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Video publishing company WellcomeMat is now a benefit for members of the nation’s largest multiple listing service (MLS), according to an announcement the company sent to Inman.
California Regional MLS (CRMLS), which serves more than 110,000 members, welcomed the marketing add-on in the same week it announced market metrics provider Local Logic would join its cadre of proptech partners.
WellcomeMat doesn’t help agents create videos. Its role is more of distributor, helping agents organize, publish and analyze video content performance.
“Videos have become standard web content, and consumers expect to see them on every website and mobile app,” said CEO of CRMLS Art Carter in the announcement. “It is an integral, organic extension of the MLS’s value proposition to help leverage the power of property videos and remove the hassle of third-party video hosting.”
WellcomeMat’s users upload content from any number of sources, such as YouTube, Google Docs or Dropbox and utilize the solution to categorize and publish videos using embedded players on their companies’ and other websites.
The WellcomeMat integration offers a brand-new video toolset for CRMLS users within each of the listing “Add/Edit” suites they use, according to the announcement. The CRMLS Matrix platform will feature this integration first, with CRMLS Paragon and Flexmls following suit.
Videos can be updated, removed or adjusted as metrics come back to users and easily replicated across multiple social media outlets. And as is common among MLSs, WellcomeMat allows users to remove branding elements upon upload as well as create chapters for quick navigation, which could help viewers jump ahead to a pool tour, or neighborhood breakdown, for example.
The company announced in February that it was also selected by TriangleMLS, which covers the Raleigh-Durham region of North Carolina. Its executive director Matt Fowler said at the time that video should be managed in the same way photos are handled.
“By allowing our subscribers to send their property listing videos directly to us, instead of linking to a hosting service, we can syndicate the videos back out to thousands of subscribers just like we now manage photos,” he said.
Video marketing is growing quickly and is the content format driving a couple of new popular real estate marketing mobile apps. Australia’s 1060 has made its way to the states, and Real, backed by reality TV agent Fredrik Eklund, has its lens focused on Wall Street. Rila is another, around well before the former two.
WellcomeMat, however, has them all beat in terms of tenure. The company recognized the potential of real estate video in 2006. Its CEO Christian Sterner said in the announcement that he’s excited about his app being featured on such a prominent MLS.
“We are honored and humbled,” Sterner said. “WellcomeMat has maintained that all rich media can and should be native to every real estate website and mobile application. We are finally making true video distribution a reality in real estate.“
