
Use Real Estate Technology to Enhance Your Customer’s Experience
Technology touches our lives daily in endless ways, and it is no different in the real estate world. While real estate has been hesitant to adopt technology in the past, it’s different now.
Real estate agents understand that their audience and the way they interact with businesses are changing. To be parallel with their needs, it is vital to use high-tech real estate tools to one’s advantage. Be it automating processes and tasks, organizing information more quickly, reaching new real estate clients, or staying in touch with current ones, every operation is advancing.
In this blog, let’s go through five real estate technology tools you can use to ensure your clients enjoy the best experience possible.
5 Real Estate Technology Tools to Keep Your Customers Happy
1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Many technologies or trends may come and go, but one thing that will remain the same is your need to organize all the information about a prospect, customer, or client. From their preferences to preferred communication modes to their webpage movements, you need to have an account of everything for an accurate buyer persona.
It is where Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) comes in handy.
CRM is like a central hub or powerhouse of information. It is a tool that brings all of your marketing tools — your email marketing platform, your social media accounts, marketing and sales documents, and workflows — into one place. While each of these tools function independently, CRM aligns them at one central point. It helps you track everything and build a unified marketing strategy.
Related Read: WHY USE CRM IN A HOT REAL ESTATE MARKET?
2. Marketing Automation
Being a real estate agent, it’s your responsibility to be there for your customers and guide them through the transaction process. It involves connecting with them on social media or websites and being prompt in responding to their messages and questions.
You can use a marketing automation tool to streamline your marketing efforts and make them more effective. From social media marketing to mobile messaging to online ads, it can manage many aspects of your marketing strategy. For example, it can –
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- Identify leads, and segment them into categories for smooth follow up
- Email leads with targeted listings
- Manage your viewing schedule
- Automate real estate offers
- Create and run micro-targeted ads
- Update your social media posts to reflect your current portfolio
- Respond to emails from other agents or customers and follow up with them
3. IDX Websites
Buyers begin their home search online months before they reach out to a real estate agent. An IDX website is most instrumental in empowering agents to effectively display listings online.
IDX, or Internet Data Exchange, enables agents and brokers that are members of MLS (Multiple Listing Service) to integrate real estate listings from the MLS database and display them on their websites.
Here’s how an IDX website can help you shine in an oversaturated real estate market –
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- IDX website gives visitors a reason to stay on your website for a longer period, helping you capture lead information.
- It helps with effective lead management by encouraging the prospect to go further into the sales funnel.
- With more visitors coming, you get more opportunities to convert leads into customers.
- IDX websites have higher search engine rankings.
- Offers a user-friendly and responsive website design.
4. Social Media
Did you know that millennials make up 43% of home buyers? And you probably are aware of the relationship of millennials with social media. 52% of people search for their property online, but 99% of millennials use the internet to research properties.
So two things are evident here. First, you have to target millennials, as they are now the largest demographic in the real estate market. Second, if you want to attract them, you need to provide information in the way they want to consume it, i.e., through social media and popular messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
Social media provides you with a platform to share homes, new developments, and beautiful imagery of your property. When you put consistent and share-worthy efforts, it helps boost brand awareness and get your name out there to a wider range of potential leads.
5. Transaction Management
Real estate requires a lot of back and forth between buyers and agents. It’s not like retail, where once a customer adds an item to their shopping cart and buys it, the transaction is done. A single transaction in real estate can take weeks or months. Agents deal with multiple such transactions in one day where large amounts of money change hands. For such huge, life-impacting purchases, lots of questions and communication are expected. A transaction management tool can help you here.
This tool can help you set chronological activities to automate standard internal procedures and processes. Once you set it in motion and customize it, you won’t spend most of your productive hours tending to repetitive real estate duties. It will also eliminate agent micromanagement by assigning duties to everyone on the software, and result in more productivity.
Putting the right real estate technology in place at your real estate firm isn’t something you can achieve overnight. These software and tools define the productivity of your firm. No wonder most agents spend weeks analyzing their tech options to ensure they buy the right tools.
If you’re in this search arena, take ZipperAgent’s help. We can help you assess your business needs and recommend the software most fit for you from our real estate toolkit.
Talk to our expert agents today at 1-800-350-3695 and streamline your real estate firm’s operations well.