Real estate agents are embracing digital services
Real estate agents in Australia are going through a rapidly changing environment for Internet and mobile technology that we have experienced first hand with our websites for real estate agents service and I recently spoke with some successful real estate agents in Sydney Lower North Shore about other areas where they use technology, the agent mentioned Open Homes. The technology I’m talking about is smart phone apps that enable agents to quickly and easily capture potential buyers details who arrive at open homes.
Open home mobile apps are important for agents and vendors
Open homes are the critical time where real estate agents are visibly doing work for vendors and it’s an important task that busy real estate agents need to manage very well if they have many home available for sale at any given time. With mobile phone usage exploding it’s little wonder we are using them to do everything these days – and spending less time sleeping!
From the conversations I had with Sydney based real estate agents the busy days are Wednesday and Saturday and the open home is usually the easy part. The hard work happens afterwards when all the follow-up calls are made and the agent filters the prospect list to those potential buyers who are serious about that property and that is when an open home app comes in. A great open home app should help agents in the following ways:
- Collect potential buyers contact details (electronically)
- Enables the agent to text property information
- Enables a quick call back and logging process
- Shows the agent how many buyers have been to several of their open homes
- Integrates with the agents CRM for contact management
- Enables the agent to send automated marketing campaigns to buyers
An open home app is also invaluable to collect information that can later be presented to vendors to measure the results of the real estate agents marketing strategy and demonstrate the ROI of any money spent (including agents fees).
Our team explored some of the mobile apps and cloud-based services that are available, including US companies and below is a list of what appears popular:
- Open Home Pro – seems to be the most talked about and used
- AM Open House – part of a larger suite of apps for real estate
- Open House Toolkit – Keeps track of questions and answers at sign in
- Canvas – has a PDF designer
Why should Open House apps be cloud-based?
A good digital solution should have the capability of interacting with your current systems and when managing the visitors and follow-up to open homes the most important app is your CRM database because that is where most of your information is stored. The technically correct term for interact is “Integrate” and if you have a capable CRM you’ll be able to use the collected data (email addresses and mobile phone numbers) to keep in touch with all of the people who came to visit so that you remain front of mind.
Integrations are the most important aspect to explore when you’re looking into a cloud-based or smart phone app because it enables you to use multiple tools that are all connected together to share information without you having to retype it and retype. They also of course help you completely eliminate the need for printed forms and illegible writing!
Cloud Integrations
The best example of integrations we came across was for AM Open Home. This organisation listed almost 2 dozen popular cloud based CRM’s that they integrate with. To give you another example, our sister company EzyLearn offers training for Xero, MYOB and soon Intuit Quickbooks and these popular accounting programs use to compete on features – they now compete on the number of integrations that work with their software in their app market place. Pure Internet based applications like Xero are able to focus on this aspect of their solution and they find that the companies that integrate with are actually passively promoting their software too.
Digital Agency for Real Estate Agents
virion is a digital agency that aims to help great real estate agents build a great digital profile (see 123ezy.com) and reputation and we advise our clients about the best tools, technology and approaches to use, regardless of platforms.
