Introduction
Are you looking for a way to improve your lead generation process? If so, you may want to consider automating some of the tasks involved. Automation can help make the process more efficient and effective, saving you time in the long run.
You may be wondering how to get started or what tools are available. We’ve got you covered!
Automating your lead process starts with acquiring the lead. Then, you move into nurturing them and finally, or should we so hopefully, convert them into customers. What you may not realize however, is that most real estate agents find it hard to manage leads manually. That’s why the most successful ones use some form of automation to help with the process.
For example, lead automation software can help you manage your leads more effectively and efficiently across the lead life cycle. In this guide, you will learn about several ways to automate your workflow and make more sales along the way. Just a few things we’ll cover include: lead scoring, lead automation, automated qualifying, disqualification, and how lead automation can help you get more leads to the finish line.
Ready to be a legend in real estate? We hope so. Let’s dive in!
CHAPTER 1
What Is Lead Automation?
Lead automation is the process of automating your lead management process using software. Automation can include anything from qualifying leads to sending automated emails and SMS messages. It can help you manage your leads more efficiently across the lead life cycle.
Lead automation has tons of benefits for agents. It can help you save time and make the lead process more systematic. You can also use automation to improve your close ratio and increase sales.
The benefits of lead automation don't stop there! Automation can also help you in these areas as well:
Save Time
Automation can save you time by handling tasks like qualifying leads or sending automated emails and SMS messages.
Increase Your Pipeline
Automated processes can help you increase your pipeline by automatically adding leads to your sales funnel.
Improve Your Close Ratio
Improving your close ratio can be one of the most significant benefits of automating your process by sending the relevant information to the right people at the right time.
Increase Your Sales
By automating your lead management process, you can free up more time to focus on needle-moving activities. This can lead to increased sales and more commissions in your pocket!
These are some of the main benefits agents can see from lead automation. Not only can it save you time and make the lead process more productive, but it can also help you increase your sales and improve your close ratio.
Pro Tip: Use tools and software to make your workflow easier.
Learn about several programs you can consider in our post 6 Best Lead Automation Tools Used by the Top Real Estate Agents.
How Agents Are Using Lead Automation
Some of the ways agents leverage lead automation are by retargeting leads, leveraging bots, and creating triggers based on lead activity.
Retargeting
Retargeting doesn't mean you only go after previous leads that you've closed. It means you target all of your contacts with automated marketing messages until they either buy or unsubscribe.
By focusing on lead interest and understanding engagement levels, you can retarget leads with information they're actually interested in. You can also use lead scoring to determine when a lead is ready for retargeting.
Pro Tip: You can retarget anyone in your sales funnels regardless of their status.
Leadbots
Leadbots aka chatbots are computer programs that automatically interact with leads on behalf of an agent. They can answer questions, qualify leads, and even book appointments.
Leadbots work by using natural language processing (NLP) to interpret the lead's intent, and they then respond in a way that makes sense. This helps you save time by not answering every lead's question yourself.
Pro Tip: Make sure your chatbot doesn't feel too much like a salesperson. You want to ensure the bot provides value and doesn't come across as pushy.
Trigger-based automation
Trigger-based automation is another great way to automate your lead management process. This is when you automate your lead management based on a lead's specific actions.
For example, you can create a trigger that sends an email to a lead when they fill out a form on your website. This type of automation is great for nurturing leads and keeping them engaged with your brand.
You can create triggers based on website visits, lead engagement, or even time.
Pro Tip: The best way to use triggers is to create a custom workflow for each stage of the lead life cycle. This will help you focus on leads that are most likely to close and increase your sales.
Agents who implement lead automation see many advantages in their business. From saving time to increasing sales, automation can help you do it all.
Not only is lead automation a great way to improve your close ratio and increase your sales, but it's also a great way to make the real estate lead lifecycle more manageable.
Learn more about lead automation in our post How to Use Automated Real Estate Lead Generation for Better Quality Leads.
Chapter 2
How Does Automated Lead Management Make the Real Estate Lead-Lifecycle Easier to Manage?
In our post How to Automate Real Estate Lead Scoring to Drive Conversions, we share that one of the main benefits of using automated lead management is that it makes the lead lifecycle easier to manage. Automation can help you keep track of and organize all your leads in one place. This helps make sure that no one falls through the cracks.
In addition, automation can help you keep track of your leads' activity, and you can use this information to determine when a lead is ready for the next stage in the process. Automated lead management acts as your personal assistant and helps you keep track of your leads so you can focus on closing deals and work with those who are ready to do business.
Here are five ways lead management can help make the real estate leads lifecycle easier to manage:
Automated Lead Scoring
One of the best ways to determine how close a lead is to buying and their level of engagement is to use automated lead scoring.
Lead scoring is when you assign points to leads based on their activity and engagement levels. This helps you focus your time on those most likely to close.
Lead scoring is a great way to automate your lead management process. You can use it to determine when a lead is ready for the next stage in the process.
Transitioning Leads to the Next Stage
Another great benefit of using automation is that it can help you transition leads to the next stage.
You can move your leads through the stages of your sales cycle by utilizing rule-based automation. This type of automation is based on specific actions that a lead takes. It is excellent for nurturing leads and keeping them engaged with information relevant to the step of the process they're in.
Building Stronger Relationships with Leads
Nothing beats automation combined with a personalized touch. Agents no longer need to pick between convenience and forming lead relationships. Use a real estate follow up automation software such as Agent Legend that allows you to seamlessly incorporate your brand voice and tone without spending hours connecting with leads one on one.
Filter Large Amounts of Leads
To increase your chances of success, it's essential to focus on the accuracy of the information you receive from a lead list.
One of the best ways to do this is by using automated lead filtering. This will help you filter out leads who don't have accurate information, or are missing some information.
This will help you focus your time on the leads that have verified information and keep your sales funnel from being clogged with low-quality leads.
What Are The Benefits of Automated Lead Scoring?
When it comes to lead automation across the lead lifecycle, automated lead scoring is one of the most powerful tools an agent has at their disposal. Automated lead scoring helps agents prioritize their leads and focus on the hottest leads first.
Automated lead scoring comes with many advantages an agent can use to their advantage. Here are some of the main benefits:
1. Focus on the Hottest Leads First
This is one of the most significant benefits of automated lead scoring. By prioritizing leads, agents can focus their time and energy on the leads closest to converting into a sale. Focusing efforts first on those most likely to result in a deal can help save agents time and money in the long run.
2. Automated Lead Scoring is More Accurate Than Human-Assisted Lead Scoring
One of the drawbacks of human-assisted lead scoring is that it can be inaccurate at times. On the other hand, automated lead scoring is more accurate because it is based on algorithms that calculate a lead's likelihood of converting. This means that agents can confidently rely on the automated scoring system to prioritize their leads accurately.
3. Prospects Receive a More Engaged Experience
Automated scoring systems will let your automation know how to interact with each lead on an individual level. Lead scoring helps you send the content a lead wants and not random information that may not be relevant to them.
4. Aligns Marketing and Sales Efforts
One of the drawbacks of human-assisted lead scoring is that it can be inaccurate at times. On the other hand, automated lead scoring is more accurate because it is based on algorithms that calculate a lead's likelihood of converting. This means that agents can confidently rely on the automated scoring system to prioritize their leads accurately.
The 3 Main Types of Automated Lead Scoring
When it comes to automated lead scoring, there are three main types: explicit, implicit, and data-quality.
1. Explicit Lead Scoring
Explicit lead scoring is based on a prospect's actions, such as filling out a form or downloading a white paper. When a candidate takes an action that is indicative of interest in your product or service, they are scored based on their proactive engagement.
2. Implicit Lead Scoring
Implicit lead scoring is based on a prospect's behavior, such as their web browsing history or the time of day they visit your website. When a prospect's behavior is tracked, it allows you to make informed decisions about how they will engage with your business.
3. Data-Quality Lead Scoring
Data-quality lead scoring is assigned to the quality of the data a prospect provides. Typically, this type of lead scoring is used to score leads that are not yet ready to buy. This type of scoring is important because it allows agents to nurture and build trust with potential new clients.
These three main types of lead scoring can be used together to understand better how likely a prospect is to buy and where they're at in the buying process.
chapter 3
How Does Automated Lead Qualification and Disqualification Help?
Every real estate agent would love to take on more leads, but not everyone is worth pursuing. Automated lead qualification and disqualification helps to identify which leads are worth pursuing and which ones need more nurturing.
When working in real estate, time is of the essence. Automated lead qualification and disqualification can help to speed up the process by automatically weeding out unqualified or bad leads.
The Advantage of Lead Disqualification
There are many advantages to lead disqualification that can help real estate agents be more effective and efficient in their work. These include: not wasting time on bad leads, getting more qualified leads easier, and reducing clutter.
1. Don't Waste Time on Bad Leads
Time is precious, and real estate agents can't afford to spend time on leads that are not quite ready to make an offer. Automated lead disqualification can help identify these unqualified leads and save the agent time and energy.
2. Get More Qualified Leads Faster
Automated lead disqualification can help speed up the process of getting more qualified leads, so agents can receive more leads that have a higher chance of converting.
When creating your ideal customer profile, you may choose to use a template (like this HubSpot one) or just create a list of what traits your ideal customer has. Whatever method you choose, just make sure your ideal customer persona is as specific as possible. This will also make it easier to write sales copy, and other lead generation materials.
3. Reduce Clutter
Bad leads can clog up your list, making it harder to concentrate on the leads that need your help the most. Automated lead disqualification can reduce the number of bad leads and keep your contact list clean.
After identifying disqualified leads, it's important not just to eliminate them from your funnel. These leads can eventually turn into qualified leads if given the attention they need.
How to Handle Disqualified Leads?
Now that you have identified and disqualified some leads, what do you do with them?
1. Nurture Them
Some disqualified leads may still have potential and need extra nurturing to convert. These leads can be sent to a lead nurturing campaign or funnel to help them progress. Even this element can be automated, yet still feel personal and authentic! We cover how to automate the nurturing of your leads extensively in our post 5 Steps to Automated Lead Nurturing for Real Estate Agents.
2. Create Marketing Automation Rules
If you have a lot of disqualified leads, it may be helpful to set up some marketing automation rules to put them into a sequence that will help nurture them. Giving leads informational content after they have been disqualified can help to keep them interested in you and your services.
3. Remarketing Can Help
If a disqualified lead is still interested in your product or service, remarketing can help to recapture their attention. By showing them relevant ads, you can remind them of what they are missing out on and increase the chances of conversion.
4. Have a Plan in Place
Disqualified leads can be a valuable asset to your business when handled correctly. Having a plan for nurturing them can help you make the most out of leads that may not have initially looked promising.
Learn more about lead disqualification in our post Why You Need Automated Lead Disqualification.
How Automated Lead Qualification Benefits Agents
Just like lead disqualification, automated lead qualification has many benefits that can help agents be more productive and impactful.
Automated lead qualification can help to:
- Reduce the amount of time spent on leads that are not a good fit
- Qualify leads more quickly and easily
- Determine where leads are at in the sales process
- Improve the overall quality of leads list
Lead qualification can be the difference between an agent wasting time on a lead and quickly disqualifying those who are not a good fit or will not convert.
Automated lead qualification can help agents do just that by automatically qualifying leads based on predefined rules.
In addition, automated lead qualification can help to improve the overall quality of an agent's pipeline by weeding out bad leads.
We share more on this subject in our post, Real Estate Sales Lead Automation: How to Speed Up Your Sales.
chapter 4
How Can You Use Email Automation to Better Engage Leads?
In our post 5 Ways Email Response Automation Helps Real Estate Agents With Leads, we shared that email automation is one of the most effective ways to engage with leads. Automated emails can be sent at different points in the lead lifecycle and can help to keep them interested in your product or service.
There are many different automated email campaigns that agents can use to engage with their leads. Some of these campaign types include:
Welcome Email Campaigns
When a new lead is generated, a welcome email campaign can be one of the best ways to engage them. A well-crafted welcome email can help introduce leads to your company and products and can help to set the tone for future interactions.
Nurture Email Campaigns
Leads that don't convert immediately may still have potential. Nurture email campaigns can help keep these leads interested in your product or service and increase the chances of conversion later on.
Reactivation Email Campaigns
Leads that have been inactive for a while may no longer be interested in your product or service. You can use reactivation email campaigns to recapture the attention of these leads and encourage them to return to your site or product.
Sales Email Campaigns
Once a lead has been qualified and is ready for purchase, you can use a sales email campaign to close the deal. These emails are typically sent as a series of messages that provide more information about your service and help to encourage the lead to start the buying process.
By using automated email campaigns, agents can optimize the experience of their services and leave a lasting impression on their clients. Automated email campaigns can also help to build trust and credibility with leads, which can lead to more sales in the future.
How Can Real Estate Agents Benefit from Email Automation?
There are many benefits that agents can receive from using email automation. Some of these include:
- It helps you stand out from the competition
- It gives you a personal touch
- It saves you time and money
- It helps to build relationships
- Not spending time customizing each email
- Targeted emails with specific engaging content
- Stay top of mind
- It helps your leads connect in an authentic way.
With email automation, agents can better connect with their leads and build more meaningful relationships. Automated emails allow agents to send targeted content relevant to the lead's interests and help to keep them top of mind. Additionally, automated emails help agents save time and money by not manually creating each email message.
Chapter 5
How Lead Automation Helps the Lead Management Process
Lead management is the process of managing and tracking leads from the time they are generated to the time they are converted into customers. The goal of lead management is to increase the number of conversions for agents.
You can use many different tools and techniques in lead management, but Agent Legend's lead automation is one of the most effective tools.
Lead automation helps agents automate the lead qualification process by automatically qualifying leads based on predefined rules. Agents can spend more of their valuable time pursuing the leads that are most likely to result in more immediate conversions.
Another way that lead automation can help agents is by automating the email marketing process. Automated emails help agents engage leads at different points in the lead lifecycle. Additionally, automated emails help agents keep leads interested in their services by staying top of mind.
Having lead automation can help make your sales team up to 52% more productive, leading to 47% higher conversions. It also helps management track leads through each of the seven steps of a lead's lifecycle.
These seven lifecycle stages include:
1. Prospective Lead (Unqualified)
They are on your radar and have contacted your real estate business in some way.
2. Under Nurturing
They are on your list and want more information.
3. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL )
Through automated scoring, you’ve deemed this person likely to transition into a customer.
4. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
This lead has been qualified by a salesperson as most likely to buy.
5. Listing Inspection
At this stage, you know the prospect is ready for an agent to see homes they are interested in.
6. Listing Reservation
our prospect is ready to view and has reserved time to look at properties for sale.
7. Paid Customer
The holy grail! These leads have successfully transitioned into buyers.
You can learn more about these lifecycle stages in this post .
Lead automation can help make the lead management process more efficient and effective. The benefits of using lead automation include the ability to qualify leads automatically, send targeted messages at different points in the lead lifecycle, and track leads through each of the seven steps of the lead lifecycle.
chapter 6
Final Thoughts and Next Steps
Using an automated tool like Agent Legend's lead automation software can be highly beneficial for lead management. Contacts that move through a lead automation process are usually more qualified than unqualified ones, so automated lead qualification may save agents time by filling their list with leads with higher chances.
Automated marketing can also help agents better engage leads and keep them interested in their services or listings. By using lead automation, agents can make their sales process more efficient and effective.
So where do you go from here? If you want to be a legend in real estate, try our software. We’re betting that you’ll quickly see how much time and money you’ll save, and a single commission will more than pay for the platform. But, you don’t really have to take our word for it. In fact, you don’t even have to pay to try it. You can get started with Agent Legend's lead automation by signing up for a free trial today! Get Started Free, now!
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. What Is Lead Automation?
- 2. How Does Automated Lead Management Make the Real Estate Lead-Lifecycle Easier to Manage?
- 3. How Does Automated Lead Qualification and Disqualification Help?
- 4. How Can You Use Email Automation to Better Engage Leads?
- 5. How Lead Automation Helps the Lead Management Process
- 6. Final Thoughts and Next Steps