Door knocking, cold calling and writing notes by hand are like the suit and tie of real estate marketing tactics; people have been wearing them for so long because they’ve always looked good. Of course these analog approaches to marketing yourself and your brokerage should be included as parts of your overall strategy. But I’m also reminded of the folk tale of John Henry versus the steam-powered hammer — sure, he won the race in the end, but winning also made his heart give out from exhaustion. Brokerages still need to encourage their agents to block out time every week to hammer away at those time-tested forms of communication, but if you have a steam-powered hammer lying around — like the real estate brokerage CRM automations that come baked in with TRIBUS’ custom platforms — why in the world wouldn’t you use that, too?
In the past, we have already covered why it’s important you have a robust CRM system. This time around, we wanted to focus on a few of the many real estate brokerage CRM automations you can set up for your brokerage. Automations don’t replace the older, more manual methods of marketing; in fact, they provide people with more time to focus on them. Here are a few ways to leverage your CRM to turn your agents into marketing machines.
Lead Tags: the Bedrock for Real Estate Brokerage CRM Automations
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Think of automatic lead tags as the foundation on which so many of your real estate brokerage CRM automations sit. You can set up custom capture forms on your brokerage’s website that immediately apply a tag to the prospect that determines the right marketing strategy for him or her. Are they buyers or sellers? Looking to move into a new place yesterday, or thinking in the long-term? Tagging them not only allows you to organize your leads into manageable categories, and export them to mailing labels and CSVs for manual correspondence; it also automatically starts them on campaigns built specifically for their needs, and the path to conversion, without lifting a finger.
A Drip for Every Occasion
Now that your leads have been auto-tagged accordingly, start them on a drip email campaign. With the help of some handy email templates, branded for your brokerage and the agent in charge of the lead, you’ll be able to continually engage and re-engage with leads as time passes.
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Whether you’re sending over messages to make sure your name doesn’t stray far from your leads’ minds, like a “What’s Your Home Worth?” email, or wishing them a happy homebuying anniversary a year after closing to encourage repeat business, these kinds of drips are set-it-and-forget-it keys to success.
Capturing Leads with an Integrated CRM
Not all your leads are going to be coming right from your real estate brokerage website. When you or your agents get a new lead, it’s crucial to know where they came from. So, for instance, TRIBUS’ CRM is integrated with sites like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com to push leads from those sites into your system. You can do this with all sorts of lead-gen services, though, either through email parsing or an automation platform like Zapier. Make sure your real estate brokerage CRM automations include the ability to capture these leads and start them on the conversion funnel.
Always Be Engaging
Marketing and advertising in real estate is a unique challenge. A fast-food chain can air an ad around dinnertime, full of mouth-watering shots of their food (or, more likely, food that looks a million times better than what you’d actually receive), and can make you say, hey, yeah, I actually could go for a Whopper. But when it comes to buying a home, the biggest financial decision most folks make in their lives, a couple of commercials won’t convince anyone to make that leap. Instead: always be engaging. The more communication you have with people, the more likely they are to think of you when the time is right for them to buy or sell a home — to become customers.
And, yes, that communication can and should involve plenty of handwritten notes and face-to-face conversations. For every phone call and knock on the door, however, a full-service CRM can engage with many, many more leads at a time. (We’ve only started to scratch the surface here — if you want more examples of how TRIBUS can generate automatic engagement for your brokerage, check out features like our saved search alerts, property suggestions and market insights emails, among many others.)
If you want people in your area to think “real estate” and see your logo, real estate brokerage CRM automations are indispensable tools. Why settle for hammering away at the same-old, same-old when your brokerage can be a bonafide marketing machine?
