Communicate with Contacts

Most successful agents use some type of system to keep track of contacts and clients. Whether you use a spreadsheet, a whiteboard on your wall, or pay for customer relationship management (CRM) software, it’s important to have a system in place. If you have multiple contacts in different stages of your pipeline, a CRM can help you stay on top of active leads and target your communications. Organizing your contacts and following up with them consistently is key to growing your business.

Best practices

Download the Premier Agent App
The Premier Agent App offers a free and simple CRM solution to effectively manage all contacts from Zillow and Trulia and easily categorize leads based on their timeline to transact. You can also quickly learn more about the contact, including search history and pre-approval status, as well as publicly available social media information like LinkedIn profiles. Contact management features include:

• Incoming alerts contain message details from the contact, as well as information on the property the buyer or seller reached out about.
• Information about the contact includes search history across Zillow and Trulia, as well as move timeframe and loan pre-approval status.
• You can set the status for contacts, based on the consumer’s readiness to buy a home.
• You can search across your entire contact list and sort by contact status.

You can also manage your contacts on the Zillow desktop by navigating to the Agent Hub and clicking Inbox.

Set up Tech Connect: Leads
If you’re using a CRM other than the Premier Agent App to manage your contacts, check out Tech Connect: Leads. Tech Connect: Leads provides an easy way to connect your CRM to your Zillow account so that all new Zillow and Trulia contacts flow directly and automatically into your system of choice. Setting up and connecting Tech Connect partners is quick and easy.

Create email templates
Responding quickly is the cornerstone of successful lead conversion, but crafting the perfect response takes time. By creating pre-populated email templates, you can send tailored messages to new inquiries with a few taps of your fingertip. Many agents set up email templates for different scenarios, such as price point, location, or home type. To set an email template, navigate to the Agent Hub menu on Zillow, click Inbox, and then click Auto Actions. Click Add New Template, fill out the template form and then click Add New Template.

Set up automatic responses
Real estate agents deserve a work-life balance, too. Automatic responses help you follow the top practice in successful lead conversion: quick follow-up. The next time you’re taking some time off from the job or away from your phone, use the auto-responder feature, which lets you to turn an email template into an immediate, automated response for new buyer and seller inquiries. To set an automatic response, navigate to the Agent Hub menu on Zillow, click Inbox, and then click Auto Actions. Click the Set As Auto-Responder button next to the email template you want to activate.

Create lead forwarding rules
If you work with a partner or team, forwarding rules can make it easy to distribute contacts to them automatically. You can create forwarding rules based on an inquiry’s time of day, price range, property type, or location they’re interested in. You can also create a vacation-forwarding rule, which routes every inquiry to a specified colleague in addition to yourself. To create lead forwarding rules, navigate to the Agent Hub menu on Zillow, click Account, click Contacts Forwarding Rules, click New Rule and follow the prompts.

Start a drip campaign
With free drip campaigns from Premier Agent, staying in front of buyers and sellers over the long-term is easy. You can automatically send your contacts a market report or a saved search email. The market report is a monthly email that gives your client a breakdown of the latest market conditions in their area of choice. The saved search email is sent to your contacts as frequently as once a day, depending on how often new listings come on the market that match what they’re looking for. Each email prominently displays your picture, name and contact information at the top. They’re a great way to keep potential clients engaged and ensure that you stay at the top of their minds.

Related resources

• Email scripts that work
• Phone scripts for success
• Effective text messaging scripts
• 8 simple steps to set up an email drip campaign