Work Southaven Homes
The proving ground.
Southaven Homes is a spec builder in Middle Tennessee — and it is run by our partner Ryan, which makes it the one client we can never lose and never fool. Every system Etch sells ran here first, on real leads and real listings, before any client saw it.
The desk before
A builder’s marketing problem.
A spec builder’s marketing desk is a second job nobody applied for. Leads arrive from the website at seven in the morning and get answered the next day, if the day allows. Four hundred real-estate agents who have shown or sold the homes should hear from the company every month; they heard when someone remembered. New listings deserved a post the week they went live, written carefully, because real-estate advertising has Fair Housing rules with teeth. And all of it competed with the actual work of building houses.
The usual answers are a marketing hire the size of a superintendent’s salary, or an agency retainer that still needs somebody inside the company feeding it. We built the third answer.
What we built
First the site, then the desk behind it.
In 2026 the website was rebuilt from scratch: seven floor plans, live listings, a blog, local pages, and forms that land in the owner’s inbox. Then the Etch Engine went in behind it — a private dashboard on the company’s own subdomain where the marketing is drafted, proofed, approved and reported.
- The agent program.424 agents who have shown or sold Southaven homes, organized in Airtable and mailed twice a month. The Engine drafts each send from that month’s actual listings — five subject lines, three angles — and it waits for a person’s edit before anything goes.
- The buyer program.A separate list, a separate voice. Buyers get the homes; agents get the commission math. Two audiences, never one blast.
- The social composer.Every post previewed the way each platform will actually crop it, with a Fair Housing screen before anything is queued. Listed homes with no post in two weeks get flagged, so nothing goes quiet.
- The blog pipeline.A post, its homepage card and the sitemap, published in one command. The next email picks the post up automatically.
- The rest of the desk.A text engine that schedules subcontractors in English and Spanish, and a voicemail line that transcribes every call and emails it in. Not marketing — but the same rails, and the same rule.
- The Monday report.Leads, replies, opens, follows, and what to do about them. One page, plain English, in the inbox before the coffee is done.
Every send waits for a human yes. The Engine drafts, checks and queues; Jessica’s eyes are on every proof. The rules of the engine room apply here first.
A morning on the desk
What running it actually looks like.
- RepliedNew lead from the website form. Texted back in ninety seconds with two showing times.She picked Thursday at 4. Logged to the CRM.Booked
- DraftedSeptember agent email: five subject lines, three angles, written from this month’s real listings.Waits for Jessica’s edit before anything is sent.Awaiting approval
- Scheduled“Just listed” post for 435 Moncrief Ave to Facebook and Instagram, photos from the site.Fair Housing screen passed. Goes out at 11:30.Queued
- PublishedNew blog post, its homepage card and the sitemap, in one command.The next email picks it up automatically.Live
- ReportedWeekly numbers in the inbox: leads, replies, opens, follows, and what to do about them.Every Monday
Every send waits for a human yes.
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The numbers
What the dashboard says.
From the Southaven dashboard, September 2026. The Engine has run the desk since summer 2026.
The open rates are good, but they are not the point. The point is that the emails exist: drafted from live inventory, edited by a person, sent on schedule, month after month, without the owner writing a word — while the follow-up, the posts and the report happen beside them. We will not print an industry benchmark here that we did not measure. Your own numbers are the comparison that matters, and the assessment starts by reading them.
The honest part
What it costs, and who it fits.
An Engine takes three months to go live, because the first month is spent learning the business rather than automating it. There is a build fee for those months, then a monthly fee for running it, quoted after the Growth Assessment — and the assessment is credited toward the build. We run the Engine for a few clients at a time, because every one of them gets Jessica’s eyes on every proof and Ryan’s hands on the system.
If your business wins in a radius and keeps a customer file — homes, pools, brakes, dental, fitness — the shape of this desk transfers. The listings become your jobs, the agents become your past customers, and the Fair Housing screen becomes whatever rules your trade answers to.
Want this desk for your business?
It starts with the Growth Assessment: two weeks, fixed price, three prioritized moves with what each returns. Credited toward the build.