Is your CRM data costing you money?

 

Your CRM is the lifeline of your real estate business. When it’s properly maintained, it’s a gold mine. Unfortunately, for most agents, going through a database to update contacts isn’t quite as sexy or exciting as pounding the pavement for listings.

 

But, consider this: Between 10 percent and 25 percent of the contacts in your CRM contain critical errors, according to SiriusDecisions, a Connecticut marketing company.

 

Bad data—you know, those leads with missing, inaccurate or incomplete information—could be costing your real estate business money. Not only that, but if you hope to remain in the industry for any length of time, lead management is imperative.

 

 

Yesterday’s CRM maintenance

Go online and search for advice on how to clean and maintain your CRM and you’ll find tips telling you to get rid of duplicate entries, to toss entries that don’t have contact information or contain erroneous contact information (how many people really live at 123 Main Street anyway?) and to delete any leads you consider lost causes.

 

While that advice may have been pertinent five years ago, it’s crazy today. “Salesforce.com estimated recently that anywhere between 42% and 55% of leads received by most companies from online sources are fake,” according to Likely.ai’s Jonathan Peterson.

 

Are you willing to delete more than half the leads in your CRM? Thankfully, you don’t have to—not when big data can help you fill in the blanks and keep you updated on what’s happening in these people’s lives.

 

 

It’s all about information

An estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of consumer data is collected every day, according to IBM. It’s generated when we watch a streaming movie, shop at the grocery store or go online. All this information forms the backbone of what is referred to as “big data.”

 

Now, imagine this information in the hands of a real estate agent. Actually, you don’t need to imagine it because Coldwell Banker is currently using it, with its CBx app. CBx supplies agents with information on homebuyers, allowing them to be “able to see who is buying, what they’d be interested in, and what the proper approach to them is,” according to Athena Snow, Coldwell Banker’s senior manager of public relations.

 

The latter (determining the proper approach) is one of the plusses of leveraging big data in your CRM. For instance, consider how financially unwise it is in 2018 to blanket every lead in your CRM with direct mail pieces when, with the right information, you can target only those addresses of consumers who are planning on buying or selling a home in the near future.

 

 

What happens when your CRM is full of valuable, accurate information?

Not only can the use of big data help clean up the information in your CRM, reaching out to past clients becomes brilliant. Imagine creating focused content that specifically addresses what each of your past clients is currently experiencing.

 

•       A blog post about current baby nursery trends for the new parents
•       A newsletter article about downsizing for retirement
•       The probate home sale process for leads who’ve inherited a home

 

Think of the time, money and effort you’ll save by targeting only the most-likely to transact soon in your CRM.

 

 

Need listings?

While it’s important to keep in touch with past clients and nurturing leads through the pipeline is vital to remain top of mind when it comes time for them to buy or sell, generating new leads is part of the mix. This is where big data really shines. Likely.ai’s datasets provide your CRM with fresh, new leads of homeowners most likely to sell in your area.

 

How do we know who these consumers are? Through predictive analytics, which takes consumer shopping data, and combines it with homeownership tenure records, homeowner equity and other chunks of data.Anything that can be considered a seller signal – from purchasing home improvement items to area turnover rates – is analyzed to allow you to target only the most-likely-to-sell soon folks in your CRM.

 

It’s yet another way that AI is changing the face of real estate. Check back soon to learn more, and click HERE to find out more about Likely.ai.