MarketingTechnology
Automation has been a buzzword in all aspects of the business world during the past decades. It is one of the best ways to enhance business operations, marketing, sales, and accounting. The real estate industry, as one of the most booming in the world, is undoubtedly no exception. But what is automation in the real sense, why should you bring it into play, and how can you automate your work as a real estate broker?
Here in this post, we have provided you with a brief guide to getting started with real estate automation and learning about the amazing results it will bring to your business.
Why Is Automation a Necessity for Real Estate Brokers?
A survey conducted by McKinsey studying 800 executives reveals that 85% of companies worldwide have picked up the pace in the course of digital transformation. 67% of these companies have shifted their focus to artificial intelligence and automation. The real estate industry is not untouched by automation. Developers have already decided to invest abundantly in technology across various verticals and are noticing positive results.
Generally speaking, automation is the process of cutting down manual work and allowing your digital tools to do more for you to speed up your menial operations. This might be gained through automated notifications and task management for you and your team, email workflows, or helpful integrations between your real estate applications.
Real estate automation reduces your workload substantially and promotes your marketing and business operations from good to great. Of course, it never implies dismissing your employees to let machines do their job; it is rather about making operations extensively easier and more productive. You may use as much or as little automation as you need. At the outset, your goal must be simplifying what you are already doing. If your agency is currently equipped with a CRM or email marketing tool, you can set up some automation tools at once and sync them with the features you already have.
Advantages of Using Automation in Real Estate
The benefits of automating marketing processes in real estate are countless, as the industry is booming all over the globe. Automation tools and systems are the need of the hour for all brokers involved in the business. Furthermore, many realtors and investors find automation technology as a firm foundation for making a straightforward and transparent deal. Continue reading to learn further about the amazing results automation can bring to the real estate business.
1. Better Lead Generation through Website Forms
If you link your landing pages and website forms to your CRM system, you can create a fully-automated marketing machine that picks up fresh leads 24/7, even while you are asleep or off work. This process doesn’t need to be complicated; you could develop a callback request form or even a simple contact form.
2. Lead Synchronization from Diverse Channels
You probably capture leads from a multitude of sources. It could be challenging for you to keep track of them in different places. However, it surely doesn’t need to be. As a real estate broker, you can benefit from various examples of marketing automation tools to sync all your leads in one place. This integration will save you loads of time, money, and energy, and lead to higher productivity for lead nurturing and qualification.
As a handy example, Follow Up Boss is one of the most effective tools for real estate marketing automation with many helpful, user-friendly automation features. This lead management system is utilized and trusted by over 20k real estate brokers who use the software to automatically organize, distribute, and follow up with diverse leads from over 200 different sources. You can also connect your Follow Up Boss account to your iCloud or Google Contacts to sync your newly-generated leads on the software with your phone’s contact database. Therefore, when a lead calls you, you can notice their name on the Caller ID, and you always know exactly who you are conversing with.
3. Lead Routing Automation
It is so tough and time-consuming to manually route leads to the best brokers. However, you will save loads of time by using an efficient real estate marketing tool that automates lead routing and lead rotation. You can simply route leads geographically by zip code, refer your higher-priced leads to your more senior agents, or establish a “first-to-claim” or “round-robin” process. A round-robin process is an arrangement of selecting all elements (your leads) in a group equally in some logical order, typically from the top to the bottom of a list and, subsequently, beginning again at the top of the list and so on.
4. Developed Lead Nurture Workflows
It is crystal clear that gathering and storing leads in your CRM software is not adequate at all. You require to nurture leads to boost the propensity to close a deal by maintaining relationships with clients. These relationships are vital in today’s real estate transaction cycles, and by nurturing leads, you build and sustain that relationship over time while boosting brand loyalty and trust.
Lead nurturing includes sending timely and relevant emails to the right leads to direct them down your funnel. Drip emails or automated workflows provide real estate brokers with the best way to do this. They are easy to create and can be integrated into systems like Brivity or email marketing tools like Mailchimp. Once you are set up, you can sit back, relax, and be sure that your emails are constantly being sent to the right audience without you having to lift a finger.
5. Potential Opportunity Tracking
Your most crucial leads are considered your opportunities. They are leads who are familiar with your real estate agency and recognize your established brand plus high-priced customers you know in the market. Automation enables you to keep an extra close eye on such leads. In most CRM systems, you can utilize deal stages to track an opportunity’s journey all through the common stages of your pipeline, ranging from callback requested, contract sent, to closed-won.
6. Lead Activity Monitoring
A real estate broker should not spend much time watching their leads and speculating who is worth contacting each day. Automated activity monitoring helps you check and track your leads’ behavior on your website and social channels and use pre-defined triggers to notify you when an action is essentially needed.
7. More Effective Transaction & Task Management
As a real estate broker, you probably need to deal with long lists of tasks and checklists every day. That is a real struggle to stay on top of all of those while keeping the best track of time. With a real estate-customized CRM, it is a cakewalk for you to create automated tasks and checklists. These lists help you scrutinize and manage every detail related to a listing, open house, sale, and many more.
8. Easier Property Inspection
Property inspection can be a tough and tedious job. But luckily, technology can come to help real estate brokers. There are a variety of automation tools in the market, like Spectora, that can remarkably facilitate home inspection for agents. You can also automate inspection arrangements, reminders, and follow-ups for both agents and clients and notify everyone involved when a property inspection is rescheduled.
9. Accounting & Financial Automation
Accounting and financial procedures are mostly a big headache for many real estate agencies. An automated cloud-based system, for example, Xero, can do miracles for keeping your accounts and finances in check. Yet, ensure the tool is completely synced to your other key tools, including your CRM. You need to make sure your contacts are up-to-date everywhere.
10. Multimedia Engagement
Today, we live in a digital era flooded by various sorts of content other than textual messages. As a real estate broker, you can use a variety of multimedia apps to communicate and engage with your audience and clients. For instance, BombBomb is a valuable real estate video app that helps you engage with your previous clients, particularly if you manage to sync it with your Follow Up Boss or other tools like Dotloop to reach out on noteworthy key dates.
It is also helpful to automate your voicemail messages via tools like Agent Legend. Such user-friendly real estate apps enable you to personalize your messages and automatically send them to your leads in the easiest way. Instead of chasing every single lead yourself, you can use the app to take the pain out of real estate lead management. Agent Legend is a mixture of easy-to-use software designed by top realtors and mortgage professionals, with pre-built campaigns and hundreds of integrations that help brokers stand on the shoulders of high-performing agents and industry experts.
11. More Effectual Follow-Ups
Before seeking new leads, it is advisable to first look at the most qualified leads you already have: your previous clients. Automated email workflows help you reach out to your past clients at pre-set intervals, for instance, one year after property purchase, or on their house anniversary (Housiversary). Automation helps you make more effectual and accurate follow-ups for each specific lead you have already generated.
12. Accurate Performance Analysis
Like any other business associated with sales and marketing, a real estate agency’s success is highly dependent on teamwork performance. As a manager, you need a comprehensive tool that compiles and generates automated reports and informs you of everything going on via an organized dashboard. Automated analytics keeps you constantly posted on how every project is coming along and which of your brokers might need extra coaching.
Automation Can Benefit All Stakeholders in the Real Estate Industry
As we clarified, there are innumerable advantages of using automation tools in the real estate industry. In this post, we mentioned a few to help you figure out all the perks and privileges better. These tools enable real estate brokers to facilitate their business activities from scratch to the final transaction. Simply put, automation works wonders for both the realtors and investors to help them gain the highest results. Automation will principally increase brokers’ productivity while enhancing the communication between the agents and clients.
Furthermore, automation can help society take a more environmentally-friendly approach since no paperwork is involved in the whole process. Consequently, automation serves numerous perks for all the stakeholders in the real estate industry. If you are a realtor, do not hesitate to equip your agency with the most efficient automation tools to delight your customers, empower your employees, and grow your business.
