The Placester team is excited to announce that we are partnering with Follow Up Boss, a leading lead management solution for real estate professionals. To help you understand what this partnership will mean for the Placester community, we got in touch with Follow Up Boss Co-founder, Dan Corkill.
Placester: How did Follow Up Boss get its start?
Dan Corkill: We started Follow Up Boss in 2011. After talking with real estate professionals, we found out they all pretty much had one problem: They were paying for leads and websites from many different providers but didn’t have a simple system in place to manage it all. One broker told us, “I’m awake at 3am in the morning forwarding leads out to my agents and I have no idea what happens after I send them the lead.”
That seemed crazy to us, so we set out to make everything much more simple, automatic and accountable.
P: What sets Follow Up Boss apart from other lead management solutions?
DC: The biggest drawcard for our system is it works with all your existing websites and lead providers. So someone may have Zillow leads, a Placester website, another website and their own landing pages in place already. Those can all be plugged into our system and trigger a follow up campaign. There is no manual data entry and no more trying to juggle leads in your email inbox or multiple systems.
We knew from our initial research that most real estate agents do not use their CRM, so we knew from the outset that everything had to be automatic, rather than rely on time intensive data entry. This ensures that in 3 weeks, 3 months and 3 years the system is still in place growing your business no matter how busy you are.
P: How can Placester users benefit from this new partnership?
DC: By implementing Follow Up Boss and Placester we can create an inbound marketing machine for your business.
For leads that come in through your Placester website, we can assign them out to your team and have an engagement email campaign go out until you contact them. We also integrate with Zapier (https://zapier.com/zapbook/follow-up-boss/) which can allow your Placester leads to be synced pretty much anywhere.
For leads that come from other sources we can do the same thing, but importantly we will drive them back to search homes on your Placester IDX website so more of your leads stay in your funnel. This is great for your leads as well because they can search the MLS direct.
P: What’s one aspect or stand-out feature of Follow Up Boss that the Placester community should know about?
DC: We have an instant call back feature that allows people to speak with their leads literally 30 seconds after they receive a lead from any of their lead providers or their Placester website. We’ve seen first hand how much of a difference this makes to contacting your leads and setting up an appointment. There has also been studies done showing how important fast service is.
You are 100 times more likely to contact a client within 5 minutes versus calling within 30 minutes. Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study on internet leads
When you call someone back that fast after they register on your Placester website, people are impressed and they will still be on your website so you can naturally ask them if they need any help browsing and if they would like to see any of the homes.
You can try it out here http://www.followupboss.com/instant-call/
P: What will the Placester/Follow Up Boss integration look like?
DC: You will be able to have your Placester leads automatically pushed into Follow Up Boss (for example, when someone signs up for your IDX or requests a showing).
We are also working on bringing across information on what people are doing on your website (for example, when someone saves a property or returns to your website you will know about that in Follow Up Boss) so you can easily see the most engaged leads, see what people are most interested in and follow up with them.
