4 Ways Technology Can Help You Drive More Business in Real Estate

Technology has always been a catalyst for change in all industries, and the real estate market is no exception.

Whether you’re trying to sell a home for your client or buy one, pulling up listings to browse on your phone or tablet is the norm these days. Understandably so, today’s worker is more mobile and more connected than ever before, which means that real estate transactions can operate anywhere.

The fascinating part is it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Real estate is an ever-evolving industry, and technology only speeds up the changes. Furthermore, at the end of the day, customers look for one key amenity — convenience. The good news is technology drives convenience in almost every aspect today!

So just as the concept of tech-driven online real estate platforms was born two decades ago, more tech tools and software are coming in to enhance the user experience.

In this blog, we will take you through four established real estate technologies that can help you accelerate your transactions.

4 Ways Technology Can Help You Drive More Business in Real Estate

1. Your Website connected to IDX

Are you struggling to find new leads in today’s cut-throat world of real estate? Or need a modern home search for your clients? If yes, you need an IDX website.

Why?

A 2019 study by the National Association of Realtors stated that almost 44% of all buyers look for property listings online as the first stage of a home search. Undoubtedly, the number must have gone up by 2022. An IDX website helps you provide the best experience for those users. Let’s have a look at how –

i. Creates Profiles

The main function of IDX is to establish a data connection between your website and the MLS. It imports property profiles and allows you to display them on your website.

The best part is you don’t have to manually add property profiles to your real estate website. The profiles update every few hours by itself. This way, your audience always has access to the most recent profiles and can contact you for information about the available properties.

ii. Helps You Track Website Visitors and Leads

Since professional IDX websites provide a better perspective of what the website visitors are looking for, you get more of them. IDX integration goes a step further and also helps you track data about them.

So, while your prospects and clients will be doing their property search on your IDX real estate website, you can track exactly what towns, price ranges, and properties they are looking at. Additionally, you can also access where the lead comes from and follow up with them from CRM.

iii. Directly Connected to Your MLS

Real estate brokers come together to create an electronic database of real estate properties for sale. This database is called a multiple listing service (MLS) and is updated regularly.

IDX integration helps real estate agents to connect MLS to their websites. This way, each agent gets more opportunities to promote listings, attract leads, and close deals.

2. Automated Marketing Based on Triggers

While you can manage your leads and customers manually in the beginning, it’s impossible to do so when your real estate business grows. You get a lot on your plate and automating your real estate marketing can make your life easier.

Marketing automation software automates your manual marketing tasks to save time, energy, and money. In addition to managing campaigns, it can also design campaigns, streamline workflows, and simplify processes. As a final point, it facilitates what you are already doing!

Let’s go over how a marketing automation tool can help your real estate business –

i. Sends Automatic Notification Alerts

In today’s day and age, marketing is not limited to one channel. You need to have an optimized presence over multiple web platforms relevant to your business to attract leads. However, how do you track all the leads of different stages at different platforms regularly? After all, you don’t want to miss any hot leads.

Marketing automation software comes to your rescue here. You can flag the platforms or particular listings, and the software will automatically send you notification alerts.

ii. Trigger Drip Email After the Sign-Up

It takes a lot of sequenced actions to make a real estate sale. After all, not every website visitor or lead you get is ready to buy the moment they connect with you. It’s your job to push them through the sales funnel and turn a cold lead into a hot one.

With marketing automation software, you can set an email sequence for the visitors who sign up to your landing page. Once you do so, all the sign-up users will start getting a series of emails, showing them relevant properties.

iii. Send Automatic Reminders for Viewing Appointments

As we said above, it may be impossible to track every single sign-up, inquiry, or message you get in a day. Even if you hire a person specifically to manage it all, there can be delays in communications. As per different studies, customers expect a response within minutes, if not immediately.

Use automated marketing to not miss out on leads and probable sales. The software will notify you of the actions of visitors. Additionally, if someone signs up for a house viewing, it will not only send you a notification but reminders as well.

3. Newsletter Campaigns

Email marketing offers the highest return of all marketing strategies. Unarguably, it is irreplaceable for real estate agents. However, some email campaigns are more versatile than others, and a newsletter campaign is one of them. It’s scalable, personalized, establish expertise, and drives engagement.

Learn how you can use real estate newsletter campaigns to your advantage –

i. Segmentation of Email List

Your real estate firm has various kinds of customers, including sellers and buyers. You need to deliver different content to each segment to nurture them as leads.

One of the most valuable advantages of email is that it allows you to divide your audience into segments and deliver different content to each of them. Subscriber A attended an open house and wants to buy a house, while subscriber B is a happy customer. You could be in trouble if you send the same newsletter to both subscribers.

With email segmentation, you can target both types of subscribers with content that’s useful for them. You can segment them by age, price range, or other sets of data to send them a newsletter designed specifically for them.

ii. Automate and Schedule Emails for Optimal Impact

Do you have clients in different time zones from yours? Or do you want to notify leads of a weekend property viewing?

Well, you can take care of everything in advance with newsletter campaigns.

Real estate agents already have a clumsy timeline. Sending newsletters on time, regardless of the day and time is just more responsibility. However, you don’t need to work on weekends or stay up at odd hours to send newsletters. Instead, you can automate and schedule emails according to the timelines, weekdays, and different behaviors and demands of the subscribers.

iii. Data-Based Decision, and Not “Your Gut”!

How do you know if your newsletter campaign is driving the targeted results? By tracking the analytics!

Tracking variables and analytics help you understand how to make your newsletter campaign perform better. It includes testing elements like the subject line, interactive elements, email length, sent time, etc.

Moreover, you can test the validity of any email by measuring the email’s click-through rate and open rate. You must also analyze engagement trends, subscribers’ long-term activities, and the email list’s health.

4. Mobile App for Agents on the Run

As the number of smartphone users has grown significantly, the demand for advanced applications has grown too. Like every other industry, real estate also has substantial potential for app development.

A user-friendly and glitch-free real estate mobile application offers property buyers a robust platform. It helps them search for their desired listings and connect with realtors and team members. All in all, the experience enhances exponentially, helping real estate businesses to grow.

i. Real-Time Processes and Updates

Real estate agents do not have their work limited to their office walls. Most of the time, they are on the run meeting clients, showing properties, and approving documents. While you can take your laptop around with you, it’s not convenient to track the website updates all the time.

However, you have your mobile phone all the time and you can use the mobile app. The app dashboard shows all the key metrics for your business, including the number of contacts, the number of new leads, active buyers and listings, and all your key activities. So, you do not have to get back to your office or access your laptop to track updates. The application will give you real-time data on all the processes.

ii. Agents Stay Organized and Efficient

Any successful real estate agent will tell you that time management is key to success in the industry. Real estate agents have to go around multiple tasks in a day — keeping track of appointments, client contact information, preparing marketing materials, filing paperwork, and more. A real estate mobile app for agents can free up some time in their schedules.

A mobile app can help you keep all of your client contact information, appointments, and property listings in one place. Many applications also provide automatic appointment reminders and the ability to share listing information with clients. You can also get help in lead nurturing with automatic lead capture and follow-up features.

All these elements make the app a valuable tool for any agent looking to streamline their business.

iii. Instant Decision-Making

Real estate transactions possess a lot of friction. There is a lot of to-and-fro between internal and external parties for a sale to happen. For example, junior agents have to communicate with senior agents, who get approval from external authorities, and then send the request forward to executives. It is just one chain; there are several that exist.

A mobile app for agents can ensure that decision-making does not take too long due to these transaction frictions. Once you connect your entire real estate team to the application, all the processes can be updated here. No one agent has to waste time asking for updates. From listings to market trends to buyer information, agents can access all information in one place.

 

Also, if you integrate your app with a Camera, audio recorder, Google Maps, mortgage calculator, and other vital features, you can establish better connectivity.

We all have the same hours in the day. However, if you want to get more done at your real estate office in a day, technology is the answer. The right tools provide you with efficient results, which helps to develop your client portfolio and close more transactions.

If you’re ready to embrace real estate technology, ZipperAgent’s real-estate software can help you. Get in touch with us today at 1-800-350-3695.