Posted on Thu, May 17, 2012 @ 09:40 AM
LeadTrax can be used to automatically manage drip marketing campaigns to your leads. To set up a drip marketing campaign you first need to consider what is going to trigger a lead to receive a drip marketing campaign. Drip marketing campaigns can be set up to automatically send emails to leads segmented by one of the several lead attributes you can associate to a lead.
For example: Create a general status of "incubate" - any lead that is set with "incubate" as the general status will start to receive drip marketing emails once every thirty days.
Other examples of how to activate a lead receiving a drip email would be ranking, user status or contract status.
Drip marketing campaigns are set up using business rules in LeadTrax. You explain to your LeadTrax representative what triggers the campaign to activate and the frequency the emails are sent. You can attach as many unique emails as you want to the campaign and can determine for how long the campaign will run as long as the lead's status that triggers the campaign is set for that lead. You have complete control over the email content that is sent.
Other options to consider would be after a lead is converted and does business with your company. You may want to consider an email sent to them a year later to see how everything is going. This promotes your brand, lets the customer know that you're thinking of them and are available to help in any way in the future.
Contact us to learn more how drip marketing campaigns can be created and managed using LeadTrax.
Posted on Tue, May 15, 2012 @ 06:49 AM
One of the key selling points we focus on when discussing our solutions with real estate companies is the willingness to partner and work to integrate with other software solutions our clients' utilize. In the past ten years of working with real estate companies, we've come to the conclusion that real estate firms are going to have to leverage different software packages from different companies to accomplish company goals.
There are vendors who will claim to have a "fully integrated end-to-end" real estate software solution that gives a broker everything they need to run their business successfully. However, we have not run across any brokers who've decided to put all of their eggs in one basket to run their front end website with MLS search, agent tools, relocation and internet lead tracking, transaction management, back office commission processing and accounting solution. While there may be vendors who claim to offer all of these services, what they will usually find is that the solution is strong in a specific area and weaker in others.
In our opinion, the practical alternative is choosing software vendors who are open to working with other software vendors to integrate platforms. The fact is most software vendors do one or two things very well. When looking to implement a new software package, it's important to find out the willingness of that vendor to work with other providers in the industry. Does the vendor have an API or the ability to easily export data so that it can be consumed by another solution? These are important questions to raise when doing your due diligence on a software vendor whose solution(s) you're interested in.
Posted on Thu, May 03, 2012 @ 06:59 AM
While talking with a new client about what challenges they would like to improve with our lead management solution, LeadTrax, they mentioned agent lead follow-up. Specifically, how do they make sure a lead that is assigned to an agent is followed-up with consistently after those first few contact attempts are made?
A common challenge we run into when working with new clients is lack of follow-up from the agent after a certain amount of contact attempts. Agents are eager to build a relationship to help a potential buyer or seller, but after a certain period of time, stops follow-up with the lead because of lack of response or a non-readiness to move forward. What real estate companies find, though, is that they will get a lead, assign it to an agent, and then find out the lead did buy or sell a home but with another brokerage. The time between acquiring the lead, assigning it to an agent and that lead actually conducting a transaction can be one, two or even three years later. How can a broker overcome the challenge of having their sales associates deeming a lead dead if they can't get them to buy within a few weeks or months of them being assigned a lead?
There are a few strategies a broker can look to implement that can help solve this problem:
1. Scrub your leads: before you assign a lead to an agent, scrubbing and qualifying leads can help segment the immediate buyers and sellers from those just kicking the tires.
2. Educate agents: the reality is an internet net lead may take a year or longer to turn into business. Make sure you're assigning leads to agents who understand this and will not give up on a lead if it doesn't turn into business right away.
3. Implement a lead nurturing campaign on behalf of agents: many of our LeadTrax clients have implemented lead nurturing campaigns that email leads on behalf of the agents they've assigned the lead to. By using our email template system that will place the agent info inside the email when it is sent out of LeadTrax, it looks as if the agent is continuously following up with the consumer, when in actuality it is an automated rule that is doing the work.
4. Require updates from agents: with LeadTrax you can set up automated follow up rules if agents are not getting back to you with the current status of the leads that are assigned to them. This is an effective way to track which agents do a good job of follow up and which ones need coaching.
These are just a few strategies that can be implemented to help with lead follow up by your agents. To learn more best practices and strategies that successful real estate companies have implemented, join our next webinar on May 16th at 3pm. Click below to learn more.
Posted on Tue, Apr 24, 2012 @ 02:27 PM
Of the many tasks a real estate back office accounting solution should be able to effectively track is what deals have closed that originated from a web lead or relocation referral. The real estate firms we deal with typically will have a lead management solution or relocation management software. When these management tools automatically pass data to the back office accounting solution, the manual process of collecting referral fees from agents is eliminated.
Our lead management solution, LeadTrax, has the ability to push lead data into our back office accounting, Profit Power. However, we still run into scenarios where leads that were assigned to an agent and then closed missed out on the correct referral fees. There are several reasons this occurs, most notably the name on the deal changes from the time it was transferred from LeadTrax to Profit Power to the time it actually closes. Because this can happen more often than not, we have devised a way to match any closed sale with leads or referrals that are set up in Profit Power. We look at several different data points to see if there any matches between contacts in the Profit Power database with those that have a closing associated with them. Since launching this matching service, we've shown several clients how many referral fees that they have not been able to track. This matching service becomes even more valuable when you don't have a connection between your lead or relocation management systems and your back office accounting solution.
Does your company run into this challenge? How much time does it take to manually track all your closings and match up any contacts who originated either from a web lead or relocation referral?
For more strategies on how an Enterprise Back Office Accounting Solution can help make your company more profitable download our white paper below.
Posted on Tue, Apr 17, 2012 @ 08:02 AM
Many of the companies that we deal with who are looking for a solution to help them better track their leads are just getting around to taking the leads they generate online seriously. Either they've been working in real estate for many years and have not put much thought into the overal strategy of how to deal with online leads or they just have gotten into the business and realize that with a strong web presence and an efficient system for collecting, assigning and following up with leads will help gain more business.
Below are a few ideas to consider if you're just beginning to put together your lead management strategy:
1. Identify all of your potential lead sources: it may sound obvious, but identifying where your leads are coming from is an essential factor in improving conversion rates. There are still many companies who receive leads on their site but because of poor tracking or lack of a system, can't identify exactly where their leads come from. To understand how to improve your lead management process, or if just getting started, identifying what sites or pages on your website leads can contact you is an important part of the process.
2. Who is in charge of the process: another challenge real estate firms run into is there is no one who is tasked with overseeing the process. By hiring someone whose sole responsibility is to manage the entire process from lead acquisition to close is important for success. If the responsibility is going to fall to someone already working in the company, then make sure they have the bandwidth to focus on lead management.
3. Lead assignment and follow-up rules: So, you've started to generate leads. Great. Now what? Having a clearly defined set of rules that everyone that is involved in the process is aware of will help structure the lead management strategy and help to see where improvement is needed as time goes by. For example: before you launch your strategy, decisions need to be made on who gets assigned what leads, how much time do you give a sales associate to respond acknowledging they've received the lead and have followed up, and how often you'll require that user to update you on the lead status.
4. Monetizing your leads: Success in lead management is based on figuring out how much each lead is worth. To accomplish this, you need to define referral fees taken (if any), how much it costs you to acquire your leads and break that out by source. Also, are you going to measure success based on leads received to closed or lead assigned to close?
5. Lead nurturing: Ongoing success in lead management requires a long term plan to nurture leads. Not all new leads you receive will be ready to work with a sales associate right away. They are either looking for additional information or just "kicking the tires". To keep your brand in front of these leads, its important to opt them into a lead nurturing campaign so when they are ready to take that next step they contact your firm.
There are many factors that lead to successful web lead management. Making sure you have clearly defined how the process works from start to finish will help from the outset.
Posted on Tue, Apr 10, 2012 @ 07:45 AM
When it comes to lead generation sources, there are many options available for real estate brokers to partner with. From national sites, such as Trulia, Zillow and realtor.com, to local newspapers, listing syndication and attempting to gain exposure on your properties is essential to competing online. With all of these sources, it makes sense to be able to track and understand which one's are generating leads. To take it a step further, can you track which sources close faster than others? Many companies still struggle to understand where their leads come from, who they are assigned to and which ones are closing. This is where having a real estate lead management solution designed to track all your leads can help shed some light as to where a positive return on sources is coming from.
Our LeadTrax lead management solution is designed to bring in all your lead sources automatically. We can track both a primary source as well as a secondary source. There are also several reports which can be run to show conversion rates for specific sources as well as what agents are assigned which sources and their individual sources.
To learn more about how successful real estate companies manage their leads, download our lead management best practices white paper. We have partnered with the most successful real estate companies in the US to help manage and convert leads.
Posted on Fri, Apr 06, 2012 @ 07:02 AM
One of the topics covered in our recent white paper on increasing your bottom line is the importance of one-stop shopping for consumers. Continually looking for ways to get your ancillary services in front of the leads and clients you're working with is essential in keeping your company profitable. The first step in making sure all of the services your company offers are presented to a consumer is when a lead is generated. Lead scrubbing and asking the right qualification questions can help get the lead to the right department or input into a campaign that will remind the right department when it is time for follow-up.
With our LeadTrax lead management solution, you can track the available opportunities and who has been assigned a lead whether it is a sales agent, a loan officer, home warranty specialist or attorney. It's important to not just look at a lead whose inquired on a property as a buyer or seller, but an opportunity for all your company services.
With our Back Office Solution, Profit Power, once a real estate transaction has taken place you can track who got the mortgage, what company worked on the title and which attorneys got involved. Reports can let you know which agents use your mortgage company more often than not and can show where improvement in converting more opportunities are present.
Posted on Wed, Apr 04, 2012 @ 10:03 AM
We've been conducting a monthly webinar on Real Estate lead management best practice strategies and one of the topics that we cover which seems to pique interest is our "lead inquiry secret shopper" program. We've worked with several clients who were looking to measure the speed of response from their agents when a lead submits a request on one of their listings. What we do is submit a hundred inquiries on the broker's listings. We then monitor and track the time from when the form is submitted, until the time we receive a response back from the agent. We've conducted this "secret shopper" program several times and in each case the chart of responses looks almost exactly the same.
There are generally a very low amount of responses within fifteen minutes and a handful of responses within the fifteen to thirty minute range. We get a couple more within an hour, about six or seven. Then about ten to fifteen within three hours. Within three to six hours, about five to ten. There's a smattering that come in between the six to twelve hour range and twelve to twenty-four range.
Of course by this time, the lead is most likely long gone and the chances of working with a lead after about an hour of not responding is slim. However, the biggest eye opener for brokers is the "no-response" column. In all of the studies we've run, the no response category is at or just below about fifty percent.
This is obviously a huge eye opener for Real Estate firms looking to improve their internet lead conversion rates. To overcome this, we suggest stricter guidelines around follow-up policies for agents. Many of our clients have implemented a system where the listing agent gets first shot to accept the lead, within twenty minutes. After twenty minutes and no response, the lead is then routed to an agent who is required to respond to the lead within ten minutes. When it is all said and done, the lead who has inquired is hopefully, worst case scenario, being contacted within thirty to thirty-five minutes.
Posted on Wed, Mar 28, 2012 @ 08:39 AM
Over the weekend we attended the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World Conference in Orlando. It was a great opportunity to meet with existing clients and new contacts and I made a point of asking as many Brokers and Executives how their respective companies were faring so far in 2012. Most agreed that their markets were doing much better than in years past. There was also some cautious optimism and a sense that the economy and industry was not out of the woods just yet, but overall, the feeling was that 2012 would be the best in about five years.
Yesterday, both Inman News and RIS Media published articles about NAR predicting an increase in homes sales in 2012. Things seem to be pointed in the right direction and as a technology services company, serving residential real estate brokers, we're certainly seeing more of a willingness to invest in technology to help improve processes this year. We recently published a white paper discussing the importance of using technology to help improve the bottom line and think that now is as good of a time to look at making better use of the leads you're generating online and maximizing all opportunities to convert more of these leads.
With the spring market in full swing and the trends pointing to over 90% of potential buyers using the web to start their home search, being aware of real estate lead management best practices and using a real estate lead managment solution can help in an increase in lead conversion will help your company become more profitable. Having a strategy that helps to continually improve lead generation and lead conversion will lead to increased profitability.
Posted on Thu, Mar 22, 2012 @ 08:24 AM
If you're attending the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World Conference in Orlando this week, please stop by the Relocation Specialist booth to learn more about the leading relocation software on the market today.
We've partnered with Relo Spec to become their first Value Added Reseller and also offer add-on tools to their software that helps automate data entry processes, provide ad hoc reporting options and improve follow-up communication with agents and staff through automated business rules. Patrick Gaughan, VP of Sales at LanTrax, will be working with the Relo Spec team at the conference and can help answer your questions about our integration points with Relo Spec and the add-on tools we provide.
Relocation Specialist is a powerful, easy-to-use relocation software solution that track all your relocation activities. Used by hundreds of residential real estate companies, Relo Spec has all the features you need to become more efficient in managing and converting your relocation business. To learn more check out the Relocation Specialist blog.