How to Use Technology When the Real Estate Market Changes — Tech Tips for a Hot or Cold Market!

Long gone are days when real estate operations were all manual. It’s 2022, and the market is witnessing the shift from ‘real life’ to ‘real-time’ with CRM and marketing automation tools.

Introduction

The real estate industry is fast-paced and, not to mention, volatile. Your phone won’t stop ringing one season, and every deal fizzles out the next month.

Managing this constant fluctuation between the hot and cold markets is every real estate agent’s challenge. The classic real estate methods of operations do not make it any easier.

For a long time, real estate agents have had trouble moving away from traditional systems. Manually filling out spreadsheets of prospects, keeping customer profiles in bulky binders, or using a good old-fashioned Rolodex to contact leads were comfortable methods. But these consume lots of time and energy, the two variables whose optimum use is vital for growth in real estate.

With gradual generational advancements and forced virtual switch due to the pandemic, real estate agents are realizing the need for real estate technology. They now seem more open to understanding how it can help them navigate through the ups and downs.

In this blog, we make the benefits even more clear. Keep reading to learn how a customer relationship management (CRM) tool and marketing automation software can help you leverage the highs and sustain the dips of the real estate market.

Use-Cases of CRM in a Hot Market

Imagine a busy day at work — customer calls or drops in, they have repeated property inquiries, then endless post-sale questions. With every call, you’re putting your customer on hold, storming cabinets, trudging through files looking for customers’ search criteria, and turning pages to fill the customer in with relevant information. While you struggle to find the right data among the bulky binders, your customer is losing patience waiting for your response.

Time is of the essence in real estate, even more so when the market is hot and leads are abundant. See how a Real estate agent CRM can help you turn the table and take advantage of a busy period.

 

1. Organized Database

An unorganized database makes the data hard to navigate and inconvenient to access.

CRM software can help store and organize your data in the cloud. You will have every customer’s information located in one single location. You save time and energy and can boost your efforts in onboarding a prospect. It enhances your speed and productivity, a huge bonus in a hot market.

Moreover, you could stop wasting time recording new leads manually in spreadsheets. The CRM will update customer information and share it with your whole team or at least those that might need it.

2. Lead Nurturing

Customer satisfaction is a top priority for every real estate agent. However, you need to surpass your leads’ expectations to delight them and stand out from the crowd. CRM software can help you do so.

Nurturing leads is the foundation for finding, converting, and closing deals. Your prospects expect you to pop in their email with a sales pitch. However, they notice you and feel your dedication when you follow up.

A CRM tool helps you set reminders to follow up with multiple prospects and store details of past communication. It will walk prospects through every step of the conversion process and even post-transaction outreach. Improved and effective follow-up can increase sales.

3. Deal and Commission Tracking

In heavy traffic situations, there’s always a chance of inaccuracy in commission tracking. Some agents may even forget to calculate commission or track a deal altogether, causing confusion later. Moreover, calculation through mental math and filling out spreadsheets manually is also time-consuming.

CRM software can help you clearly monitor commissions earned on every sale. It leads to less mistakes, even if there are lots of sales to keep track of at a time. Additionally, it helps the management team identify the top earners within the team.

CRM is Even More Essential in a Cold Market!

Everyone wants a million-dollar real estate sale. However, even modest deals are harder to come through when the market is cold. In these times, it’s natural that you think putting in extra effort and investing in a CRM tool is a waste of money.

However, a CRM tool is 10x more beneficial to your real estate business when sales are slow and low. Here’s how you can use it to your advantage:

1. Converting Cold Leads to Warm Leads

When the market is rosy, your focus is narrowed down to the warm and hot leads. You barely touch base with the cold prospects. However, they can be a large part of your target audience, and you should try to convert them into customers.

A temporary standstill in the real estate market provides you with time you can use to focus on cold leads. An agile CRM software has distinction-based data ready with basic information about leads. You can schedule your interaction via texts or emails and monitor their web-behavior.

2. Form Long-Term Relationships

The hot market doesn’t give you enough time to breathe, much less catch up with old clients. Nurturing your network, relationships, and past clients is one of the best ways to cushion the bad times.

Use CRM to personalize communication with them by using customers’ first names in emails and other contact methods. 62% of customers open emails because of a personalized subject line. You can also schedule reach-out calls to check in with people in your sphere of influence.

3. Maintain Personalized Touch

Real estate is a business all about people, and you need to stay on top of their minds to attract new customers. Sure, personalized sales emails are effective, but go a step further by using CRM to schedule birthday and anniversary emails for your customers.

It shows loyalty to your existing customers and improves customer engagement. If you can, add a little gift too — a coupon or a discount to a favorite restaurant. Customers appreciate it — birthday emails have a 179% higher unique click rate when compared to other promotional emails.

Why Use Marketing Automation in a Hot Market?

Have there been days when you wish the day had more than 24 hours?

Time never seems to be enough, especially when you have a positive and constant flow of lead generation. A hot market provides you with the opportunity to make the most of new leads and attract maximum sales. However, what if you are stuck with routine marketing and end up missing follow-up tasks and leaving sales on the table?

Marketing automation tools eliminate hours spent on your real estate marketing strategy by automating your individual agent marketing plan. Keep reading to learn how it can benefit your business –

1. Capture Leads

Online marketing provides several ways to lead generation. While some real estate customers call in on a listing sign, others come through a web lead generation tool. Many are even potential referrals from past clients.

To nurture these leads, sales agents have to follow up. However, in a hot market, it seems impossible to consistently, accurately, and timely follow up with every potential lead. It creates a gap and leads go to your competitors.

Marketing automation software ensures every lead gets funneled to an appropriate follow-up sequence. It even sets reminders for the agents to contact the lead. This way, every prospect gets nurtured, even when the market traffic is going through the roof.

2. Segmentation of Real Estate Customers

Suppose you receive a new listing in a high-end area. The 2-bedroom condo is on sale and needs buyers within the next three months. To market the listing among the potential buyers, you have to manually put filters for people who –

• are open to making a purchase.
• are interested in living in a posh area.
• have the goal of instant purchase.
• agree with the property specifications.

Get rid of this time-consuming, repeated process and use automation to initiate targeted follow-up. It will allow agents to tag your customers by their criteria so that they automatically receive alerts relevant to their status.

3. Improved Workflows

What happens when you recognize a new lead? How and when do you get in touch with them? How often do you contact them? What kind of message do you send them?

All of these questions can be answered with a standardized workflow. Instead of sending a random set of emails to prospective clients, use marketing automation software. It will help you send a meticulously crafted group of messages with different intents based on the actions taken by your leads.

The automation allows you to focus on other lead conversion decisions knowing that your emails are being sent to the right people without you needing to lift a finger.

Does Marketing Automation Help Even in Cold Markets?

Your efforts in the cold market define the results in the hot market. When the market is prospering, most of your time goes into serving your clients. However, prospecting for leads before the busy season begins lands those clients.

You see, effective marketing automation in the off-season is your key to prospering in the highly competitive season. Let’s have a look at how it helps you to effectively market on multiple channels online –

1. Increase Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement is one of the most effective outreach methods. Marketing automation tools can help you monitor the platforms and reach out to people who need a real estate agent. You may even set automated messages to reply timely and address customers’ concerns.

Other than recognizing your target audience and pitching your services, you should also invest time and resources in creating engaging content. Tweets, status updates, Instagram stories, and posts with unique copies and attractive images — you need it all. You can save yourself hours by scheduling these marketing posts using automation.

2. Promote Content Through Emails

Once you have your social media marketing automation in place, it’s time to turn your attention to your real estate email marketing plans. Drip campaigns are ideal for capturing leads through a standard workflow. But you also need to ensure a constant and steady flow of informative content to establish your authority in the market.

You can use marketing automation tools to build and schedule campaigns, featuring mixes of various types of content and listings. Authentic and consistent newsletters, publication emails, or reminders of blogs will help you earn audiences’ trust. A sturdy backlog of content is likely to turn cold leads into warm leads and pay back when the market is hot.

3. Reduced Costs

Let’s face it — real estate involves several repetitive and routine tasks. There’s little time left over to work on the growth of your business when you’re occupied with Facebook ads or emails. Thus, you look to outsource these jobs. While this is a good idea, it adds to your costs.

Using marketing automation tools can cut down the need for outsourcing, saving you money. It is an advantage, especially when the housing market is slower. Moreover, it will give you a chance to enhance your efforts in email and social media marketing. As a result, your business is likely to generate repeat business and attract new customers, resulting in high ROI — while saving time.

Conclusion

Real estate agent CRM solutions and automation are key areas of development for real estate professionals.

As Peter Williams, CEO of Deloitte Digital, said, “Real estate agents will not be replaced by technology but by agents with technology”. So, if you are not open to adopting the change, you are likely to lose the competitive advantage.

Before you pick a CRM and automation tool for your organization…assess your specific requirements, available resources, and business goals. The tool should be the fuel for your growth and success and not the other way around.

You can start your search with ZipperAgent. We’re an all-in-one real estate marketing and sales solution solving real estate professionals’ biggest challenges. Use our predictive CRM and marketing automation tools to create a new success paradigm for your real estate business.

Book a demo — a 30-minute expert session to help you recognize your faulty areas and ways to reprimand them to grow your business.