In the real estate industry, digital innovation has always been focused on making the home buying process easy and convenient both for buyers and sellers. People can easily use mobile apps to search or list a property. They can even go online to check out a home for sale, thanks to AR/VR technology. They can apply for a home loan or look for the best interest rates on the internet. Even after the sale, they can easily book moving and storage companies online to help them transport their belongings to a new home.
You can’t say the same for real estate agents. Many of them are still used to the traditional part of the trade. They spend their time sitting on their desks and doing tons of paperwork for the buyers or sellers. But because of the global pandemic, many industries, including traditional trades like real estate, began accelerating their digital transformation. Now, many mobile apps emerge to ease the daily pain of real estate agents. These apps have helped them continue doing business despite the challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. And as the world prepares for the post-COVID era, these apps remain beneficial for real estate agents, who need to meet the changing behaviors of buyers and sellers.
Whether you own a real estate firm or you’re an agent working independently, here are some of the apps you should start using. Taking advantage of these can help you thrive today and in the post-COVID world.
Wise Agent
Between scheduling virtual open houses, closing deals, and prepping new properties for listing, the last thing you want to forget is to attract and nurture new leads. Let Wise Agent automate marketing for you.
One of the innovative features of Wise Agent is email marketing. It allows you to set everything up—the subject line, message, schedule, etc. Once that’s ready, you can send the email to a specific list of prospects and leads. You can even let it run by itself every time you have a new listing relevant to that similar list. You can also customize to send a series of emails for a long-term lead nurturing campaign.
Contactually
Real estate agents often get overwhelmed by the amount of outreach they need to keep their good relationships with their past and existing customers and other contacts. Fortunately, Contactually makes that easier to handle. It is a CRM app that allows you to organize your contacts in categories and lets you communicate with them easily through the app. You can also schedule sending of messages. If you prefer email, the app offers email templates that make messaging fast and convenient for a busy agent.
CINC
CINC is a powerful platform that helps agents seamlessly engaged with their clients from the start of the home buying (or selling) process to after the sale. The app makes it easy for you to monitor incoming leads. It even acts as your personal assistant by getting your prospects or leads on the phone without having you send tons of emails or text messages to get them to talk to you about a property.
In addition, it’s easy to integrate CINC with other business and real estate apps. It can seamlessly work with apps like Gmail, Salesforce, Zillow, Chimes, and Dotloop, which will be discussed next in this article.
Dotloop
Need a great app for signing offers and sending closing documents? Dotloop got your back. With this app, you can go paperless and secure electronic signatures wherever you are (or no matter where your buyers and sellers are.) In turn, real estate transactions have become fast and convenient. That’s helpful, especially when it’s difficult to have the buyers and sellers in one room due to health protocols.
Dotloop offers additional features such as reporting and task management. It also allows users to create go-to templates for documents that usually need to be signed. That way, you don’t need to prepare the same forms over and over again; you can then save time to spend on other equally important tasks.
As the world goes digital, it is high time for real estate agents to join the bandwagon. Using mobile apps to simplify or automate communication, email marketing, lead generation, and many other processes, you can create a better experience for prospects and clients alike. And by trading deskwork for a few clicks on your smartphone, you can have extra time to focus on building customer relationships. That greatly matters in an industry like real estate—whether there’s a global pandemic or not.
