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Want more clients? Tap into marketing automation

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Marketing automation is a vital part of a real estate agent’s lead generation strategy. When leveraged effectively, automation of the marketing strategy can allow real estate agents to offer customized marketing messages to their prospective clients in real time, stay on top of their communication, and engage, convert and retain maximum clients. 

According to a VentureBeat insights report, 80 percent of the businesses that implemented marketing automation saw an increase in lead generation and reported a 77 percent increase in conversion as a result of automating their marketing efforts.

The importance of marketing automation for real estate agents

Marketing automation is a process of using technology to streamline your marketing efforts in order to maximize efficiency. It allows real estate agents to get a comprehensive, 360-degree view of their strategy, and saves valuable time and effort, which can be focused on boosting the customer experience instead. 

While most real estate agents include automation in their strategy, it’s usually limited to email automation. A full-fledged marketing automation strategy involves leveraging technology to get qualified leads and retaining them long term. Here’s how marketing automation can add value to your marketing process.

1. Find qualified leads — faster

Accelerating lead generation and excelling at lead management can get your real estate business to land clients faster. Understanding the difference between a prospect who is just browsing through your website to warm up for an investment in 2025 and someone who is ready to take action right away is crucial for real estate agents. 

The latter are more likely to convert and bring in equitable business returns. Identifying qualified leads and further nurturing them toward conversion is something that marketing automation makes possible. 

Marketing automation can help agents put lead magnets in place for capturing leads effectively. Whether it’s a web form on a listing where prospects enter their information or a conversation with a chatbot, automation through lead magnets can streamline the entire process. 

Agents today have a massive spectrum of interaction with prospects, and numerous data points are continually being generated. Use of a customer relationship management (CRM) software can help real estate agents stay on top of all the data and maximize on the leads being generated. This not only ensures that you get qualified leads more efficiently, but it also makes sure there is zero lead leakage.

2. Use data to engage with prospects

Real estate transactions need a huge amount of negotiations and interactions with prospects. Data can help make these conversations seamless and more fruitful. Real estate agents can send out tailored and customized marketing materials to engage with prospects depending on the stage of the marketing funnel they are in. 

Understanding the different stages of the sales funnel customers are in — and engaging with them accordingly — is crucial for successfully closing deals. It’s important that you personalize your marketing messages according to the audience’s needs. 

Instead of bombarding all of your prospects with generic email campaigns, automation software can help segment the leads. Based on the type of property they’re looking for, the customers receive targeted marketing modules that help them further along the sales funnel and get them to convert.

3. Scale your marketing, and reach more sales

Marketing for real estate is a time and resource-intensive activity. Engaging with prospects at different touch points and ensuring regular follow-ups can lead to burnout. Marketing automation removes the cumbersome paperwork and allows real estate agents to truly scale their business. 

Through a real estate CRM like ActiveCampaign, any information that the prospects enters is automatically synced in the database in real time. Equipped with intelligent segmentation on the basis of buyer preferences, past purchase history and other related information, real estate agents can scale their marketing campaigns and bring in quantifiable results. 

You can also choose to develop your custom CRM according to the requirements of your business that’s uniquely tailored to your workflow. A growing number of businesses are relying on custom CRMs and dashboards to give their agents the access to data in real time. CRMs themselves have come a long way from being confined to the computers into the pockets of the users. 

Having access to a mobile CRM software gives real estate agents access to real-time data when on-site or during a listing allowing them to function efficiently and reach more sales. The powerful analytics and dashboards that the modern day CRMs offer help leverage data to find meaningful insights and are undoubtedly a powerful tool in the arsenal that can pave the path for disruptive business innovation.

4. Craft a unique customer experience

With other businesses leveraging intelligent chatbots to enhance customer experiences, why should real estate lag behind? Unlike their names, chatbots are no longer bot-like in their conversational capabilities.

Powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, modern-day chatbots, with their exceptional conversational abilities, are a value-add to your marketing strategy. 

The best part is that including chatbots in your workflow doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You can choose to leverage chatbots on Facebook Messenger to engage with leads on your social media platforms. You can also design your own chatbot with zero coding knowledge on platforms such as ManyChat that specialize in chatbots for real estate. 

You can also connect the chatbots to your CRM so that the conversational data the prospects enter is synced within your database instantaneously. This helps you customize your marketing messages, catering to the individual customer needs. It can also automate communication, freeing up agents from answering routine queries and letting them focus on building customer relationships instead. 

ManyChat integration with ActiveCampaign is a seamless process that doesn’t require an in-depth technical know-how. The subscriber from your ManyChat account can be directly added to the contact list of your CRM, leading to direct data transfer.

How real estate professionals can leverage marketing automation to their advantage

A CRM software is a must have tool in your marketing automation strategy. Have a collection of leads in your database with a planned lead nurturing sequence result in better customer relationships and maximize the chances of conversion. 

Automation through real estate CRM also reduces human efforts by qualifying leads and allowing real estate agents to focus on prospects who are more likely to convert. It equips agents with data-driven marketing insights to convince them faster, streamline negotiations and deliver a tailored customer experience. 

A CRM helps automate the mundane tasks while allowing agents to focus their attention at specialized tasks. Ultimately, marketing automation is all about saving human efforts and directing them to areas where it’s more required — like crafting lasting customer relationships.

Abhi Golhar is the host of Real Estate Deal Talk in Atlanta. Follow him on Instagram or connect with him on LinkedIn