In real estate (and every other industry), the million dollar question is, ‘How do I make more money?’ The easy answer: close more deals. Unfortunately, it’s not always as easy as it sounds, otherwise we’d all be rolling in the dough. The reality is you’re only one person, and there’s only so much time in a day (unless, somehow, you’re a vampire…or a player in Donald Trump’s Real Estate Tycoon).

Just like a car requires an engine to run, so does your business. Keeping your team accountable for the leads they accept while embracing best practices is a struggle for many. Think of an automated real estate CRM as your ‘smart-automation engine’ that enables you to turn prospects into leads and internal best practices into reality. It should not only include a smart campaign of automated tasks and alerts to maximize agent productivity, but ultimately act as a lead-driving machine for your brokerage.

By automating some of your most important and time-consuming processes, you can become more effective in cultivating leads, keeping in touch with clients and managing your active listings. An effective real estate CRM will free up valuable time, allowing you to focus on the long-term success of your brokerage.

So, what does your brokerage automated look like? Here are a few ways that a real estate CRM can automate your marketing and team activities to help you work smarter and become more profitable.

1. Agent and Team Tasks

A single, simple task multiplied by your growing pipeline can result in a domino effect of unfinished business (and unhappy clients). With every new listing, there is a checklist of things to perform, whether it’s 5 items or 50 items. No matter how large or small your list is, tasks are one of the most important things you can automate. Set up automated reminders and follow-up triggers to keep things from slipping through the cracks that may jeopardize a listing.

2. Lead Capture and Distribution

Automating the handling of incoming leads will ensure that you are working those leads in the most efficient manner possible. Lead capture forms that automatically input lead info into your system are a good start, but if nothing else happens from there, you are not maximizing your potential to close those leads. An effective automated real estate CRM will not only capture leads, but decide who will be in lead distribution pools, blast or round robin delivery, lead acceptance and timeouts.

3. Email and Drip Marketing

Email and drip marketing is tougher than it used to be. Open rates, click-through-rates and personalized templates are all factors that play into getting maximum exposure for your messages. An automated email campaign without personalization will get you little better results than that generic flyer you left on someone’s windshield. Your system should provide templates for personalizing emails with lead information on the fly, allowing your campaigns to achieve maximum impact with real estate leads and contacts.

4. Phone and Text Messaging

Phone and text-messaging automation is essential in today’s lead real estate CRM systems. As you are well aware, a 5 minute follow-up response vs. 30 minutes has an enormous impact on lead engagement. Schedule automated, personalized texts to follow-up with leads that hit your website within that five minute window and increase your contact rates by as much as 10x. Enable your team to move past barriers that prevent them from following up by tapping into the fastest growing communication medium.

5. Search Alerts

Time is of the essence when it comes to MLS updates. Give your clients the information they need, when they need it, by sending automated listing alerts matching the criteria they are looking for as soon as a property hits the market. Seek out a CRM solution that gives you a competitive advantage by automatically updating your MLS feed multiple times a day and allows you to set up search alerts for clients based on a variety of criteria.

A real estate CRM system is only as good as the use you get out of it. Your CRM should be customizable and adjust to what works best for you and your business. Keep your pipeline running smoothly and put the pedal to the metal with a real estate CRM that was built with your business in mind and designed to automate growth. Automation is a better, faster way to grow your team, drive leads and close more deals.

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