In the year 2022, there will be more than two million real estate agents in the United States of America. Not all of them will use real estate marketing automation.
Many have thought their company could stay afloat without using real estate marketing automation like their competitors. However, the generall experience a constant customer outflow while his competition went up.
Automation will enable you to process over 500 leads per month after integrating real estate marketing automation. This likely would not be possible if relying on manual processing by several agents, which likely would have resulted in fewer leads being processed.
Real estate marketing automation can save businesses money and improve efficiency.
What are the benefits of automating real estate marketing and business? We explore the pros and cons below.
What is Real Estate Marketing Automation?
Real estate marketing automation is a term used to describe the process of using technology to improve marketing productivity. The goal of real estate marketing automation is to increase sales and efficiency while reducing the amount of time and effort required by marketing staff.
The real estate marketing software can help with:
- Lead identification
- Lead categorization
- Email marketing campaigns
- Lead engagement
- Ad creation and running
- Website activity and its behavior
- Marketing and sales analysis
- Sales and cash flow prediction
The Key Benefits of Implementing Real Estate Marketing Automation
The majority of companies have increased their focus on digital transformation, with over two-thirds targeting marketing automation specifically.
The change in the media industry whereby digital media marketing channels are the primary source of lead generation is resulting in growth.
Although lead generation marketing can be challenging, there are tools available to help real estate businesses.
At the end of 2020, over 68% of marketers used marketing automation for:
- Improving their marketing process speed
- Developing a clear marketing system for tracking potential leads
- Creating accuracy in the marketing and sales process
- Serving more leads
- Reducing marketing paperwork
Speed
By the end of 2021, 7.1 million houses were sold in the USA. This was the highest number of houses ever sold in the market.
Entrepreneurs who automate their real estate marketing processes receive accelerated feedback and spend less time moving deals from the first interaction with leads to closing.
Consistency
Nowadays, Before 2015, real estate companies and single agents actively used Excel, GoogleDocs, or private blogs to track their leads manually. It was a long, arduous process to keep everything organized but now things have changed. Thus, time is of the essence.
Marketing automation for real estate helps to create a system to track potential leads.
Accuracy
Working with data sets by hand is a slow and difficult process that often leads to human errors.
By automating your marketing processes, you can avoid mistakes that occur during manual data entry. Additionally, automated marketing can help direct client questions to the appropriate person or team. This is particularly important when communicating via social media platforms. Automating your marketing can lead to a 36% increase in conversion rates.
Scope
Most customers search for properties online, looking at 4-5 different real estate websites. They perform an average of 11 search queries.
Utilizing marketing automation allows agents to serve a greater number of leads while also handling requests that are more applicable. Additionally, it makes it possible to contact leads that haven’t been connected before when they come to the social media platform by using cookies. This would be an excellent way to increase profits.
Less Paperwork
Marketing automation will help marketers and agents speed up the process of managing large amounts of paperwork that used to take a lot of time.
There are many official documents related to marketing agreements, contracts, and other property industry agreements that can become challenging to track.
The proposal management program makes it easy to exchange documents with clients and includes an electronic signature function.
When selecting marketing automation, be sure to choose one that is integrated with your customer database. This will allow you to prefill contract fields with information you already have.
4 Top Tools for Automating Your Real Estate Marketing Processes
The real estate marketing automation tools are the best choice for building trust between buyers and sellers, identifying properties, and attracting new leads. There are four types of software that make the RE marketing process as efficient as possible:
- Real estate CRM
- Ad management
- Customer experience
- Lead nurturing
Real Estate CRM
CRM systems designed for the real estate industry help manage relationships between customers and businesses. These systems can be used by small, medium, and large businesses, and help to keep track of customer interactions, schedule appointments, and more.
Marketing Channels Automation
There are various marketing channels that businesses can use to reach out to their target audiences. These channels can include social media, print ads, television commercials, and more.
Understand your audience and what values they hold to know what marketing channels to pursue.
You can get complete information about clients by combining your landing pages and website forms with the real estate CRM software.
It works as a single system which:
2) Accessible from any computer with an internet connection 3) The information is stored securely and is backed up regularly It automatically saves information about your clients in a database that is accessible from any computer with an internet connection. The information is stored securely and is backed up regularly.
2) Segments information based on:
- Location and time-spending period
- Activities on different social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, etc.
- Decision-making speed before the request, and more
A real estate customer relationship management system helps you collect leads from various marketing and social media platforms in one place.
Email Marketing Automation
Most real estate agents prefer to communicate with clients via email, as it is considered a more reliable source than other forms of media.
Email messages are the most effective marketing method of lead generation to date.
Automatic real estate marketing package can perform the following functions:
- Create a series of scheduled marketing emails
- Send personalized subscription email notifications to leads
- Adapt mailing lists to lead segments and preferences.
There are many lead generation marketing tools on the market that can automate the process of sending personalized voicemails, text messages, and email campaigns to leads. This can save a lot of time and hassle for businesses that are trying to generate new leads.
Examples: IXACT Contact, B2B Bricks, DoorLoop, SEO Samba
Warming Up Leads with Marketing Automation Tools
Warming up leads is the process of building relationships with potential clients through engagement and nurturing until they are ready to purchase. There are many real estate companies or single agents who receive a lot of leads from different sources. The main objective of the business from a marketing perspective is to convert a lead into a paying customer. Therefore, it is essential for marketing teams to warm up leads. Warming up leads is basically creating relationships with potential customers through engagement and providing them with the necessary information until they are ready to buy.
Real estate CRM will be able to set up a personalized lead warm-up with the help of automated:
- Welcome letters
- Letters with viewed property objects
- File information sharing
Examples: Homesnap, Slack, Grasshopper
Customer Action Response and Requests Marketing Automation
Brands are expected to respond to social media comments within one hour as well. On average, customers expect a response to an email inquiry within one hour. This is significantly higher than the average response time for social media inquiries, which is around four hours.
The waiting time for a response should be minimal.
When you use marketing automation, your property clients will often have to wait less time for a response.
Marketing automation programs can improve the time it takes from the first interaction to a sale. For example, when a consumer clicks on a banner, lead response automation can immediately send a message, without the need to wait. A CRM can also send scheduled pre-written marketing messages in just a few minutes, which can make the sales process faster.
Examples: Follow Up Boss, Response, etc.
Lead Management and Lead Segmentation Marketing Automation
Aberdeen’s study found that 71% of businesses in various industries (including real estate) had used lead management technology in some way. The study also found that these businesses had used automated lead segmentation marketing tools to track lead behavior.
Lead management and segmentation marketing program has three main features:
- Managing and distributing leads
- Nurturing potential leads
- Analytics and reporting marketing
Also, real estate companies and agents can find these functions in:
- Communication and cooperation marketing information tools
- CRM
- Lead generation marketing
Examples: Claritysoft, Freshsales, Leadsbridge, vtenext, Naranga
Lead Engagement Marketing Automation
Customer engagement is a key factor in the success of marketing and sales campaigns.
In a 2020 report, PWC found that 80% of companies are investing in client engagement marketing automation tools, up from 20%.
In 2022, the most popular way to attract clients is using AI chatbots.
By 2022, chatbots that use natural language processing will be one of the most effective ways to attract more customers.
Chatbots are used primarily so that agents can spend less time on engagement with prospective clients.
Chatbots are computer programs that can be found in CRMs or integrated with websites. They are designed to simulate conversation with human users.
Sloboda Studio created the CallMeBot for a UK-based client. After the project launched, the CallMeBot could process up to 5,000 calls daily and perform up to 50 client calls at a time. As a result, the client saved money by decreasing the number of cold-calling in-house employees.
Lead Tracking Marketing Automation
A good sales funnel marketing program will give you an accurate picture of what is happening in your sales funnel. It will also help you keep track of conversations, appointments, email campaigns, lead transitions, and more.
Nowadays, CRMs are smart and can evaluate potential leads quickly and efficiently.
In 2022 CRM systems assist sales teams to focus on:
- tracking sales through funnels
- making deals
Communication and Incentives Automation for Future Transactions with Past Clients
It is important to keep in touch with previous clients. If the cooperation was successful, they can write a great review and come back to you with a new request for information about a property.
If you want to stay in touch with your past clients, automated marketing follow-ups are a great way to communicate with them. Real estate CRM has an in-built function that can send planned email letters to the leads depending on different filters.
Real Estate Reporting Marketing Automation
Reporting is one of the key aspects of transactions. RE companies determine:
- Real estate demand and further income
- Productivity and performance of agents
- Customer feedback analysis
- Prediction and efficiency sales reports, etc.
This is because if you understand how a business works, you can make better informed decisions that save time.
Analysis marketing program allows companies and agents to easily listen to and analyze in real-time lead feedback through different social media channels like Facebook. This type of marketing program includes such vital features like:
- NPS
- Data correlation
- Text analysis based on marketing automation
Some feedback marketing programs can use artificial intelligence and natural language processing capabilities.
Additionally, collecting customer feedback can help improve your team’s activities. With a CRM that generates automated marketing reports and dashboards, you can quickly view important statistics and determine who would benefit from coaching or additional training.
We’ve been creating CRM software for the real estate industry for over 6 years, and our team has developed a deep understanding of the nuances of digital products for this sector.
Today CRM helps real estate businesses to provide:
- Real-time access for leads
- Workflow tracking and analysis
- Centralized client data storage
- Effective lead distribution
- Irrelevant leads filters
Real estate businesses can avoid losing potential customers by keeping them updated through automated emailing on various social channels.
By choosing a custom CRM project, companies will get such benefits like:
- Custom functionality
- Feature flexibility
- Freedom in integrations
- High-level information security storage
If you choose a custom CRM, it will take longer to build, but you’ll be able to scale quickly and increase sales.
Real estate marketing tools in 2022
Task and project management
1. Trello
As a leader of a real estate team, it is your responsibility to keep everyone working together. Trello can help you by managing tasks in a way similar to a Kanban board. Kanban is a system that uses visuals to track work in progress and identify areas that need improvement.
A board structure can be used to see the structure of projects at a glance, what the stages are for each part of the project, and what path a task must go through. This break-up of tasks into stages is especially essential for productivity.
Pricing
Trello has two pricing plans: a standard plan for $10 per month charged annually, and a free forever plan. The free forever plan would be great for finding your way around the app.
Tip
The Kanban method suggests that having too many projects in progress at one time will slow down the entire system. Whether you’re working on a team or individually, it’s best to limit the number of projects you’re working on simultaneously.
2. ClickUp
ClickUp is like Trello, but better because it offers more features. If you work with a team, ClickUp is the best tool for you because it is easy to use. Many people in different industries like real estate use ClickUp because it is simple and easy to use.
You can set up your projects for each day, similar to how you would in other popular project management tools. These projects can be customized to however you want them, for example you could have them be classified as lead generation, in contract, sold, follow up, etc. There are three ways to view the projects–list, box, and board. This function helps by filtering the information so you’re not bombarded with too many tasks at once.
Pricing
Clickup is a project management software that is free for the basic plan and $5 dollars per month for the business plan per user.
Tip
You can create an assigned comment by clicking the ellipsis in any existing comment and selecting “Assign to…”. From there, you can select the team member you’d like to assign the comment to.
3. Zoom
It’s a must-have Zoom can be used for a variety of purposes by different businesses, such as a collaboration tool, a teleconferencing tool, a meeting tool, a quick chat tool, or a training session tool. The company saw a lot of growth in 2020 likely due to its versatility. For real estate businesses, Zoom can be used for showings, client or team meetings, or just assigning tasks via chat.
The Zoom Chat client allows you to quickly join a meeting or see announcements made by your company’s executives or PR team. If you want to reference a conversation taking place in another chat, you can create a direct link to that chat group by typing #[channel name].
Pricing
Zoom Basic does not cost anything, while Zoom Pro costs $14.99 per host per month and Zoom Business costs $19.99 per host per month.
Tip
There are a few things you can do to improve your appearance on Zoom. Touching up your appearance in the settings is one option. Another is to get a ring light, which is relatively cheap and makes a big difference in the quality of your video.
4. ProofHub
For real estate agents, this should be a go-to choice. If you’re a real estate agent, you should check out ProofHub. It’s a tool for managing large-scale real estate projects, like construction projects. It has features like tasks, Gantt charts, calendars, project templates, centralized file storage, and custom roles.
The text describes the features of a project management software. The software has an online proofing feature that allows team leaders to review and approve documents quickly. It also has a group chat and online discussion feature for conducting brainstorming and planning sessions with team members. In addition, the software has a notes feature for project note-taking.
Pricing
The price of ProofHub ranges from $45 to $135 per month, depending on the number of users and storage capacity required. The most basic plan allows for 5 users and 10GB of storage, while the most expensive plan includes 50 users and 100GB of storage. Additional features available with the more expensive plans include white labeling, detailed activity logs, and IP restrictions. There is a 14 day free trial.
Tip
Keep your team in the loop by debriefing them or drafting a plan of execution using the discussions feature. You can also share files and get real-time feedback from team members to make decision making faster.
