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Zillow is continuing its leadership shuffle, with the Seattle-based residential portal announcing a new senior vice president of agent sales on Friday. Former PayPal executive Soumya Tulloss will lead Zillow’s agent sales, the segment that includes flagship products Zillow Showcase and Zillow Premier Agent.

Jun Choo | Credit: LinkedIn

“Zillow is investing in software and digital solutions to power the real estate industry, and that includes a suite of innovative products for agents, who continue to be an integral part of Zillow’s business,” Zillow SVP of Real Estate Software Jun Choo said in a prepared statement. “Organizing our sales teams under Soumya’s leadership allows us to rapidly innovate and strategically invest in our agent community.”

“Soumya’s commitment to exceptional customer experiences, as well as her impressive ability to supercharge sales organizations while driving revenues, make her a valuable addition to the Zillow team,” he added.

Tulloss has 15 years of experience in sales and marketing, starting with an internship with Google where she drove 35 percent of U.S. traffic for the search engine’s Google Maps Favorite Places campaign in 2009. From there, Tulloss went on to work for Deutsche Bank Securities, PayPal, GoodData, Twilio and Deliverr.

At Twilio, she supercharged the company’s revenue growth by more than 3,000 percent, jumping from $89 million in 2014 to $2.8 billion in 2021. She brought that same growth to Deliverr, which reached $2.1 billion in revenue before being acquired by Shopify in 2022.

Soumya Tulloss | Credit: Zillow

In a prepared statement, Tulloss said she’s excited to bring that same growth to Zillow, where she’ll be responsible for driving growth and deeper integration between agent sales solutions and other products within the company.

“I’m excited to support Zillow’s critical mission of getting more and more people home,” she said. “My goal is to make the more than a million agents powering the residential real estate industry wildly successful by offering exceptional services that enable them to serve more customers, more efficiently.”

“As a first-generation American, purchasing and owning a home was a dream for my family,” she added. “The partnership and support we received from our agent helped my family turn that dream into a reality. I’m excited to support our agent customers as we all work together to make this dream a reality for many more people.”

Tulloss’ appointment comes at a critical time for Zillow, as the company aims to stay above the drama of an intensifying portal war and evolve its value proposition to agents as they navigate the dismantling of the National Association of Realtors’ Participation Rule.

During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Zillow co-founder and co-executive chair Rich Barton and CEO Jeremy Wacksman shared their vision for the portal’s next chapter, which will focus on strengthening the “digital future of real estate” by driving deeper integration between Real-Time Touring, Zillow Showcase and Zillow Premier Agent to create a frictionless transaction experience for agents and consumers.

“We believe we and our partners are the outsized beneficiaries of these changes coming in the industry. We have the most customers. We work with the best partners,” Wacksman said. “We provide the most technology, and we expect our Premier Agents will deliver and get paid because they provide great service.”

In his last Inman Connect Las Vegas keynote as Zillow CEO, Barton said Zillow will continue to accelerate the move toward delivering a platform that will make homebuying and homeselling as easy as buying a latte — an increasingly attractive proposition as agents and consumers wade through a new real estate landscape.

“It’s not unlike Brad Inman’s latte transaction [keynote] from 2013. Who remembers that?” he said. “His vision was organizing this mess and saying moving should be as easy as buying a latte. Well, we’re getting there. We’re getting there. It’s taking a while, but we’re getting there.”

Email Marian McPherson

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Real estate software company MoxiWorks has selected SOCi, a powerful online marketing solution that works with some of the business world’s most recognized names, as the latest in its 150+ member MoxiCloud network, according to a July 25 press release.  The release describes SOCi as “the leading co-marketing cloud for multi-location enterprises.”

The digital marketing company’s software automates everything from social media and display advertising to customer surveys and product reviews, among other marketing tactics. It also tackles online reputation management and SEO strategy.

“This partnership enables brokers and agents to effortlessly post real estate listings — whether they’re new listings, open houses, price reductions, or closings — directly to their social media channels,” MoxiWorks said in the release.

While there are a number of real estate-specific companies that handle such needs, even MoxiWorks itself, SOCi’s advantage is that it brings case studies, feedback and business intelligence from customers like Ford, Jersey Mike’s, KOA, Ace Hardware, Rent-A-Center, SportClips and Marcos Pizza, among many others. External insights can be powerful drivers of improvement for real estate brands.

“Everyone knows how important social media is for promoting not only a real estate listing but an agent and their brand as well,” said Krista Hannahs, MoxiWorks’ Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships, in a statement. “We’re excited to have a powerhouse tool like SOCi in our MoxiCloud partner program to offer agents technology that truly simplifies their social media management, especially for large brokerages with multiple franchises and locations.”

Of specific interest to MoxiWorks customers may be SOCi’s Genius Social, an AI-driven social media content planner and assistant. Hyper-localized content and marketing insights can be assembled into sequential posts with a centralized calendar, optimized for long-term engagement and focused on specific zip codes or regions within one.

Because of the deep integration, users are assured that all listing data, copy and relevant marketing assets are pushed through to SOCi’s interface. There’s a full automation option for those with more listings than time, as well as total manual oversight for those who want to be more deliberate with how messaging is disseminated.

Richard Lumsden, senior vice president of business development at SOCi, said in the release that his company’s suite of features can help new agents become market authorities, and established agents scale “without lifting a finger.”

“This powerful partnership ensures maximum efficiency and effectiveness in social media management for brokers and agents,” Lumsden said.

In March, RealReports joined MoxiCloud, and in February, it was custom app builders HomeStack.

SOCi set up a website on the partnership at www.meetsoci.com/moxiworks-integration. MoxiWorks is based in Seattle and states that it powers more than 800 brokerages and 400,000 agents.

Email Craig Rowe