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CRM Chime refocuses on real estate agents with latest software update

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Real estate marketing technology company Chime has rolled out a new location-based, lead-generation feature on its popular web-based platform.

The new product called Geographic Farming helps users determine a physical prospecting region and launch targeted outreach campaigns to earn their business, according to an announcement.

“Geofarming is not a new strategy for agents looking to boost brand awareness in a given area,” said Chime Head of Industry Development Stuart Sim in a statement. “But in today’s dynamic market, it’s not enough to simply target customers on a map. With our latest capability, real estate agents can dive deeper and clearly identify areas of opportunity based on potential sales volume or CGI.”

Seeking buyer and listing prospects based on location is a long-proven tactic for agents and brokerages. It’s a common use of direct mail and even door-knocking. However, the onset of sophisticated digital marketing tools has made it significantly easier to sharpen campaigns for more accurate, better-qualified results. Chime’s new feature is a prime example.

“The new product combines deep local market intelligence with AI-powered marketing automation,” the statement reads.

Instead of merely blanketing a zip code or named community, Chime users leverage the interface to identify a desired area, which serves as a direct query to its public and private data sources. The resulting list provides more than ownership data, revealing data on area sales volume, average sales price, competitor market share and potential gross commission income (CGI), among other business metrics.

By delivering market sales data, Chime customers can make better choices about where to focus their follow-up marketing campaigns, which can be launched directly from the resulting search function. Users can also divide results according to agent performance or team status within a certain price range.

The software also allows for the tracking of competitor performance within a mapped area and integration of data into existing Smart Plans, a Chime feature that categorizes marketing campaigns according to lead status, home price range, location and other demographic characteristics.

Chime has been focused on large-scale implementations of late as opposed to smaller, agent-centric upgrades. Like many of its competitors, the company is doing its own farming, hoping to cultivate business on the enterprise level. It rolled out a brokerage recruiting tool, invested heavily in its customer support staff and developed a social media marketing offering.

In September 2022, Chime announced the surprising acquisition of Retancy, a property management software firm located in the United Kingdom. The company said its plans for the transaction include expansion into Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Email Craig Rowe