Customer Story
LockedOn helps real estate agents generate 500x ROI with SMS
Overview
Challenge: LockedOn wanted to help real estate agents generate more sales from their databases with a low-cost, repeatable marketing channel that could outperform many traditional and digital alternatives.
Solution: Sinch Engage supported LockedOn’s CRM and coaching model with targeted SMS campaigns, templates and automations designed to help agents engage buyers and sellers more effectively.
Results: $250 New Year SMS campaign delivering 45 listing appointments, 23 listings, 20 sales and more than $136,000 in commission within three months — around 500x ROI.
“The return on investment [for SMS] is in multiples of 100s. It’s just absolutely crazy, and you can’t get that anywhere else.“
For LockedOn, SMS is not an add-on to the sales process. It is one of the core tools the business uses to help real estate agents turn prospect databases into appointments, listings and sales. LockedOn was built to replace older, harder-to-use real estate systems with a CRM that kept the salesperson front and centre, and SMS became an important part of that philosophy early on.
The company was launched around 12 years ago by directors with more than 80 years of combined industry experience. From the start, the focus was on giving agents practical systems that would help them sell more effectively. That meant not just storing contact data, but using that data in targeted ways. For LockedOn, the challenge was simple: help agents find the best pathway to more sales. The answer, in many cases, was SMS.
Luke Newton and Aaron Shiner built that belief into the platform’s approach. Their view is that real estate is a numbers game, and if agents want to maximise sales while keeping costs down, SMS remains one of the most effective and affordable channels available. LockedOn pairs the platform with coaching, scripts and targeted message strategies so agents can use SMS in a more disciplined, repeatable way rather than as one-off outreach.
Turning targeted messages into listings and sales
The value of Sinch Engage (formerly MessageMedia) in this model is not just delivery. It is what the channel allows agents to do with the right database, the right grouping and the right wording. LockedOn shares practical SMS templates with clients for use cases like alerting buyers to new listings, notifying owners about recent sales in their street and sending special-occasion campaigns that prompt seller enquiries. The platform also supports automations, including out-of-hours response texts that reassure buyers their enquiry has been received.
LockedOn says the results can be substantial when those campaigns are executed well. One targeted New Year SMS campaign costing $250 is cited as generating 45 listing appointments, 23 listings, 20 sales and more than $136,000 in commission within three months — around 500x ROI. The company also points to SMS open rates of 98% and the speed of replies as reasons the channel works so well in real estate.
