Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.
Industry stalwart BoomTown has rolled out a passel of new features to help its agents stay in front of current clients and attract new ones.
A series of new email campaign templates have been implemented that directly address real estate and the pandemic — a nice touch for agents who are still struggling with ways to communicate what’s happening out there.
As a callback to Madison Avenue advertising insight, BoomTown made a slight adjustment to its listing page call-to-action copy to help agents get more people interested in virtual showings.
Editing “Ask a question” and “Schedule a showing” to “Tour in Person” and “Tour in Video Chat” resulted in a 15 percent jump in responses.
Leeway has to be given to the increased number of people online these days. Nevertheless, agents should never underestimate the value of well-written ad copy.
The company also launched two new online advertising products. Agents can now assemble custom ads using static images or video content.
In essence, the product translates the Facebook ad builder into a sharper, easier-to-understand interface, with each section of an ad getting a dedicated content field to populate. Headline. Subhead. Image.
Audiences for any ads being launched can be tracked down using geo-targeting or a look-alikes, also called “personas.” This is a tactic that searches for new prospects using active leads as a model.
BoomTown has also developed HomeSearchNOW, a private consumer search app for active buyers. Not available on any app store, the app instead exists within the agent-client ecosystem. The intent is to create an active connection between the buyer and the agent, a private two-way home search radio, so to speak.
In a short video demo, the app looks and functions as most consumer-search apps are expected to. Map search. Save searches. Vertical scrolling through property pictures. Again, the app is a good way to keep buyers within their agents’ realm of control. It lessens the chance of them using Zillow or another app that would browbeat them with appeals from other agents.
Success Assurance, BoomTown’s concierge-level lead qualification service, has also been amped up.
Agents can regularly check in on how their leads are being worked, as well as jump in to active text conversations to “impersonate” the BoomTown rep. This would be especially helpful if a lead is probing with highly specific market or community-centric questions.
Also, the service can be turned on and off as needed, or as leads no longer require it.
The software’s iconographic alert tools let you know how many chats are happening and with what leads. A quick scan can alert you to what conversation needs your intervention the most.
I spoke with an agent friend of mine who has been a longtime BoomTown power user and a tough critic of proptech. His assessment after 10 months of use is that the Success Assurance program is on-point.
Content from Keeping Current Matters is also integrated into customers’ blogs and social media. It can also be used in the aforementioned new custom ad products.
BoomTown also reported that its users’ cost-per-lead is down in the last several weeks as the custom ad products have gain traction.
These new tools are timely and thought-out, and they nicely overlap with current solution functionality. In a system as robust and omnichannel as BoomTown, new features need to be considered carefully for fear of bloat and redundancy. So far, so good.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
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