The Challenges and Opportunities for Automation in the Real Estate Industry

According to Ascend2, 71% of businesses use marketing automation. The benefits of marketing automation are significant across all industries, including real estate. Even better, marketing isn’t the only process that real estate agents can automate in their business. 

Managing a real estate business can be time-consuming. Numerous, repetitive tasks can prevent agents from maximizing their time and focusing on their significant business goals. However, automation helps agents eliminate repetitive tasks and become more efficient day-to-day. 

Automation is also one of the best ways for agents to grow their business. By automating social media, email campaigns, paperwork, and other tasks, real estate professionals can stay ahead of the market and their competition.

Here are four tasks agents can automate as well as some challenges they may face.

Social media marketing

A strong social media presence is no longer an option – it’s a necessity. Social media is undoubtedly on the rise, and agents are increasingly relying on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram to build their brand awareness. 

Manually creating and posting social media content requires a lot of time and energy. However, real estate agents can use automation tools to run their social media campaigns. By automating social media, agents can schedule updates across all of their social media channels. 

Social media automation tools can pull and automatically post valuable real estate content at optimized times, on behalf of the agent. A consistent presence on social media increases an agent’s online visibility and reaches audiences where they’re most active. 

While social media automation is an excellent way to schedule posts in advance, agents should be careful to schedule posts for a week in advance or less. This ensures they’re posting appropriate content. It’s also vital to review scheduled posts in the case of unforeseen events.

Social media ad management

According to a report by We Are Social and Hootsuite, the average American Facebook user clicks on eight ads per month. Advertising on social media is one of the best ways for real estate agents to generate new leads. 

Finding the right content to post and boosting it individually on each social platform isn’t the most efficient use of time. It can also be challenging for agents to determine their target audience through trial and error and A/B testing.

 Agents can use social media ad management platforms to automatically find relevant content for their target audience and post the content on all of their social media channels. Automation tools can detect new listings and upcoming open houses in the MLS, and automatically generate ad campaigns. 

The advantage is that agents no longer have to worry about taking the time to create visually appealing social media ads to generate leads. However, receiving a large number of high-quality leads means agents should respond quickly. They must prepare to continue to follow up with potential clients as to not let them fall through the cracks.

Email marketing

Studies show that 94% of real estate agents prefer to communicate with customers via email. As a top priority among agents, it’s no wonder email is a massive opportunity for automation. 

With automation tools, agents can create drip campaigns that send prospects a set number of emails over time. It’s essential for agents to segment their audience based on actions or events, such as an open house or showing, so that they can send personalized content. Keeping interested clients in the loop with constant updates provides opportunities to increase engagement, thus generating new business.

While automating email marketing maintains a steady flow of communication, agents shouldn’t go overboard and bombard prospects with too many emails. The last thing an agent wants is a missed sales opportunity because a potential client gets annoyed and unsubscribes from their email list. 

Automated emails can also feel less personal, so agents should take the time to personalize the content and humanize their messaging. No one wants to feel like they’re communicating with a robot. 

Document workflow

From numerous contracts and disclosures to inspection reports and purchase agreements, agents deal with a massive amount of paperwork daily. Managing vital documents is one of the most time-consuming aspects of real estate, so it makes sense to automate this process.

Instead of spending time scanning, printing, and emailing documents, agents can use automation software to handle the necessary paperwork. For instance, electronic signature software helps agents create and share documents digitally and simplifies workflows. 

Agents can ask clients to sign all documents, such as home inspection reports or purchase agreements, in one place. They can also access forms from anywhere, regardless of their location.

Navigating automation in real estate 

While automation delivers many benefits for real estate agents, it certainly doesn’t replace every task. It’s also not as simple as setting it and forgetting about it. Agents who embrace automation should still expect to personalize content and keep an eye on their automated processes. 

Automation has undoubtedly modernized the real estate industry. By using automation software, agents can become much more efficient, eliminate manual processes, and stay ahead of their competitors.

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