How to Use Your Real Estate CRM to Create Authentic Relationships Online

Our lives have been made easier by technology and access to information. In the real estate world, potential buyers and sellers can quickly go online and find insights on home prices, features, and locations. They can search for homes and sign up for listing alerts.

For real estate agents, this means more competition to earn a client’s business. Those who are ready and willing to adapt will have continued success. While technology has introduced new challenges, managing potential leads doesn’t need to be complicated.

A well-implemented real estate CRM tool can help you juggle hundreds, if not thousands, of leads. You can build better customer relationships, have better lead conversion rates, and increase your customer loyalty.

What is CRM in Real Estate

Real estate CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is all about managing your interactions with clients, leads, and prospects. A CRM tool keeps track of all customer information, including communication, buying history, and email trails. 

In the past, this may have looked like taking hours of extra time tracking your leads and data on an Excel sheet or other manual tracking site.

Modern CRM tools allow real estate agents to automate mundane tasks, manage their leads well, and, in turn, have the time and energy to build better customer relationships. 

Maddie Stiles – Showcase idx

How To Choose The Right CRM

With so many CRM tools to choose from, how do you pick which one is best for your real estate business? 

First, determine what your needs are as a real estate agent. Decide how many features you want in CRM software and how much you’re willing to pay for. Whether you want just the basics or want an all-in-one marketing and sales solution, it’s best to have an idea of what you want before choosing a CRM tool.

Most CRM tools allow you to have a free trial run before purchasing the product. Take advantage of this! Try out some CRM software and see how they fit your needs. The longer the trial, the more chance you’ll have of seeing if that CRM tool is what you want.

Real Estate CRM with IDX Integration

Most CRM tools hit the basic features (email alerts, social media integration, newsletters, etc.), but the most successful real estate businesses invest in a CRM with IDX integration.

A great IDX-integrated CRM software should connect to your website and social accounts, so it knows what your clients are viewing, searching for, and interested in. This helps deepen your client relationships, while making you the go-to website for home buyers and sellers in your community.

As the number one leading IDX plugin for WordPress sites, Showcase IDX includes CRM with their plugin. You’ll be able to manage your client relationships effectively, keep traffic directly on your site, and track data from your socials and website activity. To find out more about adding an IDX-integrated CRM tool to your website, chat with one of our friendly experts.

How to Effectively Use a Real Estate CRM

Whether you are working alone or with a team, managing your day-to-day work involves knowing exactly where to focus. Knowing who needs a call, text, or email should be a productive and seamless process.

Not only do the contacts need to be timely, but potential clients expect a personalized touch. Buying and selling homes are emotional experiences. Clients want to feel that their needs are heard.

A real estate customer relationship management (CRM) tool should keep all of your leads in one place. You should leverage the tool to build those client relationships while also automating the process whenever possible. 

Smarter real estate CRM illustration

Client Insights

Each client has specific needs and reasons for entering the real estate market. While a client may provide you with some information, you can gain additional insights from online behavior and enriching their profiles with additional (public) data.

You are probably using social media for real estate marketing and to engage with your clients. A CRM tool can pull back social media profile information. This helps you gain insight into the person in ways that may not otherwise come up in conversation.

You can also gain insights by tracking a lead’s behavior on your IDX website. Knowing what properties were viewed and links clicked tells you a lot about what that potential client is seeking. If you have reactions, favorites, or other website tools, you should keep that information with each client’s profile.

Pulling all of this information together into a CRM will help you know what steps to take next.

CRM for real estate lead routing

Lead Behavior Routing

If you are working with a team, you want to pair your leads with the right agent for that client’s needs. Certain agents may have expertise by geographical area, price point, or client niche.

Within a real estate CRM, you can automatically route leads to different agents. You should create criteria that make sense for your team. You’ll improve the relationships by ensuring your leads are matched with the best agent possible.

Your team will have more accountability with automated routing. You won’t have to worry about a lead slipping through the cracks. Leads will get in front of the right person so that the follow-up happens quickly.

If you manage your own leads, you can still use rules within a CRM to follow-up with leads based on different behaviors. 

Think about your potential clients and how you identify and follow up with a “hot” lead versus someone who is “just browsing.”

Real estate CRM note taking infographic

Personalize Your Contact with Clients

Automatic collection of information and assigning agents are great for some of the upfront work. But the way you will connect and build relationships with your clients over time is by adding that personal touch.

Within a CRM, you will want to keep notes that you can add to the profile of any client or potential client. When you ask those critical questions about wants and needs, you will want to add this information to that person’s profile. That way, next time you speak, you can show that you listened and care.

Your CRM should also keep all of your correspondence in one place. From automated drip emails, to 1:1 emails, to phone calls: you want to know when you last contacted that client and why.

Workflows in Real Estate CRM tools

Automate Your Emails

With so many leads to nurture, the correspondence can be overwhelming. From alerts of new properties that match their criteria to auto-responders for scheduled showing, the emails and texts can be endless.

Fortunately, customer relationship management (CRM) with email automation is relatively simple. You can still personalize the message based on the client, but the task does not have to be tedious. 

Using a combination of a modern IDX and real estate CRM, you can automatically send the emails to clients based on the criteria you define. 

Here are some examples of ways to automate the contacts with leads and clients:

1. The Welcome Email

Don’t overlook the importance of a welcome email. This is your first engagement with the potential client and sets the tone of who you are as a real estate agent. Automate the welcome email to new leads in your CRM.

2. Lead Nurturing

Not all customers will want to engage with you directly at first. Some are still thinking about what they want or want to do their own research first. Still, it is important to nurture the leads with emails that reflect your personality and establishes you as an industry expert for what they need.

3. Provide Meaningful Content

The more you can segment your leads into different groups, the better you can provide that personalized touch and take advantage of email automation. For example, your engagement will differ between buyers and sellers, different price points, and various neighborhoods.

You should set up your CRM with workflows that identify the type of email to go out and the timing. This will boost the overall effectiveness of your email marketing strategy.

3. Listing Alerts, Open House Alerts, and Other IDX Powered Emails

Real estate CRMs are great for organizing your clients and sending regular marketing emails. However, the complexity of real estate specific search and listing alerts should be sent by a modern IDX. These are different technical problems, each requiring a multi-million annual investment to create and maintain the SAAS (software-as-a-service) platform

Showcase IDX integrates deeply with Liondesk and Follow Up Boss to provide the powerful technology stack you need.

real estate agent and couple buying first home

Putting a Real Estate CRM To Work for You

Throughout the journey of your real estate clients, you want to provide them with meaningful contact. You’ll have better lead conversions and more success if potential clients see you as someone they can trust. You’ll save time and cost per lead by utilizing a powerful real estate CRM.

Showcase IDX offers a free lite CRM solution to effortlessly manage your opportunities, with integrations with thousands of other technology tools through Zapier. You can start engaging with your website’s visitors by creating a free trial account today..

Author Details
Entrepreneurial marketing leader that’s built and run organizations from start-up to over $500M annual revenue. He brings a unique combination of storytelling and innovation to the team, having led marketing for many brands. Kurt’s a regular conference speaker and workshop leader around modern marketing tactics that actually drive sales. In addition, he has been asked to coach and advise thousands of leaders, from startup founders to the President of the United States.

Share This:

Related:

  • Great post on Real Estate CRM! Here are a few actionable tips to help real estate professionals make the most of their CRM:

    Choose the right CRM: Do your research and choose a CRM that meets your specific needs. Look for a CRM with a user-friendly interface, robust features, and good customer support.

    Streamline processes: Use your CRM to streamline your processes and automate repetitive tasks, such as sending follow-up emails and scheduling appointments.

    Import and manage your contacts: Import your contacts into your CRM and keep the information up-to-date. This will help you stay connected with your clients and prospects.

    Use data to inform your strategy: Use the data in your CRM to inform your marketing and sales strategy. Analyze your data to identify patterns and trends, and use this information to make better-informed decisions.

    Continuously evaluate and improve: Continuously evaluate and improve your CRM usage. Ask for feedback from your team and make changes as needed to ensure that your CRM is helping you achieve your goals.

    By following these tips, real estate professionals can effectively use their CRM to improve their productivity and achieve success. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us!

  • Search

    Join Our Support Team For A Live Demo

    Join our support team for a live demo on the leading wordpress plugin for real estate websites.

    Get Your Copy Now

    Recent Posts

    >