Case Study —
Public Relations • Thought Leadership
Built and stewarded a marketing/martech team that quadrupled user growth and secured sothebysrealty.ca’s standing as Sotheby’s International Realty’s #1 ranked website out of 1,100 offices worldwide.
Talent Growth & Retention
Agile Culture Risk-Taking
Brand Storytelling
SEO Content
Copywriting
Business Alignment
Vision & Roadmap (Early Stage)
Performance Metrics
Project Management (Early Stage)
Lead Generation (Early Stage)
Conversion Strategy (Early Stage)
CRM Integration (Early Stage)
Cross-Departmental Training
Internal Communications
Talent Growth & Retention
Agile Culture Risk-Taking
Brand Storytelling
SEO Content
Copywriting
Business Alignment
Vision & Roadmap (Early Stage)
Performance Metrics
Project Management (Early Stage)
Lead Generation (Early Stage)
Conversion Strategy (Early Stage)
CRM Integration (Early Stage)
Cross-Departmental Training
Internal Communications
In 2012, as the U.S. real estate industry was being transformed by innovators such as Zillow, sothebysrealty.ca attracted just 800,000 annual visitors, generated few measurable leads, and fell short of reflecting the prestige of the Sotheby’s International Realty brand. When I joined the company in 2013, the opportunity was clear: to build a premium, brand-driven digital experience that would also serve as a powerful lead generation engine, supported by a back-end system designed for operational efficiency as the company scaled.
As CMO, I led the website strategy and team responsible for engineering sothebysrealty.ca and the proprietary Gateway marketing technology ecosystem, building and evolving an in-house team that transformed these platforms into a defining competitive advantage for the company. I made relaunching sothebysrealty.ca the company’s top priority, with lead generation, conversion performance and traffic growth at its core. This began with selecting the right agency partner to launch the site, and eventually evolved into building a lean, agile in-house development team, supported by content and digital agency partners, to drive continuous innovation within finite resources. Innovation and product development were integrated in key roles across the marketing and martech team, empowering a conventionally marketing-focused group to also function fractionally as a high-performing web and software development team.
Built a small, agile team with fractional and multi-disciplinary talent who were empowered to make decisions, iterate quickly and execute continuous improvement across the product lifecycle.
Refocused web strategy to align with short and long term business goals by applying conversion-centered design and content, and continuously optimizing for lead capture. Established the foundation for future enterprise-grade CRM integration from day one.
Secured executive buy-in for enterprise-grade corporate CRM integration. Strengthened the marketing team with specialized CRM talent, enabling the development of a multi-year strategy that delivered nearly $200 million in annual sales opportunities.
Rewrote website copy to strengthen brand narrative and value proposition. Built the foundational content strategy to drive ongoing organic traffic growth.
Engaged an analytics-driven content agency to produce content informed by in-depth qualitative and quantitative competitive and analytics research, an approach and partner eventually adopted by Sotheby’s International Realty’s global head office for its international website, sothebysrealty.com. Sustained analytics driven content creation through agency and team changes.
Within 30 days of relaunching sothebysrealty.ca in 2013, property listing leads increased 68% and corporate leads surged 200%, demonstrating the immediate impact of conversion-driven strategy. In year two, unique users grew 51% year-over-year while direct-to-agent leads were up 64%, improvements that were driven primarily by organic traffic gains rather than increased ad spend. By year three, unique users rose another 45% year-over-year, and direct-to-agent leads improved an additional 5%, reflecting sustained, compounding growth achieved on a finite budget.
Through continuous innovation by a highly talented in-house development team, sothebysrealty.ca’s audience quadrupled, expanding over 300% in a decade to 13 million annual pageviews. In 2024 sothebysrealty.ca earned the T3 Fusion Ranking Award for excellence in website design and performance.
More Property Listings Leads
More Corporate Leads
Website for Sotheby’s International Realty Worldwide
Fusion Website Ranking Award
More Unique Users In <10 Years