I read a great article in ActiveRain recently, entitled “Rich Real Estate Agent, Poor Real Estate Agent.” The information in the article is so powerful that I felt the need to share it with all of you – our loyal blog readers. The data in the article is a result of a survey of 1,758 real estate sales professionals that ActiveRain polled. 22% of the agents who took part in the survey were classified as “rich” Agents (a yearly salary of over 100K a year) and 21% were classified as “poor” Agents (a yearly salary of under 35K). You’ll read that a real estate CRM software was found to be key to the success of the top performing agents. Email marketing also played an integral part to their success.
The below is ActiveRain’s findings in the technology category:
Rich real estate agents invest 6 times as much in technology as poor real estate agents. Every year the average rich real estate agent spends $3,000-5,000 per year on technology, while the poor real estate agent only spends $500-1,000 per year. So, for every one dollar that the poor agent spends on technology, rich agent spends six dollars. Think about this: the average rich real estate spends more money in a month, than some poor real estate agents spend on technology all year.
Where does this spending go?
A top notch IDX site: Why? Because a good web site with home listings and lead capture is the backbone of any successful online marketing campaign.
CRM or Lead management systems: CRM’s (customer relationship management systems or a database) are an integral part of their success. This is the most dramatic difference in the survey. Almost twice as many rich real estate agents use a CRM or lead management system than poor real estate agents.
It’s this systematic management of their database that allows rich real estate agents to build a high volume business. This is the most dramatic and visible difference in the entire survey.
Email Marketing: Rich real estate agents aggressively use email marketing. In fact, they touch their clients more frequently through email marketing than their less successful brethren. Many of them send automated listings via their IDX sites, and they are 54% more likely to use email newsletter and drip marketing campaigns.
IXACT Contact is a real estate CRM and a email marketing system built into one. It’s also the only real estate CRM software on the market to include Email Campaign Reporting. This article demonstrates the value of a system like IXACT. You might also want to read another enlightening article we recently published on our blog, called, “Your Real Estate CRM Sounds Great BUT… $34.95 is expensive.”
We want to know: what do you think of this article? Are your surprised by the findings?