Daft.ie: 1997-2005

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Daft.ie 1997-2005

• Presentation by Eamonn Fallon, Co-Founder Daft.ie
  for NovaUCD

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Agenda

• Section 1
• Daft Introduction What we do and who we sell to
• Daft Timeline Interesting turning points in the
  business
• Section 2
• Top Five Tips How we became the biggest property
  website in Ireland
• Summary and QA

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Section 1

• An introduction to the Daft business

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What does Daft do?

• Daft.ie is Irelands biggest property website
• 200,000 properties let/sold every year
• Equals 4 billion worth of property transactions
• Over 13 million pages of properties viewed by
  310,000 people in January 2005
• Visited every 3.1 seconds
• We specialise in
• Residential property to let
• Property for sale for First-time-buyers and
  investors
• House Shares
• Commercial Property Offices spaces, Retail
  units, Parking Spaces, Commercial property for
  sale

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What does Daft look like?
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Who does Daft sell to? (1/2)

• Property Seekers
• Students and young professionals wanting to rent
  a house or live in a house share (Original Core
  Audience)
• First-time buyers, investors and over-seas buyers
• Backpackers/Foreign Workers/Holiday Makers
  looking for short-term accommodation, corporate
  lettings or holiday homes
• Anyone looking for office space
• Anyone looking for city centre parking
• Coming soon Anyone looking to rent or buy
  property abroad

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Who does Daft sell to? (2/2)

• Property Advertisers
• Estate agents (over 850 member agents)
• Landlords (approx 50,000)
• Owner-Occupiers (approx 30,000)
• Private Sellers and Property Developers (over
  1,000)
• Commercial property owners/renters
• Property advertisers pay to get access to our
  property seeking audience
• Property seekers get access to our property lists
  free of charge

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Daft is a low-cost advertising medium

• Property to let ads cost only 3.95 and stay on
  the site until let
• Typically takes from 2 hours 3 weeks to let on
  Daft
• First ad is free
• Property for sale ads costs 85
• Bulk rates available for people with big property
  portfolios and estate agents

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Sample Ad 1
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Sample Ad 2
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Sponsorships and Banners

• 2004 saw online advertising revival
• We now run approx 6 different campaigns a month
• Permanent TSB, CPL, EasyJet, ESAT BT, VHI, O2
• Sponsorships
• Mortgage Centre generates over 100m worth of
  mortgage application each month
• 6 mortgage brokers pay to sell mortgages to Daft
  users
• We only take sponsorships that will add value to
  the Daft service

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Mortgage Centre
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Daft, a little history 1

• 1997 Brian setup original Daft as the first way
  to find accommodation online in dublin
• September 2001 Eamonn Brian form Daft Media
  Ltd.
• September 2001 Lost website in the new york
  attacks
• November 2001 Relaunched Daft and went
  country-wide
• July 2003 Quit full-time job to work on Daft
  full time and commercialise business

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Daft, a little history 2

• September 2003 Launched property for sale
  section
• March 2004 Launched mobile version on O2 and
  Meteor networks
• May 2004 Launched commercial property section
• June 2004 Launched short-term accommodation
  section
• September 2004 Finalist Ernst Young
  Entrepreneur of the Year

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Daft, a little history 3

• October 2005 Re-launched website with new look
  and feel
• November 2005 Launched Mortgage Centre
• November 2004 Winner 4 golden spiders
• Feb 2005 Digital Media Brand of the Year

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Daft, the Future

• Over next two weeks, we will be launching an
  international property section
• Allows people let out property they own abroad to
  an Irish audience
• Allows Irish people to buy investment properties
  abroad, without having to visit the country
• Continue to build our brand amongst first-time
  buyers

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Section 2

• Internet Strategy

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Top 5 How did Daft become the biggest property
site in Ireland

• Built a brand not a website
• Built up quality content, so people would visit
  (and return)
• Focused on generating word-of-mouth advertising
  and targeted editorial
• Making our customers very very happy
• Taking care of our customers to keep them very
  very happy

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1. Build Brand

• Daft is a brand first, website second
• By building brand we increase barriers to entry
• Hard for new generic sites to take market share
• Hard for existing players to buy market share

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2. Build quality content

• Once you get visitors you need to give them what
  they want
• Content should be as up-to-date as possible
• If the visitor has a positive experience and you
  give him the info he needs, he will probably tell
  others (WOM)

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3. Target your Marketing

• Try to get as much editorial as possible
• Daft.ie is recommeded in the campus accommodation
  booklets, embassy websites, lonely planet guide,
  company intranets, recruitment companies
  literature and moving to ireland websites
• We also get coverage in national newspapers, TV
  and radio
• Daft.ie appears first in Google for many search
  terms. Eg Dublin Houses for Sale

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4. Keep Customers Happy

• Happy customers are your sales force
• Make sure its easy to give feedback
• Act on that feedback so that if negative it
  doesnt affect anyone else
• As with any business if you give customers what
  they want and even exceed what the want, they
  will promote you to others
• This generated WOM marketing, which is the best
  kind

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5. Take Care of your Customers

• Answer every email within the day
• Preferably as soon as it comes in
• Its possible to automate some customer care
• Daft automatically emails a personal message to
  people when a number of different conditions are
  met. Thousands sent daily.
• Integrate customer care into business, so that
  feedback goes directly back into new/updated
  content

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Summary and QA

• A brief look at the Daft business
• Top 5 tips
• Slides available at www.daft.ie/novaucd
• Questions?