Technological advancements have brought the people together and made it easier to connect with each other. This is certainly true in the real estate industry, where agents are able to connect with motivated buyers and sellers more quickly than in any other time in history.
New tech continues to emerge, making real estate transactions more efficient. What are today’s real estate professionals using to improve their jobs and enhance the buying and selling experience for their clients? Let’s take a look.
Smart Mobile Devices
Just about every real estate agent in the industry uses a smartphone today. They’ve become an essential tool, serving in many different capacities.
With smart mobile devices, real estate agents can stay more accessible to their clients, responding to calls, texts and emails, even when they’re on the go helping others. Having a smartphone means never again missing an opportunity in the fast-paced world of real estate.
Smartphones also let real estate professionals take quick pictures and videos to send to potential buyers as soon as a house is listed, or to easily add more images to a listing to further highlight a property’s great features. In short, smart mobile devices are indispensable.
Video Marketing Tools
Today’s buyer wants to view and learn as much as possible about a property before even seeing it in person. That’s why listings with a large gallery of images plus a video tour often generate more interest. Since videos appeal to prospective buyers, video marketing tools are very useful.
But a home or commercial building tour is not the only great use for video. Real estate agents can create video profiles, which property buyers and sellers often find more engaging and informative than a simple image accompanying a brief bio. Agents are using video to market themselves and create a connection with prospective clients.
A number of online services enable you to make great videos you can use as a marketing tool to showcase your skills and services. One example is Animoto, which lets you create promo and business videos quickly via convenient, customizable templates.
Another excellent online tool is BombBomb, which comes with comprehensive analytics tools that show how effective your videos are. Depending on the plan, features can include the ability to learn who clicks, opens and watches your video emails — information that can come in handy when determining where to put marketing dollars.
Helpful Apps
Mobile and laptop applications (apps) can help any agent stay more organized and reach clients more efficiently. From calendar apps to mortgage calculating apps, real estate agents have digital tools at their fingertips to maintain schedules and assist clients with information they can use.
There are several specific apps worth mentioning here that can make life easier for a real estate professional:
• Contactually: A customer relationship management (CRM) app, Contactually helps manage an agent’s contact base. It’s an effective tool for building and maintaining professional relationships.
• CINC: This app monitors incoming leads and responds to them without the need for back-and-forth texts and emails. It’s a huge time-saver that helps agents focus on the top leads.
• PalmAgent: This mobile app was created especially for real estate agents to enable them to work from anywhere. With this app, an agent can use a smartphone to run a net sheet for sellers in seconds or instantly provide buyers with estimated closing costs, for example.
• Waze: Never get lost again or arrive late to a meeting or open house. This app shows you the fastest route to your next appointment.
Realtors who haven’t tried these and other time-saving apps yet might want to get started. A good app truly improves productivity and facilitates better client interactions.
Convenient Cloud Services
We don’t have to tell you that real estate transactions involve a lot of forms and paperwork. These days, though, actual paper doesn’t always have to be used. Many forms can be shared and signed digitally. Cloud services help real estate agents share files easily with clients and with other parties throughout each transaction.
The best thing about online cloud services is getting rid of the need to fax or mail documents. A service like Dropbox facilitates document exchange via computers and mobile devices. Or utilize your existing options available through your email provider — whether you have a Microsoft 365 account that provides access to OneDrive and SharePoint or if you utilize Google Workspace, both products provide a variety of cloud saving and sharing options that may already be coming with your subscription.
Quick Response Codes
More commonly known as QR codes, quick response codes work much the way barcodes do. Real estate agents can insert these codes into everything from direct mail fliers to business cards, and even on “For Sale” lawn signs.
Anyone can scan a QR code with a smartphone. Doing so links them directly to the agent’s web page, making it another great marketing tool for reaching potential new clients.
Online Document Handling
DocuSign has become the industry standard for online document handling, but similar services are available that work in the same way. These services make it easier to sign papers without actually having to meet in person.
Form Simplicity enables real estate professionals to manage transactions through the cloud for convenience. Files can be shared, stored and signed using e-sign capabilities.
Online document handling apps and services enable multiple parties to easily prepare, sign and manage all of the forms that need to be filed when a property is purchased or sold. They enable long-distance sales without any party having to drive or fly out for an in-person meeting, since electronic signatures are used instead.
Agents today find cloud services and document handling tools to be essential to doing business in the 21st century.
Real Estate-Specific CRM Systems
We’ve briefly touched upon customer relationship management (CRM) systems in our “Helpful Apps” section, where we mention Contactually. This is a great service that helps you organize your contacts and lets you set up automatic follow-ups, among other useful tasks. We’ll discuss a couple of other CRM systems later.
First, here’s an overview of what a real estate-specific CRM system is and what it can do for you and your business:
Real estate agents need an effective way to keep track of the numerous prospects, buyers, sellers, agents and other real estate professionals they deal with. Good CRM systems designed for realtors come with templates and tracking features an agent would find useful. Managing this database efficiently is one of the most important jobs for any agent today.
In addition to Contactually, other CRM systems real estate agents make use of include:
• BoomTown: This is a great resource for lead generation, lead management, listing promotion, business growth and more.
• Wise Agent: This service comes with helpful transaction management features, lead automation capabilities and time management tools.
Business cards and Rolodex files are fine, but to keep up with demand and grow your business today, you need to invest in a true CRM system that will give you the features you need to reach out to every lead and contact that crosses your path. By automating many of your emails and tasks, you can focus your energy on the work that will bring you and your clients the most ROI.
Email Campaign Software
Personally emailing every person who reaches out to you is not the most efficient way to run your real estate agency. There is a time and place for personal emails, but in truth, you can automate the vast majority of your email interactions, freeing you up to do other work, like run more open houses and show your clients more properties.
Useful email campaign software tools give you automated email options that are suited to drip campaigns, newsletters and other communications. They help you share listings with your customer base and enable you to nurture leads until you’re ready to interact with new clients in person.
Here are a couple of email campaign software providers to consider:
• SendGrid: This email delivery service allows you to scale while you save time and make the most of automated email marketing strategies.
• Mailchimp: This marketing platform helps you create great email content and automate your email communications to ensure different customers are reached at key points.
Make Technology Work for You
Technology is here to stay — and for a very good reason. It works. Technology is helping real estate professionals everywhere run their agencies more efficiently. It helps agents communicate with everyone without dropping any leads.
Today’s apps, software, cloud services, document handling and marketing tools are designed to streamline the otherwise time-consuming tasks real estate agents are involved with day in and day out.
While you don’t have to use everything listed in this article, we recommend that you start using some of these apps and services and see how they work for you. Get some training if you need to, but don’t let the newness and unfamiliarity with these tools drive you away. Once you start using them, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.
A little upfront investment and time will benefit you immensely for the rest of your career. Once you start using technology that simplifies your job as a real estate agent, don’t be surprised to see significant business growth, better time management, and smoother transactions. By letting technology work for you, you’ll be freeing yourself to work smarter for your buyers and sellers.
Bahar Ferguson is president of Wasatch I.T., a Utah provider of outsourced IT and managed compliance services for small and medium-sized businesses.