Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
1999-01-04
2001-05-22
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2162)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Discount or incentive
C705S014270, C705S026640, C705S027200, C705S037000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06236977
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to computerized business management systems. More particularly, the invention relates to an electronic commerce marketing system that automates and optimizes the behavior of inbound and outbound marketing campaigns on behalf of each of several different parties seeking to exchange valuable resources. The optimization takes places over time as the system learns from previous results allowing such campaigns to tune themselves. In one embodiment, the computer-implemented system employs an optimization engine utilizing genetic algorithmic and game theory techniques augmented by a prediction engine that uses holographic neural network techniques. Although the system is well adapted and described in the context of a single family residential real estate marketing system, it may be readily adapted to for use in other businesses, as well.
The real estate industry has traditionally relied heavily on social contact (word of mouth) and comparatively simple advertising campaigns, all relying heavily on the interpersonal skills of the real estate company's agents. Although computer technology has been used to automate the collection and distribution of real estate multiple listing information, very little else has been done to improve the information infrastructure of the real estate business as a whole. Other industries, primarily those involved in direct business-to-business marketing, have begun to use computer systems to automate the marketing process. However, existing marketing computer systems have been designed to facilitate complex, multi-person sales activity between manufacturers and their customers and do not work very well in consumer markets such as the real estate market. On the other hand, current consumer marketing systems such as contact management systems, telemarketing systems, and mail order processing systems do not begin to address the more sophisticated aspects of real estate marketing. In any event, current business-to-business marketing systems and consumer marketing systems all suffer from similar common weaknesses: they either present no means for improving efficiency over time, or they place the burden of improvement on user-supplied rules which require trial-and-error experiments and separate ad hoc analysis of the results of those experiments.
To illustrate, consider some of the issues faced by the residential single family home real estate brokerage firm. First, for most people, the home is the most substantial asset they will ever own. The decision to buy or sell a home is an emotional one and many people will understandably take a long time to mentally commit that they are ready to buy or sell. Then, even if their home buying or selling readiness is high, there is the issue of locating a suitable property, obtaining financing, finding a buyer for a person's existing property, and so forth. All of these emotionally fraught uncertainties make the real estate business highly labor intensive. It has heretofore been very costly and inefficient to locate ready buyers and sellers using conventional mailing lists and telemarketing campaigns. Simply stated, there has heretofore been no way to predict which members of the potential customer population represent good leads on which to follow up.
As noted, real estate brokerage companies have traditionally relied heavily on their real estate agents to meet the potential customer population face to face, to identify the best buyer and seller candidates. This presents a significant problem for brokerage firms that are trying to increase market share while protecting profit margins. In this labor-intensive industry, increasing market share has traditionally required increasing the number of agents. Increasing the number of agents does not translate to increased productivity and efficiency since after a point the best agents have already been taken; in fact, increasing the number of agents can actually reduce efficiency. What is needed is a means to increase the overall efficiency of the entire marketing process for the broker, the agents and the public.
The present invention applies a highly sophisticated, computer-implemented system to this consumer marketing problem. Used properly over time, the computer-implemented system can re-engineer much of the marketing side of the business. Although the presently preferred embodiment is adapted to the residential single family home aspect of the real estate marketing business, the system described herein can readily be adapted to other types of businesses, particularly those involved in consumer marketing with a sales force.
According to one aspect of the invention, a computer-implemented, self-optimizing marketing system is provided. A campaign engine selectively generates and stores a campaign population, that is, a plurality of individual marketing campaigns, each campaign characterized by a plurality of campaign attributes. Campaigns can be created on behalf of a broker (e.g. via a broker employee), a member of the public (e.g. actual or potential buyers and sellers of properties) or agents (i.e. real estate sales associates). Campaigns perform useful work on behalf of the sponsor, typically oriented to fulfilling desires to utilize, incorporate, exchange, access or monopolize resources in a more automated and efficient way than would be possible for the sponsor to do otherwise. By way of example, the campaign population might include inbound campaigns that manage the leads generated by members of the public calling a broker's hotline to learn about properties for sale in that market. The campaign population might also include outbound campaigns to manage the process of finding the optimum candidates to receive direct mail about a property or seminar. Each of the specific campaigns in the campaign population is differentiated from other campaigns by their respective campaign attributes. The system also includes a data structure for the storage and retrieval of various campaign data including; the campaign's sponsor, the desires of that sponsor in terms of specific resources, and rules or constraints (e.g. time, money) on how to optimally meet those desires. The marketing systems provides for a feedback loop between outbound campaigns and inbound campaigns such that the results of inbound campaigns can be used to monitor and improve the effectiveness of outbound campaigns.
The marketing system further includes a data store for storing a person population, property population, agent population and a broker population. Such populations may include both actual and potential members (i.e. actual customers and potential customers in the person population, actual agents and potential agents in the agent population, etc. The person population consists of individual members, each comprising stored data that represents a plurality of current customers, past customers and non-customers adding up to all members of a market's total adult population. The members of the person population are each characterized by a plurality of person attributes. In the presently preferred embodiment, the person attributes would include suitable identifying information, allowing those members of the person population to be contacted. In the preferred embodiment, the person attributes also include quantitative attributes that indicate each (non-customer) member's readiness to enter the market and the desires of that member regarding properties on the market, currently or in the future. Similarly, the agent population consists of individual members, each comprising a plurality of agents or potential agents who themselves are characterized by a plurality of agent attributes, including actual or predicted quantitative attributes regarding an agents sales productivity, areas of specialization and market areas served. The property population for a particular market is fully represented in the data store with plurality of actual properties and potential properties (e.g. sub-developments with unsold lots
Ciepiel Anthony M.
Verba Stephen M.
Harness & Dickey & Pierce P.L.C.
Realty One, Inc.
Tesfamariam Mussie
Trammell James P.
LandOfFree
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