Real estate is about property transactions, of course — but it’s also about human connection. When someone gets ready to buy or sell a house, they want to work with an agent they can trust to handle an enormous financial transaction. The most productive and successful agents aren’t just in the real estate business but also in the people business.
That means they must keep track of everyone they meet, assess their needs, deliver value, and nurture those relationships into potentially lifelong business connections. How do the best real estate agents (and brokers) manage this? Technology is the key.
Why CRM systems are critical in real estate
Remembering everyone’s birthday, homeownership anniversary, household configuration, and so on can be a nearly impossible task as your network grows—and it should. The best real estate agents can make new connections and stay in close contact with all the previous relationships they’ve worked on establishing, often for years.
A CRM, or customer relationship management, is a software system that can help agents and brokers keep track of not only everyone they meet but also everyone who visits their website to learn about homes for sale, home values, or other information about real estate transactions.
How a CRM works in real estate
Real estate agents use CRMs to track where everyone in their sphere of influence is in their home sales journeys. By separating buyers from sellers and both groups from homeowners and renters, agents get a sense of what information and resources are helpful for these different groups during a week, month, or year.
When an agent first starts in real estate, they will be encouraged to load up a CRM with information about everyone they know: name, date of birth, contact information, home address, whether they rent or own, and what their future homeownership journey might look like. As they continue to meet people, create search and social media campaigns, and grow their business, leads should be funneled into their CRM by software systems that help them keep in touch with their growing audience.
For brokerage leadership, CRM is used in several ways: lead management, recruiting and retention of agents, and marketing automation.
CRM for estate agents
Real estate agents work with clients who can be considered prospects, leads, or existing clients. At its core, a CRM is designed to organize and track clients at every stage of the process: this includes storing contact information and other details, collecting prospects in one place and filling in missing information about their situation, moving them to a lead stage if and when they’re ready to sell or buy a house, and managing documents and process stages if that prospect decides to work with this particular agent.
All CRM software will provide a baseline of an organization and tracking features. Still, a modern CRM should also utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to eliminate busywork, including mobile apps for iOS or Android, and includes deep integrations across various business software.
Some features that a CRM for real estate agents should have include:
- Daily planner and activity reminders
- Property listings
- Notification triggers
- Cloud-based data storage
- Full-featured iOS and Android mobile apps
- Drip campaigns and marketing automation
- Lead management and routing
- Social media and website synchronization
- Email management
- Integrations with other platforms
- Document management features
CRM for real estate brokers
Managing Brokers have broader needs. They need a CRM that can handle their agents’ needs and support their own recruiting and retention efforts. Brokerage leadership looks more holistically at CRM to support lead management, relationship management, and marketing automation while supporting their managers with recruiting and retention capabilities.
Brokers who still work in sales themselves or manage the team (typically a combination of sales and marketing) responsible for lead generation —can use it to keep tabs on leads they send their agents. Moreover, they ensure that leads are distributed according to each agent’s skills and bandwidth and confirm that agents are reaching back out to leads on time.
Many brokers also use a CRM as a recruiting device, offering their agents free or discounted CRM access if they sign in with the brokerage. A CRM is such a critical part of a real estate agent’s business that offering one for your agents (whether or not they use it) is more or less standard in real estate.
How real estate CRMs work with your website
Your CRM should integrate with (and interact with) your website, which will help you accomplish your ultimate goal: winning more business and closing more deals.
First, your CRM should be able to record any prospects and leads who visit your website due to a campaign or effort on your part to drive them there. Many agents will offer resources or assets in exchange for a valid email address, such as an ebook or a comparative market analysis. (On that note: Try to make sure what you’re offering is worth more than an email address; asking website visitors to provide an email address so they can browse listings will only increase your bounce rate.)
If a prospect visits your website and gives you an email address, your CRM should be able to document that interaction and note who the prospect is and their contact information so that you can follow up. Depending on what kind of campaign they’ve followed or what sort of asset they’re downloading, you want to understand their goal, whether they’re hoping to buy a house or sell one, and approximately where they are in the process — including if they just bought a house. They aren’t looking to transact for several years from now.
Second, your CRM can be used to continue to draw previous visitors back to your website. You have their email address, and you know if they’re interested in new listings or recently sold homes at a high level, so you can invite them to return to landing pages, listing pages, neighborhood guides, and more by emailing them about those opportunities. What did they find interesting? What have they opened, and what have they clicked to bring them back to your website?
How to improve lead conversion with a CRM
Getting the leads is one thing; converting them to actual customers can be a different ballgame. You need to establish trust with the people in your database and convince them that you’ll do a fantastic job with their home transactions. That typically means providing lots of valuable and free advice until they are ready to hire you.
Your CRM can help you do this, and it becomes even more powerful if you can segment your leads according to their specific wants, needs, and point in the process. A lead who wants to buy a waterfront property within a particular school district (before school starts in the fall) at a specific price point will have different needs and like additional information than a generic buyer who’s vague about their price range and timing needs.
10 Perfect Options for Real Estate CRM in 2024
1. Cloze
Cloze has an artificial intelligence (AI) component that allows it to collaborate with apps you’re already using (for email, meetings, texting and messaging, file storage, notetaking, social media, reminders, business-related apps, actual phone calls, and your contacts, to name a few categories) to keep your CRM information up-to-date. The lead pool system allows you to send leads to the most responsive, most available agents, keeping both agents and prospects happy with the outcomes.
It also integrates closely with Placester, allowing you to see what your visitors are looking at, downloading, and more. With that level of analytics, you’ll better pinpoint where your leads are in their sales journey.
2. Top Producer
Top Producer X, the newest offering from Top Producer, provides social media insights into your CRM database, MLS integration, texting and email follow-up capabilities, and more.
3. Follow Up Boss
Follow Up Boss integrates with over 200 lead sources and offers marketing automation and other features, including a team inbox and lead distribution capabilities.
4. Wise Agent
Wise Agent provides contact management, lead management, a Chrome extension, and other features to track and optimize your interactions with all your clients.
5. Propertybase
Propertybase is a Lone Wolf product that provides CRM, marketing, website, and back-office modules for agents and brokers.
6. CINC
CINC features include a referral network, automation options, integrations, and more, including the standard website and team management benefits.
7. Realvolve
With an emphasis on teams, Realvolve offers workflows and scalability options for people who know that’s the best model for them.
8. Zillow Premier Agent
Zillow’s built-in CRM is considered one of the heavyweights in the industry, and it’s one of the most popular with teams for its intuitive interface.
9. IXACT Contact
The all-powerful CRM, website, email marketing, and social media automation are available in IXACT Contact’s plans.
10. LionDesk
An integrated CRM with marketing automation capability, this platform offers social media automation, a power dialer, and more.
Which CRM is best for converting real estate leads?
We like Cloze for its close integration with Placester’s platform, including seeing which leads have visited which pages on your website and when. There’s no better way to understand what your prospects want and how you can help them achieve their property ownership goals than to see what interests them and use that knowledge to send them more interesting information. With Placester and Cloze, you have deep insight into what your customers want and who they are and can act accordingly.
