How to close more sales with real estate marketing automation

Over the years, marketers have scratched their heads and thought about how they can better automate their tasks and projects, no matter what industry they’re in. For real estate marketing automation, finding solutions might sound a little bit more complex, but in truth, it’s not all that difficult. 

Sure, you will have some obstacles along the way, but it’s the same for any industry. For real estate marketing specifically, automation has made leaps and bounds in recent years. And today, we’re going to talk about it.

We’re going to go over some ideas that you can use to automate your real estate marketing journey. We’ll talk about how to automate the lead generation process, how to manage leads and other real estate resources, and a lot more. Some of these ideas you may have heard of before, and some might be brand new. Some might even come with a suggestion for a real estate marketing automation tool. For now, let’s dive in.

What is real estate automation exactly?

For real estate marketing automation, and every other form of automation, the goal is to reduce the need for manual work as much as possible. In a car factory, that means machinery and programming. For a real estate business, that means tools to help streamline the buying and selling process for you and other individuals.

For that reason, we’ve compiled this list of ideas that you can use to automate your real estate marketing efforts. Some of these ideas will come with tool suggestions, and some will simply be open-ended ideas. This is so that you can take that information and make the best decisions based on your needs as an individual or team.

Ideas for real estate marketing automation

For real estate, the name of the game is to generate more leads faster and to sell houses, apartments, and properties quickly by doing so.

So with that said, here are some of the best examples of automation in real estate that you can easily adapt to your own business.

• Lead generation automation
• Lead nurturing automation
• Management automation
• Promotional automation

Real estate lead generation automation

Lead generation is your friend in real estate. I guess that much is true for any business, but when you’re selling houses worth hundreds of thousands or even millions, fewer leads are going to convert. For that reason, building up a solid customer database is vital. To maximize your real estate lead conversion, consider utilizing a real estate agent CRM to efficiently manage and nurture your valuable customer database.

There are a few ways that you can automate your lead generation strategy. For that, you need a system in place to collect contact information. Here are a few ideas to help you do that.

Build better relationships with VoIP for real estate

While we’re on the topic of phones, we’d be remiss not to mention their primary function – calling. After all, phone calls are some of real estate agents’ most powerful tools, and a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) automation system can make them even better. 

A Real Estate Phone System lets you combine much of what we’ve discussed so far into a single solution, including integrating CRMs, and other 3rd party tools with a click or staying productive on the go with remote work. 

These solutions don’t require anything more than the phone in your pocket to work and can be onboarded quickly without any coding necessary. They also make calling not only cheaper but easier, as they offer a variety of advanced automation tools to let you do almost anything.

Whether you want to route incoming calls to the most skilled agents available, reach 3x more clients at the same time with a dialer, or let callers solve their own issues with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, Real Estate Phone System have you covered. 

Oh, and the best thing? Clients will love you all the more for making your job easier because it’ll give you the chance to spend more quality time with them on the phone, delivering better, more personalized experiences. 

Website form lead generation

If you have a CRM that links your main page and all your landing pages, implement a simple website form to help capture leads. It’s one of the easiest ways to automate lead generation in real estate. If you don’t use a CRM or simply haven’t gotten it to link from your main page, you can look into CRM software that offers lead-capturing abilities.

Think about it like this. A new prospect enters your website based on keywords that you selected for a house that you’re selling. They look through your listings and decide that they like quite a few houses that you have listed. But, it’s 10 pm your time, and you don’t want to spend all day answering phones and emails.

Website lead forms are incredible and somewhat passive tools for marketing. Instead of making the potential lead wait until the next day, they can fill out the form. Then, when the next day rolls around, you can give them a call or send them an email. It’s as simple as that.

A big tip here is to make sure your leads are distributed evenly. If you have a decent-sized sales team, a tool like Lead Assign is a must. Although it’s not designed specifically for real estate, it is a great addition to anyone’s real estate marketing automation lineup. It helps marketing teams route leads and distribute them among the sales team for a better, more efficient workflow. It also helps you keep track of the volume of leads that each sales representative can handle. 

Open house automation

Open houses are a big part of the real estate scene but they’re not always accessible to everyone. For example, if you have someone moving from out of town, they may not be able to make the trip to see the house in person. Or, perhaps they do make it and you want to take note of what they like and don’t like.

With open house automation, not only are you automating the process, but you’re making it easier for anyone from anywhere to see the house as if they were actually there. 

There are quite a few notable tools and apps to help you with this process, each with its own unique features. For example, Openhomepro allows attendees to sign in at the beginning, taking note of their contact information for follow-ups in the future. It also allows the agent to take notes while giving the tour so that they can help guide the buyer to their dream home.

Or, if you like options, try SPACIO. It is a real estate open house automation tool that allows you to not only keep track of your open houses but also market them and communicate with leads. 

Sync leads to your phone

As a real estate agent, you’re probably on the go a lot. This can make it difficult to manage leads, as you’re not often in front of your computer or at a desk. One of the biggest tips anyone can give you is to look for ways to sync your lead generation efforts to your phone.

The good news is that most CRMs allow for instant alerts when you collect a new lead, and you can even sync those notifications to your phone. By using this system through your CRM, you can see all of your contacts, and even give them a call if needed. 

Let’s say that someone sees your Facebook video tour of a gorgeous house, and they’re interested in it. They make a comment or message you on your company profile. If you use a CRM that is mobile-friendly, then you could get a notification on your phone, and you can reply instantly.

A good idea here is to get a good tool under your belt that can automate the follow-up process. Agent Legend, for example, allows you to automate the follow-up process by sending personalized emails, voice mails, and other messages on your behalf. They offer free implementation services, tons of real estate-related integrations, and even a library of templates proven to work in the real estate industry.

Real estate lead nurturing automation

Once the real estate lead is generated, they have to be nurtured. It would be nice if they jumped on board and bought a home immediately, but just like with pretty much every other business, that’s simply not the case. For that reason, you’ll also want to automate your lead nurturing campaigns to keep the lead interested. Here’s how you can do it.

Drip emails 

Maybe the lead signed up because they’re looking for a house, but they haven’t quite found the one that they’re looking for. You already have their contact information, so why not send them an updated list of homes for sale periodically?

Sending emails in this way is called a drip campaign. The idea is that you slowly “drip” information to them. Notice that I said slowly. You don’t want to bombard them with information. It’s already stressful enough looking for a new place to live. Tailoring a real estate drip campaign with this mindful approach can nurture leads effectively without overwhelming them.

Also, utilizing some sort of email automation CRM software to help aid with your drip emails can be just the thing a lead needs to finally pull the trigger on a house.

Now of course it’s not as simple as putting them in a queue and waiting for the fish to bite. You have to know your audience, what you’re selling, and time everything perfectly. That being said, don’t let this intimidate you. Make sure you’ve got a good email automation tool under your belt and do your research.

List segmentation

Now, of course, not every house you have listed will be suitable for every lead you have. You might have someone with a million-dollar budget, but you will also have leads that only want to spend $250,000. 

If this is the case, then you’ll want to implement some list segmentation into your real estate marketing automation strategy. These segments can be based on a lot of things. Location, budget, home size, and so on. All of this data should be implemented into your lead generation strategy and stored in your CRM for automatic segmentation.

To further advance this idea, you can also segment lists based on actions taken by the lead. If they sign up for a newsletter and show interest in certain houses by clicking on multiple in a certain area, then you might be able to consider that a hot lead. If they keep visiting the same home listing over and over for a few days, then they might be highly interested in it and need a call right away. Considering financial factors is also crucial. For instance, knowing a lead’s budget range is essential, and understanding their potential home loan options can provide valuable insights into their purchasing capabilities, helping to refine the segmentation process.

There are many ways you can segment lists for proper lead nurturing automation. For real estate marketing, in particular, you basically have a predetermined set of criteria that you can easily use to segment your lists. 

Real estate management automation

As a real estate agent or agency, you’re going to have a lot of things to manage. Multiple deals going on simultaneously means multiple stacks of paperwork and tons of other details that come along with it. You will absolutely need a way to automate your management processes across the board, starting with your leads.

Lead management

Once leads are generated, they have to be managed. For a real estate agency or single agent, doing so is important but can be very difficult. You have to decide what leads are considered hot for your business, and which ones aren’t. With a normal lead management tool, this isn’t feasible, as real estate is much different than any other business.

There are a lot of lead management tools out there to help you do this. Each real estate business will have its own preferences, but what’s important is that your lead management software allows you to do five things.

• Capture, analyze, and organize leads automatically, as soon as they come in
• Route the incoming leads to a capable agent, ready to take action immediately
• Keep lead information updated with relevant contact information
• Use behavior and other profile data to qualify leads
• Make more sales by streamlining the conversion process

For real estate lead management automation, the key is to get all your leads flowing into one place. This is exactly why having a powerful tool that your entire team can get on board with is vital. Do your research and make sure the tool you choose works well with everyone.

Contract management

Many real estate businesses have a position called a real estate contract manager. As you can probably guess, these are people whose entire job is to keep track and manage contracts. This includes leases and owned property agreements. 

Whether you have a dedicated position for this or not, contracts are incredibly important to get right and manage. Being a legally binding document, you definitely don’t want it to get lost. Believe it or not, real estate automation can help with this, too. With the right real estate contract management software, you can rest assured that your important documents are well taken care of. 

Using a tool like Dotloop to help you manage, send, and sign contracts for real estate is by far the easiest way to keep up with all your contracts. It brings them to a central, digital place to help automate the entire process of creating, signing, and distributing real estate contracts. One essential feature to look for in contract management software is contract redlining. This feature tracks changes and revisions, ensuring all parties are aligned. In real estate, where contracts often undergo multiple rounds of edits, redlining simplifies collaboration and eliminates unnecessary stress.

Organize your listings and contacts based on a number of factors. As you can see in the screenshot above, it’s organized by address, type of transaction, status, and sale price. If you have multiple listings at once, this could be a lifesaver, perfect for anyone looking for real estate marketing automation solutions.

Real estate promotional automation

One of the biggest issues real estate agents face in the field is finding a way to promote their listings. Sure, you can create Facebook Ads and advertise locally, but even that can only go so far in real estate. You need a way to automate this process so that you can reach more people and be more efficient with selling.

Video automation

Video marketing is the new wave in all industries, not just real estate. But, for real estate specifically, it’s making a huge impact. Think about it. People buy houses based on the way they look. Sure, there are a number of factors that come into play other than that, but nobody cares about something like location if the house isn’t visually appealing to them.

Video marketing isn’t always easy, especially if you don’t have a dedicated videographer on your team. Even still, video projects pile up, and the process from start to finish takes time. That’s where video marketing comes into play, and there most certainly is a way to automate at least some of the process.

For this, you don’t necessarily need a real estate-specific tool. What you do need is something that is easy to learn and allows you to make high-quality videos quickly. With potential dozens or even hundreds of listings at once, you need to be efficient with your time, including what you dedicate to making promotional videos.

A tool that you might find useful is Promo. Video editing can be difficult. Add proper branding and styling into that mix, it can evolve into a headache quickly. Promo provides you with all the tools you need to get the job done, and an easy dashboard that anyone of any skill level can use. 

Real estate listing automation

Take a look back at all of your most time-consuming tasks in real estate marketing and think of the one that devoured the most. The answer won’t be the same for everyone, but we can all agree that creating real estate listings can certainly be a pain. They take a lot of time and effort to get right. And it makes sense, given how much goes into creating a great listing and getting people to stop and pay attention to your property.

You have to gather pictures of all the details you want to showcase, fill in all the details manually, add things like prices and location, and then you have to make it look good. For someone that can’t spend so much time at a desk, or finds themselves out in the field all day, this is next to impossible. Unless you have real estate listing automation capabilities.

Not only do you need a way to quickly and professionally make these real estate listings, but you need an easy way to share and distribute with potential buyers. 

Believe it or not, there is a way to automate this process. Flipsnack gives you the power to quickly create and edit real estate listing brochures with an MLS automation tool that works with RESO identifiers. All you have to do is set these identifiers, or use a Smart Template. You can create a listing brochure in literally minutes.

The best tools for real estate marketing automation

Real estate automation is such a powerful tool to have under your marketing belt. With it, you can do incredible things like automate real rate marketing campaigns, send out timely emails to get the attention of the perfect customer, and even create valuable marketing assets like listings and videos. 

All-in-all, automation in real estate will be your best friend. And to summarize the tools we mentioned above, here’s a quick rundown. 

• Promo – Real estate videos
• SPACIO – Open house automation
• Agent Legend – Automated lead follow up
• Lead Assign – Lead distribution automation
• Flipsnack – Real estate listing automation

Give real estate marketing automation a try

What can we say about real estate marketing automation except that it is a lifesaver? With advancements in tools and technology such as those illustrated above, real estate agencies and agents have been able to reach more people, showcase more houses, and of course, sell more.

In the past, real estate marketing automation wasn’t quite as attainable as it is today. Now, just about anyone can jump online, find a tool that suits their needs, and jump right into utilizing it for their own benefit. 

Want to learn more about how Flipsnack can completely transform your real estate business? Let’s get in touch. By filling out that form, you’ll be able to witness exactly how powerful Flipsnack is for a real estate marketing team. With just a few clicks, you can create an incredible real estate listing brochure that will have potential buyers itching to see more