effective way to gain the trust of agents out there.

    Report
    1. Typhoon
      January 13, 2017 at 08:58

      sadly the trust train  left the  station a long time ago

      Report
  7. AgentPink92
    January 13, 2017 at 07:37

    Why on earth would a multi branch agency, or any agency, want to rebrand as EweMove?

    They have no national advertising, almost no name awareness and if any agent wants to offer their low fees why pay chunk in franchise fees to EweMove?

    Ackroyd is either talking baloney or the agents who want to rebrand are not the smartest.

     

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    1. FlyingSheep54
      January 15, 2017 at 21:12

      No name awareness? check out Trustpilot. Number 1  in every agency category. Not bad for an unknown.

      Low fees? Haha I am the most expensive in the area and I make sure my clients are aware of this. I offset that by achieving higher sale prices. That’s why we are number 1 on Trustpilot. (I’ve never had a review less than 5 stars by the way)

      But then obviously I’m not very smart.

      Report
  8. PepeM
    January 13, 2017 at 07:42

    Desperate ! Why Martin & Co bought this business is a complete mystery, mugged !

    Report
    1. julianodell
      January 13, 2017 at 08:04

      Maybe Mr Ackroyd pulled the wool over their eyes?

      Report
    2. P-Daddy
      January 13, 2017 at 10:17

      For the same reason that Savills invested in YOPA, covering all bases for the future.

      Report
      1. Ric
        January 13, 2017 at 17:29

        Quite clever really….

        High Street Agents should buy more of these daft LowBudgetPoorServiceModels

        Run em in to the ground and get rid of them that way leaving your preferred more profitable business model there to take the spoils.

         

        Report
      2. Thomas Flowers
        January 13, 2017 at 19:43

        Agree with P-Daddy but was that before it transpired that it cost PB around £1800 of their ‘investor’ investment for every single property they listed in 2015/2016 accounts?

        Report
  9. Headache
    January 13, 2017 at 08:11

    Our local guy is called Lord Lucan

    Report
    1. Eamonn
      January 13, 2017 at 08:45

      Very good.  Going to have to use that. Hope you don’t mind

      Report
  10. surreyagent
    January 13, 2017 at 08:22

    whoever sent it out must be feeling a little sheepish now…..

    Report
  11. mrharvey
    January 13, 2017 at 08:26

    This is embarrassing. Verging on speechless.

    Report
  12. Topwakefieldagent
    January 13, 2017 at 08:37

    I am down to attend the webinar on Monday evening just for a nosey, apparently their local agent to me  is very successful! So successful he’s on holiday, how can he do this? Quite easily he has a stock of nine houses of which one is sold subject to contract , it maybe a wonder if he comes back from holiday. His back ground is Snap on tools…and he’s your local property expert!!!

    Report
    1. ead92
      January 13, 2017 at 18:17

      That’s not as bad as our local purplebricks property expert – an IFA who was sacked for forging payslips amongst other things

      Report
    2. FlyingSheep54
      January 15, 2017 at 21:02

      So his background is providing great customer service to the end user? Sounds perfect for Ewemove.

      Report
  13. ShutTheFrontDoor
    January 13, 2017 at 09:01

    I find this story quite amusing, especially as it was Property Industry Eye who actually sold them all of our email addresses last week so that they could send out the “Only stupid estate agents…” email to us all, and then gave them the publicity the day after of running the story about their franchise plans.

    Whilst I know it’s just business, it’s equally as ‘disloyal’ to subscribers as Rightmove selling our (indirect) buyer customer emails and mobile numbers to Purple **icks.

    Report
    1. BerksSurreyAgent
      January 13, 2017 at 09:27

      Good point & well made.

      Report
    2. Nick Salmon, M.D. Property Industry Eye
      January 13, 2017 at 09:30

      We are going to leave this comment up as it gives us the opportunity to make this statement.

      Property Industry Eye never has and never will sell, loan or licence our databases to any third party.

      The ‘Only Stupid Agents’ email was sent by us on behalf of Ewemove who are a client of EYE for marketing purposes. As are most of the suppliers to the industry. No client ever sees the actual database.

      It might also be worth saying that the Ewemove email had one of the highest open and click rates in recent weeks for mailings of this type.

       

      Report
      1. LondonR90
        January 13, 2017 at 09:45

        An ‘opted in email’ list is worth a lot of money. Only a fool will sell such a list.

        These guys that scrape directory sites to get their hands on thousands of emails, then sign up with MailChimp to send ‘free’ emails have very low open/conversion rates.

         

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      2. mrharvey
        January 13, 2017 at 09:55

        Nick, v. interesting to hear the email got a very high open and click rate in recent weeks.

        The cynic in me says people were insulted by the subject line and wanted to read it just so they could have a nosey and scoff.

        The optimist says people were genuinely curious and at least a handful of readers will have contacted EweMove to sign up.

        So EweMove may well actually recruit some decent agents and grow their network from it.

        What’s the result? The cynic says EweMove pocket some cash with a disastrous hit on goodwill in the industry.

        The optimist says this is great marketing and people will forget about this ‘scandal’ by the end of the month.

        Glenn knows how to get people’s attention and that is priceless in marketing terms. I commented above on this story saying it’s ’embarrassing’ but since reflecting, this entire episode makes me wonder if it’s just sour grapes that my own marketing doesn’t encourage such lively discussions!

        Report
      3. ShutTheFrontDoor
        January 13, 2017 at 10:11

        Nick, with respect, that’s hardly the point.

        When I said that P.I.Eye ‘sold’ the emails, I (and I’m sure most other experienced professionals on here) didn’t mean that you would have handed over a EweSB stick to them and said “there you go, do what you like with the data”.

        But the fact is that you sold the ‘use’ of these email addresses.

        …and that is fine to do, it’s your business to do with what you want, and it’s their money to part with.

        However, it’s questionable whether it makes ‘good business’ to rub your customer’s faces in it by sending such a directly attacking email to the database.

        Many business owners will have encouraged their staff to take an interest in industry news and to subscribe to this, so it is annoying, and I’m sure most agents will agree, for that patronage to be used to encourage staff to leave.

        Of course happy staff won’t go, that’s not the point, it’s the attempt which is the insult, not the risk of them leaving – I doubt many dedicated industry professionals would be tempted by such an offering anyway.

        This is about integrity.

         

        …and obviously it’s going to have a very high click rate – it’s an inflammatory subject line. Basic schoolboy marketing.

        However, as most of your subscribers will have ignored the offering after opening it, are you happy with the decision to effectively call most of your subscribers “Stupid”?

        Report
        1. LondonR90
          January 13, 2017 at 10:25

          Interesting view point that deserves a reply.

          If PIE sent me an email with the subject headline ‘only stupid estate agents would ignore this’ I would ope the email as well. Did readers of that email know it was sent by by Ewemove before opening? As surely that would have affected open rates.

          I wonder what the click through rate to the Ewemove website was?

          Less than 0.2% I would imagine…

          MailChimp figures for real estate: industry open rate 18.9%, click through rate 2.0%.

          Report
        2. secretagentman92
          January 13, 2017 at 16:56

          I’m just going to point out that ‘EweSB stick’ is the best pun of the day… great work STFD.

          Report
      4. Property Peep
        January 13, 2017 at 10:27

        Do other marketing clients of PIE also get as many articles written about them #advertorials ?

        Report
        1. ShutTheFrontDoor
          January 13, 2017 at 10:40

          I don’t think most other  marketing clients would be talked about if they were suppliers of goods and services (conveyancing, FAs, printing, touch screen window displays, referencing, floorplans etc.)

          Report
    3. Beano
      January 13, 2017 at 11:57

      This is a pretty childish post imo. If you expect a news service to bring you a daily dose of industry gossip and do this for free, then perhaps you might like to extend this type of generosity to your own clients and see how you get on.

      As I doubt it is the case, and you expect them to cover their costs/expenses, then save for marketing the way they do, could you perhaps help by either; suggesting new ways of raising the required revenue, or find another place to vent your frustrations, as there are no doubt far more deserving cases out there.

      Unless of course it is just the case that you feel an advertiser has to meet your personal criteria of taste and acceptability before it is put in front of you, in which case might I suggest you remove your details from the e-mailing list.

      Report
      1. LondonR90
        January 13, 2017 at 14:25

        The article focuses on Ewemove sending letters to an agent without their permission.

        Why do I need to register with the TPS to stop businesses calling me?

        Why did I have to receive and open a package from TMS Print today and then throw a load of marketing/leaflet/brochures samples away in the recycling bin?

        I did not ask for all of these suppliers to contact me.

        Yes you can remove yourself from the PIE subscriber list but you cannot stop some cold calls and all direct mail marketing.

        Ewemove are wrong here sending the letters, as is any company that emails without permission.

        Report
        1. Thomas Flowers
          January 13, 2017 at 20:03

          Interesting post London R90 should this also apply to RM and Z who are now using your client listings that you pay for to draw in a mailing list?

          Report
  14. Fair point
    January 13, 2017 at 09:09

    Everyone is entitled to their opinions but why get so angry if your confident in your staff and business? Storm in a tea cup i think.

    Report
  15. SomeAgent
    January 13, 2017 at 09:12

    I had the same here, six letters to my ’employees’………………..the names of which are not employed here and never have been!

    Report
    1. Taff
      January 16, 2017 at 10:04

      Same here, but I’ve only had 1 letter … sent to my address but addressed to a woman I’d never heard of.

      Report
  16. LondonR90
    January 13, 2017 at 09:36

    A few commentators on here asking why this guy is getting angry at that letter…

    My business is just a few months old and we have started to do a little online marketing already. We have started receiving a lot of unsolicited calls and letters. None of which I asked for. I know from experience that a lot of companies sell your personal details (companies who help with  LTD company formation for example) but I have never opted in. I have signed up with TPS and I should now (after 28 days) be fully protected.

    However, I still get about 20 -30 cold calls a day. Some of these companies are very big – Worldpay for example – if they are telling the truth.

    Unscrupulous companies will not buy up to date lists from the TPS who filter the likes of me out.

    Cold calls are extremely annoying if they happen on a large scale and I would never trust a service provider who operates in such a way.

    Report
    1. Ric
      January 13, 2017 at 17:40

      Does nobody else take the cold call, transfer it to the spare desk phone, pick the call up and then wonder off and do some work until you notice the line light has gone out? They stop calling you when they eventually realise you will do this time and time again.

      Report
  17. Property Paddy
    January 13, 2017 at 10:23

    Dear EweMove

    Sign me up !!

    Nah !

    Only joking.

    or am I ?

    Report
    1. AgentV
      January 13, 2017 at 13:59

      No….don’t do that…we can formulate something between us…..a new agency..with a a different name…..how ‘Thunderbirdsarego’ agency. I’ll be Virgil (fits in with AgentV) on thunderbird 2 and you can be Scott, John or whoever you want.

      We can have catchphrases like;

      ‘ready to launch your property sale – you know who to choose!

      ‘reach for the stars with your sale’

      ‘we ‘rocket’ boost your result’

      ‘Want to rescue your house sale – call us’

      all cheesy…but who cares…..sell a few franchises and then the company for £5 million….job done 2.5 mill each and a consultative role until retirement!!!!

      how about giving my proposition some thought?

       

      Report
  18. Industry_Pro
    January 13, 2017 at 10:34

    I suspect that Glen might be acting in this way as a result of direction from his new paymasters. How else is TPFG going to justify and recoup its investment, if indeed that is the correct word in this case.

    As to the ‘wrong names’ on the letters; this is likely to be purposeful and quite really academic – the real aim was to get the letters opened and read and to disturb the reader into further action.

    Desperate measures.

     

    Report
  19. smile please
    January 13, 2017 at 10:36

    Think my thoughts are well documented on Ewe Move

    I was going to write another scathing comment instead i will sum it up in one word.

     

    Pathetic.

    Report
    1. FlyingSheep54
      January 15, 2017 at 21:03

      Try 2 words – running scared x

      Report
  20. scruffy
    January 13, 2017 at 11:19

    8 similar letters sent to my agency, not one of which relates to a present or past member of staff. Interesting to read Glenn’s take on estate agents’ failure to adapt to an online world, citing Woolworths, Blockbuster and BHS as examples. “Hardly comparables” I would say, a phrase I usually reserve for a mortgage valuer.

    Rightmove have clearly been successful in adapting my attitude to an online world, and can be viewed, in my opinion, as a voracious bloodsucker who has fallen on estate agents like a vampire who gatecrashes a dumb blonde virgin party.

    Report
  21. RealAgent
    January 13, 2017 at 14:24

    These guys have always been, and will always be, the “herballife” of the property market.

    In an industry where there is no requirement for any professional recognition, it is hard to say when someone is qualified enough to offer huge financial advice on their property assets, but the one thing we know for sure, it isn’t after they’ve handed over £1500 and done a weeks training course in “Glen Towers”….

    Perhaps that should now be “Martin & Co Towers” where in reception there’s a sign pointing to the left saying “this way to be a Letting Agent” and a sign on the right saying “this way to be a sales agent”

     

     

    Report
    1. Thomas Flowers
      January 13, 2017 at 20:17

      RealAgent….and a lift going down if you expect to earn any where near their forecast of earnings?

      Report
  22. FromTheHip64
    January 16, 2017 at 08:33

    What sensitive soul Alex Juddery is. Has he not got a bin under his desk and work to be doing?

    Report
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