Real estate marketing automation: successful strategies and tools

Real estate agents and brokers have a lot on their plates, from generating new business to managing client preferences and more.

Luckily, real estate marketing automation can remove stress from a realtor’s busy day by taking care of many time-consuming tasks required to generate, organize and nurture leads.

In this article, you’ll learn how to maximize your time with marketing automation for real estate. You’ll go through eight key tasks you can automate straight away and the top tools to help you make it happen.

What is real estate marketing automation?

Real estate marketing automation refers to the tools and processes that handle repetitive admin tasks for real estate professionals without human input, like follow-up emails and appointment scheduling.

Automating these tasks with marketing software allows agents more time to build strong relationships with prospective buyers and sellers.

For example, a realtor might use web forms to help leads get in touch and automatically capture contact information, removing the need for back-and-forth conversations over email and manual data entry.

Here are some more everyday tasks realtors can manage with automation:

• Scheduling appointments with potential clients

• Promoting properties on social media channels like LinkedIn and Facebook

• Segmenting and routing leads based on zip code and needs

• Running email drip campaigns to recommend properties

• Analyzing marketing campaign performance

• Transferring data between their CRM and other marketing tools

With real estate marketing automation software handling your admin tasks, you can focus more on delivering value to potential clients, negotiating contracts and closing deals.

Benefits of real estate marketing automation

Marketing automation for real estate agents reduces the mental load generated by repetitive tasks and streamlines your marketing processes, freeing up time and energy for those high-impact activities.

This leaves more room for personal touches that are so critical to success in real estate sales, such as calling a client to update them on sale or contract progress.

In fact, according to the Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends report, personal calls are the activity homebuyers value most from their real estate agents.

Alongside managing customer interactions, marketing automation can also help you reach your real estate business goals.

In The State of Marketing Automation 2023 trend report, 91% of surveyed marketers stated that their current marketing automation strategy helps them achieve their marketing objectives. An effective automation strategy can easily support those in the real estate industry, too.

Here are some more ways your real estate business can work more efficiently with automation:

• Better lead generation and management. Reach and manage better-fit leads with email capture forms and automatic lead scoring (who’s ready to buy vs. who’s at the start of their customer journey).

• Personalized customer experiences. Impress customers with personalized campaigns using segmented data and insights – sending the right information to the right people with less manual work.

• Deeper insight into marketing performance. Find ways to improve your marketing processes with analytics dashboards, automated recommendations and custom reporting.

• Consistent branding across channels. Build brand recognition with content templates that ensure your brand colors, fonts and messaging shine in every social post, email and web page.

While the cost of new software and the time it takes to onboard might feel significant, the long-term increases in efficiency and sales will be well worth any temporary growing pains.

Plus, tools with automation features like Pipedrive are ideal for small businesses, so you can reap the rewards of marketing automation without ever feeling overwhelmed.

The associated costs, such as software subscription and staff training, are a worthy investment considering the potential revenue generated from property sales – especially if you automate the right processes, which you’ll learn about next.

8 key real estate marketing processes to automate

From building lists of leads in your new territory and following up after an open house to optimizing appointment scheduling and customer service, here are eight major marketing tasks real estate agents should consider automating.

1. Lead generation and follow-ups

Real estate professionals can use lead management software to automate and streamline tasks like collecting inquiring buyer and seller emails, organizing contacts by preference and following up on messages.

Here are some ways small real estate companies automate lead generation:

• Capture buyers and sellers visiting your website with highly customizable web forms

• Build lists of commercial leads who match your buyer persona using prospecting software

• Automatically enrich your lead profiles in your CRM with key data points using contact management software like Smart Contact Data to have a better understanding of their needs

• Get automated reminders to follow up or reach out at the right moment so you never let a deal go cold

Let’s look at follow-ups closely as they’re critical to working efficiently, building relationships and closing sales.

Your CRM can send automated notifications and reminders if a lead schedules a viewing for one of your property listings. This way you can reach out quickly with some relationship-building questions and strike while the iron is hot.

Some CRMs can also automate messages when an action is triggered.

For example, Ryan Fitzgerald, the owner of Raleigh Realty, set up an automated email sequence that sends messages to potential clients at specific intervals after their initial inquiry.

In addition to freeing up his agents’ time to focus on showings and negotiations, it also increased conversion rates.

Leads are the lifeblood of any real estate business, so investment in tools that streamline the process of generating them is essential to success.

2. Lead scoring and distribution

A lead scoring system helps you automatically qualify your leads and prioritize them based on how likely they are to become clients. This way you save time on low-quality leads.

To set up lead scoring, create a point system in your dedicated lead scoring software or CRM. Here you’ll define the behaviors and attributes for which leads receive or lose points.

For example, your system might award points to leads who engage with your emails, visit your listings or fall between your preferred income level and age brackets.

After establishing your scoring criteria, the tool will automatically track your leads’ behavior and traits and assign them points.

In a tool like Pipedrive, you can see which leads are hot, cold or warm:

If you’re part of a larger team with multiple agents, scoring leads is only half the battle. You also have to pass new leads to the right agent quickly.

Here’s where real estate lead distribution software comes into play. These tools automatically assign leads to agents based on routing rules you set up in the platform.

For example, you might route geographically by town or assign high-net-worth leads to the top closer. As a result, all your leads receive immediate attention from the agent most well-suited to close the deal.

3. Social media posting

Social media posts help place you and your listings in front of homebuyers and sellers. Building an online presence for your real estate business takes time and energy, but the payoff is worth it.

A technology survey by the National Association of Realtors found that social media gave respondents (realtors) the highest number of quality leads (a CRM came second).

Real estate agents can build a personal brand by posting about their professional experiences and client success stories on social media.

They can also draw attention to their listings with visually appealing photos and detailed descriptions, as Kroupa Real Estate has done below:

A social selling strategy requires consistent, often daily, posting, which can be challenging when you have negotiations and showings to attend.

Fortunately, social media scheduling tools automatically post your content based on a predetermined schedule. Some tools even use analytics to identify when your audience is most active on your chosen platform and publish your posts around those times.

Real estate brokers can also benefit from social listening tools, which monitor your target audience’s social media activity and tell you what they’re talking about.

These tools help you identify what’s important to buyers and sellers and spot new trends early, allowing you to alter your marketing efforts and messaging accordingly.

For example, a tool might reveal that people on X (formerly Twitter) tend to mention “close proximity to nature” as a key feature of their dream home. Knowing this, your social posts can highlight how close each property is to various parks and nature trails.

When you use social listening tools to discover what your leads care about and social scheduling platforms to consistently post relevant content, homebuyers and sellers will start to consider you the go-to resource for real estate advice and service.

4. Email campaigns and newsletters

Using email marketing automation software, real estate agents can efficiently build email campaigns, personalize communications and automate email tasks like replying to inquiries.

Automation ensures all leads receive immediate and relevant information when they need it, enhancing your lead-generation processes.

Below are some ways agents use email tools to streamline various email tasks:

• Automatically personalize emails with templates that autofill each recipient’s personal details like the name or property address

• Build engaging email campaigns with drag-and-drop blocks, professionally designed email templates and multiple content elements (video, image, etc.)

• Create autoresponder emails that send if a lead takes a predefined action, like submitting a contact form on your site

• Track how leads interact with your emails and find ways to improve them using email analytics (like open rates, clicks and more)

• Embed email newsletter opt-in forms on your website to easily collect email addresses

With a tool like Pipedrive’s Campaigns, you can also create highly targeted nurture campaigns that deliver only relevant content and property recommendations to recipients.

For example, if you help people buy houses in several neighborhoods, you can use Pipedrive’s CRM software to segment your buying leads by zip code. Then, add them to a sequence that focuses on the area’s restaurant scene, property listings and your advice about moving there.

Pipedrive also makes it easy to build out these campaigns thanks to its drag-and-drop email template builder:

Overall, email automation tools will decrease the time you spend crafting and scheduling emails while enhancing the lead’s experience.

5. Schedule appointments

Scheduling tools streamline appointment scheduling so real estate agents can focus on preparing for the showing or meeting. Meanwhile, leads and clients will be pleased at how easy it is to cooperate with you.

Generally, scheduling tools provide agents with a sendable calendar link to a personal booking page. Leads can see the agent’s availability and pick a time and date that works for them.

Here’s what a lead might see if the agent uses Pipedrive’s scheduling tool:

The calendar link and personal booking page are hallmark features of any good scheduler platform, but some tools offer additional time-saving functionality.

To illustrate, here’s how Pipedrive’s Scheduler works:

1. Choose your preferred meeting duration and available times

2. Add a note, links or extra fields for recipient input

3. Save availability as a template with a shareable link

4. Email the link to contacts for scheduling

5. The contact selects a suitable time from your availability

6. Both parties receive a confirmation email after scheduling

7. The meeting is automatically added to your calendars

In addition to scheduling time with leads you’re already talking with, you can also use the tool to automatically schedule meetings with inbound marketing leads.

For example, it’s common to include the link in their automated follow-up emails. This way, when a lead submits an inquiry on your website, they’ll automatically receive an email with a link to book a time with you. You’ll get a notification that a meeting is on your calendar so you can start prepping to impress the lead.

6. Customer service

Customer service automation in real estate is where you use software to ensure customers quickly get the information and help they need.

The most common type of customer service automation is a custom web form on your website. In these forms, leads can ask questions about your service and provide you with personal information that helps you find them a property that fits their needs.

For example, real estate agency Destination NJ has an interactive form that asks leads if they’ve bought a home before, their ideal number of bathrooms and bedrooms, which type of home they want and more:

Web forms are just the beginning. Customer service automation can get far more advanced.

With marketing chatbot software, real estate agents can embed conversational AI chatbots onto their site. These bots can provide leads with the information they need in real time to help scale customer service and improve the lead experience.

Some agents worry about chatbots going rogue and losing their leads. Fortunately, tools like Pipedrive’s AI Chatbot (a feature of the LeadBooster add-on) enable you to create chatbot playbooks that control how chatbots behave, what questions they ask and how they respond:

For instance, you might configure chatbots to notify you when a lead wants to talk with an agent. The agent can take over the conversation from their desktop or mobile device.

Web forms and chatbots allow your leads to easily learn about your services and get in touch while providing lead intel to help you decide whether to take them on as clients.

7. Client feedback surveys and referrals

Survey builders and email software enable real estate agents to auto-collect client feedback to improve their marketing and sales strategy going forward.

For example, you could create a feedback survey that automatically sends to clients over email after your CRM marks a deal as closed/won or closed/lost.

Your customer survey might include questions like:

• Why did you choose to work with us?

• How would you rate the experience of working with us from 1–10?

• How did you learn about our real estate business?

• How could we have better supported you in the home-buying process?

• Why did you choose to purchase this house over the others?

• Which type of content did you find most helpful?

• Was there anything missing from our listings that you’d like to see?

Your automated post-close email can also include a referral request and a link to your website so clients can easily share your information with peers.

Email automation software also improves your referral process by helping you stay connected with past clients through automated newsletters.

When clients consistently receive your helpful emails about their new neighborhood, you’ll be top of mind once a friend asks them to recommend a real estate agent.

8. Marketing analysis and reporting

Marketing automation platforms let you run custom reports and track key metrics that help you assess your campaigns’ effectiveness, learn about your target audience and answer pressing questions about your marketing strategy.

With this information, you can fine-tune your marketing processes to generate more high-quality leads.

Below are key questions real estate agents can answer with marketing analytics and reporting:

• Where are my leads coming from? (e.g. social media, search engines, email campaigns)

• What is the conversation rate of my landing page?

• Is my automated follow-up campaign working?

• At what stage in the sales funnel do most leads drop out?

• Which property features and listings draw the most online attention?

• Which types of property descriptions or headlines result in the most inquiries?

• What are the most common questions about my listings?

Imagine you currently have two email lead nurturing campaigns: one that only shares listings with leads and another that also sends educational content about buying homes in the neighborhood.

To figure out which campaign strategy works better, you can use Pipedrive’s Campaign Insights to run a conversion report:

Now you have the intel that will help you make more effective campaigns going forward.

A close cousin to marketing analytics is sales analytics, which is equally important for real estate agents handling the full sale.

This feature, found in most CRMs, allows you to track and analyze your sales activities to identify your high-impact actions.

For instance, a real estate agent might find that their win rates increase when they hold discovery sessions in person rather than over the phone. Armed with this insight, they can refine their sales process accordingly.

Whether it’s for sales or marketing, automated reporting enhances your visibility into all the systems and digital assets you use to generate and close leads so you can intelligently improve them.

What tools to use for real estate marketing automation

The three most common types of real estate marketing automation tools are CRMs, email marketing platforms and lead generation software.

Below you’ll see how each form of real estate marketing software can help you automate different marketing tasks involved in lead generation and lead nurturing.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems

A real estate CRM is a software platform that realtors use to store and manage critical information about their leads, clients and properties.

Below are some of the key data points real estate agents track in their CRM:

• Property listing details and photos

• Lead contact information, activity and demographics

• Meeting notes from calls and open houses (especially with a mobile CRM)

• Call, email, text messages and conversation history

• A deals location in your sales pipeline

• Sales activity and metrics

Having your critical data in one centralized location helps you stay knowledgeable about your leads and clients, which in turn improves your ability to build relationships with them and finalize deals.

For example, in Pipedrive, you can set up automated follow-up emails to send to leads when they take certain actions, such as attending an open house.

Despite the benefits of automated workflows, only 32% of realtors reported using a CRM in the National Association of Realtors’ technology survey. Adopting one can, therefore, be a great opportunity to outwork the competition.

Since a CRM is such a critical tool for realtors, here are some other ways it can fuel your marketing automation system and increase real estate sales.

Take Pipedrive’s custom visual pipeline:

The feature enables you to track the progress of your deals through your pipeline, so you always know where your leads stand and what action to take next.

If you want data-driven advice for how to move a deal forward, Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant even recommends next steps for the best chance of progressing the sale.

Pipedrive also has built-in marketing automation tools that help realtors:

• Automatically refresh contact information to ensure it remains current

• Maintain client engagement with automated email reminders and notifications

• Score and route leads based on their online behavior and needs

• Manage automated email and social media campaigns

• Set up AI-powered chatbots on your website

• Create lead capture forms that automatically trigger a series of welcome emails

Following the technology survey’s indication of CRM’s untapped potential, adopting a CRM system for your real estate business will help you reap efficiency gains and stand out in the marketing department.

While the right CRM may provide all the marketing automation functionality a real estate agent needs, some may want deeper feature sets for key processes like email marketing and lead generation.

In that case, integrate your marketing automation tools with your CRM so data entering one can trigger automations in the others.

Email marketing software

Email marketing tools automate email-related marketing tasks like email writing and campaign scheduling.

As a result, they help you improve your email conversion rates, streamline lead communication and reduce time spent in your inbox.

One of email marketing software’s most powerful use cases for real estate agents is its ability to create trigger-based email sequences. The software sends pre-written emails to leads when a certain event occurs, such as a lead submitting an inquiry form on your website.

As an example, here’s an automated welcome newsletter in Pipedrive’s Campaigns add-on, which triggers whenever a new person enters the system:

With Pipedrive, you can make your email campaigns hyper-relevant by segmenting your leads by zip code, housing preferences and other key attributes. Then you can send them targeted property recommendations and content, which will dramatically improve the lead experience.

Lead generation software

Lead generation software automates tasks involved in generating leads, such as collecting lead information or sending helpful information about properties your leads might like.

Common features real estate agents find most useful in these tools include:

• Custom web forms that collect lead information like their email address, zip code and preferred number of bathrooms right from your website

• AI chatbots that ask web visitors questions about their needs and connect them through property listings, agents and information they need

• Prospecting tools that enable agents to build lead lists based on their location and buyer personas

A tool like Pipedrive’s LeadBooster even enables you to live chat with visitors on your website.

LeadBooster also gives you tools for automatic meeting scheduling, lead routing and lead tracking so no potential clients fall through the cracks.

Artificial intelligence in real estate marketing automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) is slowly making its way into real estate processes, including marketing.

In the realtor technology survey, 55% of respondents said they were somewhat familiar with AI, while 30% have used AI one to two times a month.

The primary use cases of AI are generally in content creation, predictive analytics and outreach personalization.

Below are some examples of how you can leverage AI to generate more leads for your real estate business:

• Video personalization: with AI tools like Maverick you can send personalized videos at scale using lip-syncing and voiceover technology to insert customer information, like their name, into each lead’s respective video.

• AI chatbots: powered by large language models, these chatbots can understand human language and respond in a conversational manner. Embed one on your website to engage web visitors, add value and capture leads.

• Virtual staging: these tools empower you to virtually turn empty rooms into elegantly staged ones. This way you can create better property images for listings without physically staging the space.

• Sales decision-making: by analyzing sales data and recognizing patterns, an AI CRM can recommend high-potential deals and actions likely to move the deal forward.

• Market assessment: AI can analyze market trends, comparable property sales, days on the market and local economic indicators to create an accurate estimate of a property’s value.

• Deal forecasting: sales forecasting software estimates the likelihood of your deals closing and projects potential revenue using machine learning.

As AI technology allows for increasingly automated marketing systems, real estate agents can spend more time doing what they do best.

Challenges of implementing real estate marketing automation

Below are some of the key challenges real estate agents face when implementing marketing automation and some tips for overcoming them:

• Budget constraints: marketing automation tools can be expensive, especially for smaller real estate agencies. CRMs like Pipedrive offer various packages plus marketing automation add-ons so you don’t have to buy entirely new software.

• Complexity of tools: real estate professionals are always learning about their niche, neighborhood or client so they don’t always have time to learn complex systems. Choose an easy-to-use CRM like Pipedrive – built by salespeople for salespeople.

• Inaccurate or incomplete data: sometimes you lack the data you need to run automations (like zip code for property recommendations). Use a CRM with automatic data enrichment to fill in critical record fields with information from third-party sources.

• Integrations with other tools: your real estate CRM must integrate seamlessly with your other marketing automation platforms, which can be hard to set up. Look for a CRM like Pipedrive that comes with a large marketplace of easily connectable tools.

In short, to succeed with automated real estate marketing systems, real estate agents must conduct due diligence during their software evaluation.

While there will be challenges regardless of the quality of your tool (all change brings new obstacles), your journey to automation will be relatively breezy if you find an intuitive, affordable, all-in-one marketing automation solution that’s easy to set up and integrate with other marketing tools.

Final thoughts

Automating real estate marketing processes like scheduling social posts, segmenting leads and automating property recommendations helps real estate agents generate more leads in less time.

To get started, check to see if your CRM offers any marketing automation features. Most systems will at least let you create automated follow-up reminders and notifications.

Pick the feature that will save you or your team the most time, then gradually add more automations. This might mean adopting new tools like email software.

Eliminating repetitive marketing tasks from your workflow means you’ll get to spend the majority of your time helping clients sell or buy their homes.