Learn More About Real Estate CRM Software
What is Real Estate CRM Software?
Real estate agents are constantly on the go and are always “on." They must attract new clients, maintain communication with existing clients, keep up to date on listings, track contracts and the existing sales pipeline, advertise their personal brand, maintain an active social media presence, and know how to leverage tech to keep in front of their competition and prospective clients. Real estate CRM software helps unify priorities and tasks, working in the best interest of the agent that uses the software.
Real estate CRM software is more than a glorified lead capturing, generating, and tracking tool. Real estate CRM software is a client, contract, and agent database specifically designed for the real estate industry. Real estate CRM software helps agents and businesses serve their clients better by centralizing and integrating all agent activities into a consolidated system. Real estate CRM software has the capability to automate workflows, analyze agent interactions and sales cycles, and optimize and track client correspondence. With a real estate CRM, real estate agents and brokers can be more efficient and productive with their time, as well as ensure improved, engaging personalization.
Key Benefits of Real Estate CRM Software
- Consolidates and organizes lead and contact information into a searchable database
- Automates workflows and time-consuming tasks
- Optimizes marketing automation efforts
- Tracks and reports on agent performance and business operations data
- Integrates with MLS systems and other relevant third-party software
Why Use Real Estate CRM Software?
Aside from data centralization and workflow automation, real estate professionals leverage real estate CRM software for two significant reasons: to increase efficiency and improve client relationships.
Efficiency — Because real estate CRM software automatically collects client information and sets up reminders and notifications about milestones and notable events, real estate agents do not need to chase down that information. That kind of information is crucial to accurately personalize client correspondence, but it takes time to gather and analyze. Real estate CRM software automates menial, time-consuming tasks, allowing agents to respond quickly and deliberately.
Strengthens client relationships — Real estate CRM software allows agents to minimize unnecessary back and forth with a client about housing requirements by collecting and processing preferences and the like. During and after a closed deal, real estate CRM software tracks the behaviors and interactions of clients with agents, which help in predicting the feedback that an agent may receive from a satisfied or unsatisfied customer. Real estate CRM software also helps agents maintain a light, not bombarding, touch with follow-ups and can set referrals in motion.
Who Uses Real Estate CRM Software?
Real estate agents — Real estate agents use real estate CRM software to better track their sales pipeline, contracts, and client correspondence. Agents benefit from the one-stop shop that a real estate CRM offers, reducing the myriad different software systems, physical repositories, and applications that they might previously have used to keep track of their activities and clients.
Real estate investors — Real estate investors can leverage real estate CRM’s data reporting and visualization functionality to present and model business data. Real estate CRM’s data consolidation capability helps investors see the number of deals won in a specific time period and the total value of all deals currently in the pipeline, while supporting the creation of long-term portfolio strategies.
Mortgage lenders — While mortgage CRM software does exist as a tailored solution for the lending industry, lenders can still leverage real estate CRM to manage contacts, aggregate documents, and prioritize tasks. While a real estate CRM cannot integrate as neatly with a loan origination system (LOS) like a mortgage CRM can, it is still a useful tool that can help consolidate information to improve client relationships and loan cycles.
Kinds of Real Estate CRM Software
Real estate CRM software is further segmented into commercial, residential, rental, and condominium, as well as by price points. The needs and requirements of each type of real estate focus varies, as will the CRM solution that can best serve or adapt to business operations. However, the following segment will discuss the two different ways to deploy real estate CRM into a business.
Cloud-based — Web- or cloud-based real estate CRM software can either be bought on a subscription basis or as a one-time download. A cloud-based real estate CRM is helpful for real estate agents that are always on-the-go, enabling them to access or update listings or client information in real time. Cloud-based solutions can be more cost-effective than on-premises deployed CRMs.
On-premises — While on-premises real estate CRM software may be more expensive and require extra hardware or infrastructure updates, on-premises deployment promises security of client and business data.
Real Estate CRM Software Features
Not all real estate CRMs are alike, considering that some are designed for residential versus commercial real estate and ownership versus rental real estate properties. However, some features are standard across all real estate CRMs.
Contact management — Contact management functionality offers the ability to segment and categorize contacts and leads by type of lead, referral status, history, and preferences. Usually these kinds of categorizations appear as filter fields or tags. The more flexible or customizable the fields are, the better for ease of use. A real estate CRM’s contact database should also be navigable, since the database will be the repository of any future interaction or communication.
Listing management — Whether a real estate CRM’s listing management means a seamless MLS synchronization or a customizable listing database, this is a crucial feature. What use is a centralized system of client, listing, and agent personas if it cannot provide a 360-degree overview of the prospective client? Listing management also touches upon document storage and management, as well as event or transaction tracking.
Email management — Email and e-newsletter templates help real estate agents send off to-the-point emails that still exude friendliness and thoughtfulness. A robust email management feature helps agents put together and send off proposals, participate in drip email campaigns, and take advantage of any extra features, like multiple language support.
Mobile solution — Specific to cloud- or web-based solutions, real estate CRMs that provide a mobile application or support mobile devices better suit the traveling lifestyle of a field agent.
Potential Issues with Real Estate CRM Software
Inflexibility — A solution that either lacks in customization options or flexibility to adapt to a business’ requirements will fail. The buyer should research just how customizable a set of features or dashboards are and try out the solution in a free trial to discover whether fields and displays can be easily edited, deleted, or added to.
Lack of integration — Investing in a single real estate CRM does not equal a dramatic overhaul of a real estate agency. The CRM will help, but simple integration to other real estate solutions is necessary for the business to succeed. No solution will integrate with every piece of real estate tech out there, so the buyer should keep in mind the generic and industry-specific systems that are already in place.
Difficult learning curve — Complete adoption of any software is desired, but that can only happen if the learning curve isn’t too steep or cumbersome. Humans are creatures of habit, and real estate agents are already stretched thin due to the enormous amount of multitasking that is expected of them. Software that isn’t intuitive, requires exhaustive training, or doesn’t come with easy-to-reach vendor support will fail.
Expensive — "You get what you pay for" is an adage that applies to real estate CRM software. The cheapest solution won’t be as effective in optimizing the duties and responsibilities of a real estate agent, but buyers must ask a vendor’s sales reps what is included in the price of the solution. Is vendor support an additional charge? What kind of infrastructure or hardware requirements does a solution require in order to work well?
Software and Services Related to Real Estate CRM Software
Below are several solutions that can be used in conjunction with real estate CRM software or as alternatives to real estate CRM software, based on user needs:
Mortgage CRM — Mortgage lenders and brokers can use real estate CRM software to keep track of their clients and important documents. However, they are better served by turning to industry-specific mortgage CRM software to optimize business operations, since the latter understands the ins and outs of the lending industry.
Real estate marketing — Real estate marketing software streamlines the advertising of a real estate professional’s services and properties, taking into consideration different channels and SEO strategies. Most real estate marketing software integrates neatly with real estate CRM software to better generate and capture leads from websites and other forms of digital presence.
Brokerage management — Any real estate professional can use real estate CRM, including brokers. A real estate CRM allows real estate agents and brokers to perform better and close deals more effectively by freeing up manual time spent on necessary but time-consuming tasks like sending follow-up emails and sifting through listings. Real estate CRM software usually integrates easily with brokerage management software for a comprehensive real estate agency management solution.
Real estate activities management — Real estate activities managment software eases the tracking of a real estate professional’s sales, transactions, and other relevant performance metrics. Transaction management and contract management are common features of real estate activities management software, which can be made even more simple and streamlined via integration with a real estate CRM.
Multiple listing service (MLS) listing — Unlike generic CRMs, real estate CRMs are designed to parse through and collect listing information from multiple listing service (MLS) listings to better match clients with their dream homes.
Real estate investment management — Real estate investors can use real estate CRM software to keep track of their clients and sync with any listing system. However, real estate investment management software goes one step further because it is designed to handle real estate investment-specific activities.
CRM — Real estate CRM is just one example of industry-specific CRM software. A real estate agency or business can use a general CRM to organize their contact databases and keep track of their sales cycles and transactions. Additionally, some general-purpose CRM vendors have begun to roll out industry-specific customizations.
CRM all-in-one — CRM all-in-one software bundles together CRM and marketing automation functionality to fulfill the needs of small businesses. Real estate CRM goes beyond simple lead tracking and nurturing and focuses on optimizing and nurturing client relationships, and that includes providing marketing automation functionality for real estate professionals.
