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How SavvyCard’s biggest client became an investor

Veronica Brezina

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SavvyCard's platform called SavvySigns.

St. Petersburg-based SavvyCard, an innovator in real estate marketing and lead generation, hit a major milestone in August in securing a six-figure investment deal with an existing client. 

SavvyCard is a lead development platform that launched in 2012 as a free, online business card. In 2017 the company struck a major deal with CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a property information, analytics and data firm, and built on that last fall when it landed the California Regional MLS – the largest multiple listing service in the United States – as a client.

California Regional MLS is SavvyCard’s biggest client with 110,000 real estate agents. SavvyCard CEO David Etheredge said the company has worked with California Regional MLS for over three years, building a trusted relationship.

The firm recently launched the Venture MLS fund, which was created to back seed and early-stage real estate technology companies, and through that fund it invested and undisclosed amount to SavvyCard. 

“Because they’ve [California Regional MLS] partnered with us and decided to invest in our company, it makes us very excited about our prospects in the future,” Etheredge said. “When your largest client invests in you, you know you’re doing business right.” 

He said when CRMLS announced the new fund late last year, SavvyCard approached the group about potentially securing an investment. After SavvyCard made its presentation to CRMLS, the group went through a due diligence period evaluating the investment and when they indicated they would move forward with it, the investment closed within an eight- to 10-week period.

“They moved very deliberately and were very transparent. This funding was critical,” Etheredge said. “We have this RE-Target product that we released in March and had three markets. Now we have reached 55 markets in seven months. With this new product, we needed to build sales and fulfillment resources to fuel that market demand.” 

The investment from CRMLS will support SavvyCard as it builds toward meeting the high market demand for RE-Target, its managed advertising solution. CRMLS and SavvyCard now provide CRMLS users with feature-rich tools to communicate and engage with local buyers, sellers and homeowners through SavvyCard’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.

In every market, SavvyCard’s RE-Target has 30-100 advertisers monthly. With the 55 markets, SavvyCard is going from managing hundreds to thousands of advertisers.  

“Our bottom line is growing rapidly and this funding is allowing us to add staff,” he said. 

SavvyCard currently has 15 employees and is projected to grow to 20 team members by the first quarter of next year. 

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