MIPIM UK 2024 wrapped last week. We spent two days walking the floor at Olympia London, talking to real estate investors, developers, and proptech founders. Here's what we learned about selling to this crowd.
Real estate buyers don't answer cold emails. They answer warm ones.
Every proptech founder we spoke to said the same thing: their open rates on cold outreach hover around 12-15%. That's not terrible. But their reply rates? Below 2%.
The problem isn't the product. It's the approach.
Real estate decision-makers at MIPIM UK 2024 told us they get 40-60 sales emails a week. Most are generic. Most mention "AI-powered" or "disruptive" in the first sentence. Most go straight to the trash.
But the ones that work? They reference something specific. A project the developer just announced. A regulatory change affecting their portfolio. A competitor's recent funding round.
This is where research beats volume. Every time.
The structural issue here isn't just inbox fatigue—it's the decision-making cadence of real estate itself. Unlike SaaS procurement, where a single champion can greenlight a tool, real estate investment decisions involve asset managers, legal teams, and often external advisors. A cold email that lands on a director's desk gets forwarded to an analyst who has no context for the sender. That analyst deletes it. The warm approach, by contrast, pre-validates relevance before the email is ever opened. When you reference a specific planning application or a shift in permitted development rights, you signal that you understand the regulatory friction they navigate daily. That signal bypasses the gatekeeper filter because it reads as an industry briefing, not a pitch. The reply rate jumps not because the product changed, but because the context made the conversation safe to start. For proptech founders operating lean teams, this means spending 40% of outreach time on research and 60% on writing—not the reverse. The founders who did that at MIPIM left with meetings. The ones who didn't left with unread follow-ups.
How we'd approach MIPIM UK 2024 attendees
If we were running outbound to this conference's audience tomorrow, here's the workflow we'd use:
- Pull the attendee list from the MIPIM UK website. Filter by title: Head of Investment, Director of Development, CEO.
- Visit each company's website. Look for recent press releases, project announcements, or portfolio updates.
- Check LinkedIn for posts about the conference itself. People who shared "See you at MIPIM UK 2024" are warm leads.
- Draft one email per person. Reference something specific from step two or three.
- Send 20 emails a day. Not 200.
We tested this approach with a proptech founder who sells lease management software to commercial landlords. He sent 35 emails to MIPIM UK attendees the week before the conference. He got 8 replies. 3 turned into meetings at the event.
That's a 23% reply rate. On cold email.
The difference? Every email mentioned a specific building or portfolio the recipient managed. No templates. No AI-generated fluff.
The deeper insight here is not about volume or personalization in the abstract — it's about regulatory context. Real estate investment decisions at MIPIM UK are increasingly shaped by the UK's Building Safety Act 2022 and the upcoming Decent Homes Standard. A director of development at a major London landlord is not just thinking about square footage; they are thinking about compliance timelines, retrofit costs, and how lease management software can track safety-critical information across a portfolio. When our proptech founder referenced a specific building, he was implicitly signaling that he understood the regulatory pressure on that asset. That is why the reply rate held. Generic personalization — "I see you manage X portfolio" — is table stakes. The real leverage comes from connecting your product's function to a specific regulatory or compliance burden the recipient is legally obligated to address. For MIPIM UK attendees, that burden is often the intersection of capital expenditure planning and statutory safety requirements. Your email should read less like a sales pitch and more like a note from someone who has read the same legislation they are trying to implement.
What doesn't work at real estate conferences
We saw a lot of proptech booths doing the same thing: demo stations with iPads, branded swag, and a pitch deck on a screen.
It didn't work.
Real estate investors at MIPIM UK 2024 aren't there to watch demos. They're there to network, find deals, and meet people who understand their specific asset class. Residential developers don't care about hospitality tech. Commercial investors don't want to hear about build-to-rent software.
The deeper issue is structural. Most proptech booths treat the conference as a lead generation funnel, but real estate capital flows through relationships, not conversion rates. Investors at MIPIM are evaluating regulatory risk, cross-jurisdictional compliance, and capital stack complexity — not UI polish. A demo station signals that you're selling a tool. Walking the floor signals that you're solving a process problem. The difference is trust.
The proptech founders who got meetings were the ones who walked the floor, listened to conversations, and joined the right ones. They didn't wait for people to visit their booth.
One founder we talked to spent the first morning just listening. He identified three investors who kept mentioning the same pain point: managing mixed-use developments across multiple jurisdictions. He approached them after a panel, said "I overheard you talking about X — we built something for that," and had a 20-minute conversation.
No demo. No pitch deck. Just a relevant problem and a solution. That approach works because it mirrors how real estate decisions actually get made: through pattern recognition, not feature lists. The investors already knew their regulatory headache. The founder just confirmed he understood it too.
What this means for your outbound
MIPIM UK 2024 confirmed something we've been saying for months: the best sales outreach doesn't look like sales outreach.
It looks like a helpful email from someone who did their homework.
If you're selling to real estate professionals, stop sending generic cold emails. Start sending one-paragraph notes that reference something real. A project. A portfolio. A regulatory change.
We wrote about this in Your Competitor Read Their Website. You Didn't. The principle applies everywhere, but it's especially true in real estate. These buyers are relationship-driven. They trust people who understand their business.
And if you're attending a conference like MIPIM UK 2024, don't waste the opportunity. Prep your outreach before you go. Send 20-30 warm emails the week before. Reference the conference. Ask for a 10-minute coffee.
You'll get more meetings than any booth demo ever could.
But the deeper takeaway from the forum is this: the regulatory landscape is shifting faster than most sales teams can track. The Building Safety Act, EPC minimum standards, and the Renters' Reform Bill are creating specific pain points that vary by asset class and geography. A generic value prop about "efficiency" or "digital transformation" lands flat. What lands is a note that says: "I saw your recent BTR acquisition in Manchester — are you already modeling the cost implications of the new fire safety gateway requirements?" That's not a pitch. That's a signal that you understand their operational reality.
This is where your outbound process needs to evolve. Instead of scraping titles and blasting sequences, build a workflow that surfaces regulatory triggers per sub-sector. If a developer just broke ground on a PBSA scheme, your outreach should reference the specific compliance milestones they're facing. If a fund manager is rotating into logistics, your email should acknowledge the shifting yield expectations and planning bottlenecks. The conference reinforced that buyers are drowning in noise. The only way to cut through is to prove you've done the reading — not just on their company, but on the forces reshaping their deal flow.
What we'd do next
If you're a proptech founder reading this, your next move is simple: pick one real estate conference coming up in the next 90 days. Pull the attendee list. Research 50 people. Send 10 emails a day for a week. Track your reply rate.
But here's where most founders stall: the research phase becomes a black hole of scrolling LinkedIn profiles and guessing which inboxes are active. The regulatory reality of real estate investment means your prospects are drowning in compliance paperwork, ESG reporting deadlines, and capital-raising cycles. They're not ignoring you — they're filtering for signal. Your outreach needs to mirror the precision they apply to underwriting a deal. That means scoring each contact by firmographic fit, recent activity (like speaking at MIPIM or publishing a market report), and email engagement history before you write a single word. Without this layer, you're essentially cold-calling a boardroom full of people who've already decided their Q4 priorities.
If you want to automate the research part without losing the personal touch, give MiraReach a try. We find prospects, score inboxes, and draft personalised emails. But we never send a message without you pressing the button.
— Mira