Case Study: RE/MAX

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Situation

The RE/MAX International network of about 85,000 Sales Associates in more than 4,600 offices in 44 countries is as culturally and ethnically diverse as the communities in which our Affiliates serve. With unsolicited email at an all-time industry high, ensuring the safety, security, and confidence of RE/MAXs 43,000 email accounts was becoming a challenge that couldn't be ignored. Spamming companies figured out that RE/MAX had a naming scheme under remax.net and systematically generated email addresses that were associated with it and sent out the spam accordingly. Adding to RE/MAX's dismay, after these spamming companies found out which email addresses were valid, they started selling those lists, which compounded the problem. As the company sought a solution, they became frustrated at every turn and especially disappointed at the astronomical figures quoted by third parties.

Solution

Securence mirrors how viruses act industry-wide and then becomes the anti-virus by reverse engineering the virus. After a one-week pilot of Securence at RE/MAX, they found it to be a god-send.

"Since we started our relationship with Securence, we experienced a 50% decrease in our email load," said Kristi Graning, VP Web Services & IT Marketing at RE/MAX.

Graning and her techs were thrilled. During the first day, they saw a 59% drop in the load their email servers had to handle. While the Securence engineers were surprised at this low number, because most industries have a 90%+ spam infiltration rate, they were assured that it was accurate because it meant that 41% of the email was legitimate.

RE/MAX agents were also delighted. "They didn't know what we had done," said Graning. "Within 48 hours, we were receiving phone calls from them, saying, ‘Something's different. What did you do? I know you did something really great.' Or conversely, ‘Is there something wrong with my email?'"

Overall value of the Securence solution was its accuracy, low monthly cost, ease of deployment, significantly reduced workload on computer support, minimal on-going administration, and heightened security leading to improved Affiliate morale.

"I guess you could say we found our silver bullet in Securence," concluded Graning.

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