The Marketing and Communication Director of Arum Group, Elodie Casolà, is convinced that the metaverse will transform relations with clients and improve sales, but she defends that encouraging the concept of community shall be more necessary than ever.
Digitization of marketing services is fundamental to improve the business strategy and boost sales, but it does not substitute the potential of human relations. This is stated by Elodie Casolà, a professional with more than 20 years of experience in marketing and communication, 14 as a consultant for international tourism projects in the Indra Group and, from 2013 to present, is the Marketing Division Director of Arum Group, a company specialised in sale of real estate in luxury resorts on the international market.
“When we speak of major projects, of luxury residential units and with a target that focuses on the international market, it is indispensable to have latest generation technological tools, explains Casolà. “It is a field one must know very well and be very much up to date, because it is constantly changing – especially in recent years -, and we must be flexible and able to adapt to maintain the sales forecasts and objectives”, she specifies.
Arum Group is an innovative company in Spain: it participates in all the phases of development of a real estate project and offers services that range from conceptualisation to site management, integrating commercialisation and sales services and interior design, as well as communication and marketing services. What makes it unique is that it has introduced a novel concept to this county, that is triumphing in other places in the world, such as the United States or Dubai: sale of exclusive homes linked to services provided by a hotel (branded residences).
An example of their management may be found at Abama Resort Tenerife, where Arum has sold more than 400 homes up to present, which it has had designed by architects of international renown. The average price of a home is about 6,500 euros per m2, the highest on the island of Tenerife. Its clients benefit from all the installations of a resort: golf courses, tennis courts, kid camps, restaurants with Michelin stars, and constant organised inside and outside the complex. Elodie Casolà, who creates and manages these activities and events with her team, emphasises that the “buyers do not want to live in a fish bowl. It is thus very important to create a community around the real estate product. The client seeks to integrate in an area, to know its culture, to create bonds. This forms part of our responsibility as developers of the destination Communication and Marketing strategy”, she points out.
In that sense, she explains the importance of linking the brand with a purpose: “Corporate social responsibility forms part of our DNA. We not only sell marvellous experiences in exclusive residences for persons with high buying power. We share social and environmental awareness with them and it is important to transfer this to all our communication. In each project, we have a person or a department that leads this area and we involve all our team in our initiatives. That is where our experts in digital and social media do their utmost to ensure our content is known to all and position the destination product or brand as we want”, she adds.
Digitization and metaverse, facilitators of active listening
One of the technological landmarks of Arum Group is having managed to become Hubspot providers for real estate projects, adapting it to the sector. This tool allows coordination of the commercial tasks with the marketing information, having exhaustive control of the client’s web browsing, from leaving their lead until reaching the form, because they have found what they were looking for. This process is called customer journey and allows the “quality” leads to be filtered, so they reach the sales team with the purchase practically decided.
“The machinery adapts to what the client demands. We thus suppress mass mailing. This has been a major progress that allows the client response to be adjusted. The information we receive may have an impact on the actual works and evolution of the resorts. We all have projects for the next five or ten years; we have to know that this offer is valid”, explains the manager at Arum Group.
On the other hand, Casolà notes the transformation brought by artificial intelligence through the metaverse. “Just with some goggles, our clients will see all the details of the residence in three dimensions, sitting on their sofa in Berlin, London or Brussels. Their avatar may sit on the terrace with views of the golf course. The avatar of one of our sales representatives will guide them through the home and may decide what changes they want to make. This possibility is already within our reach and we must offer it to our clients so they may make buying decisions from anywhere in the world, and they may move directly to live in their new residence”.
Elodie Casolà emphasises encounters at international forums in the sector that she defends “due to their emotional component, that is also indispensable in communication strategy”. Definitively, in the era of digitization and technology, the offline world, that of human relations, it not only disappears, but is also more necessary than ever, according to the expert.
