About First National Real Estate

First National Real Estate (FNRE)⁠(opens in a new tab or window) is an Australasian group of independent real estate agents specializing in residential, commercial, rural, lifestyle, and property management. The real estate co-operative equips members with resources and training to independently lead their regions across Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia.

Summary

• Problem Canva solves: Canva helps FNRE consolidate all content creation within a single platform, enabling teams to scale content production across hundreds of offices.
• Canva features used: Brand Kit, Groups, Video Editor, Background Remover, Magic Eraser, Magic Edit, Resize & Magic Switch.
• First National Real Estate teams using Canva: Marketing, Events and Training, Business Growth Managers/Sales, Recruitment, Executive Team.

ROI

• 500% increase in design templates.
• Saved over 156+ hours per year on design production.
• Reduced template turnaround time by 85%.
• Doubled content output on Canva.
• Saved thousands on design resourcing.

The Challenge

First National Real Estate (FNRE) looks after a wide network of real estate offices across Australasia. Each one requires the ability to tailor content for their region and provide clients with local expertise.

Prior to Canva, FNRE used a template-based design tool to support 4,000 employees across office branches in Australasia. Their previous platform was a “clunky” system, lacking customization and collaboration features.

It was difficult to upload new templates, so their content library remained stagnant and largely unused. “We uploaded 20 templates over three years,” recalls Kim Batto, Marketing Manager at FNRE.

“The old platform was frustrating,” adds Madeline Bonnici, Marketing & Events Manager at FNRE Bonnici & Associates.

“All collateral in our office still had to go through me. I had to either design or approve every asset. I started recreating the templates outside the platform because it was easier to edit.”

Creative bottlenecks were exacerbated by FNRE’s multiple brand styles. Designers had to account for commercial and residential sub-brands, and individual office logos and branding.

FNRE needed an easily accessible design platform to centralize its branding and support its growing real estate network. Canva Teams⁠(opens in a new tab or window) fit the bill.

The Solution

Switching to Canva, FNRE unlocked content efficiencies almost immediately.

As part of onboarding, Canva’s team helped create 50 branded templates in FNRE’s brand style, featuring company logos, colors, and fonts. FNRE designers could easily duplicate and customize these templates in each office’s brand style for landing pages, emails, flyers, and other collateral.

Once Canva officially rolled out across the company, FNRE employees had immediate access to 500 branded templates they could access and edit with ease. Usage skyrocketed from there.

“Canva has seen the highest uptake out of any platform at FNRE,” says Kim. “Before, we were limited to 400 templates for our teams to use. Now, we have over 2,100 templates.”

That’s a whopping 500% increase.

“It’s unbelievable,” adds Kim. “It used to take a week to upload one template on our previous platform. Now, in Canva, we can design, approve, and upload in a single day.”

Group access means that FNRE can match their account to their company structure, ensuring each office only sees templates relevant to them. With their teams set up for success, every new campaign rollout starts on Canva.

Their teams now had one-stop access to the correct fonts, colors, and logos in centralized Brand Kits, fast-tracking the production of on-brand visual content.

“It’s so helpful how we can swap seamlessly between residential and commercial Brand Kits and apply them easily,” says Madeline.

Before Canva, simple tasks like creating custom ‘For Sale’ signboards required multiple design applications and edits. “It took me over three hours,” says Madeline. “With Canva, I can mock up a signboard in 10 minutes.”

Consolidating their tech stack

As the go-to hub for visual communication, Canva consolidates FNRE’s work in an all-in-one platform, saving the company thousands of dollars in outsourcing and subscription fees.

FNRE previously relied on a different app for every output, from PDFs and landing pages to videography and slideshows. Their subscription costs added up, taking a toll on the Marketing team's budget.

The introduction of Canva streamlined workflows and cut costs.

Now, FNRE leans on Canva’s Visual Suite for video production, landing page creation, photo editing, asset creation, and more.

“The old platform only offered static or PDF creation,” says Kim. “We get much more value out of Canva in comparison.”

And they’re still discovering new opportunities within the platform.

“Our offices started using Canva to create property listing slideshows,” adds Madeline. “So now we're phasing out our slideshow subscription as well.”

With all design work housed on Canva, FNRE consolidated their tech stack from multiple software tools to an all-in-one content platform.

Scaling in-house video production

From social media marketing to the television screen, Canva streamlines how FNRE teams produce and scale branded video content in-house.

Editing Instagram Reels natively on social media can be a fiddly business. But Canva's video editor makes creating professional, social-first videos for campaigns a breeze with a drag-and-drop interface.

“Before Canva, it took me up to 40 minutes per video if I had many clips to edit,” says Madeline. “Now, I can create the same content in half the time. Canva makes designing social media content a thousand times easier.”

Canva is also helping FNRE scale the production of its national television commercial for all offices. Previous campaigns saw FNRE hire an external videographer to create end frames for each office, requiring countless updates and thousands of dollars.

For the first time this year, however, offices will have the chance to edit their own end frames within Canva, cutting down production time and saving the company thousands in production fees.

Bringing listings to life with AI

Canva’s suite of AI-powered tools enables FNRE agents to make simple edits to listing photos, saving teams hours of design time.

Small image tweaks can bring real estate listings to life, whether it’s adding fire to a fireplace or removing a passerby from an image. Doing so with traditional editing methods would take hours, but Canva’s AI-powered Magic Edit feature enhances real estate photography in a fraction of the time.

“A perfect example is a photo of a fireplace. It can look so bland,” says Kim. “I showed our agents how to highlight that space, type in ‘add fire’ using Magic Edit, and see their words come to life.”

FNRE designers often faced the tedious task of removing backgrounds from real estate agent headshot photos. Canva’s Background Remover perfects backdrops in an instant, saving precious time and empowering real estate agents to do the designing.

“Before Canva, our designers would take 30 minutes to an hour to edit headshots. But Background Remover does the job in a few clicks,” says Kim.