IDX apps are a powerful tool for your business. They can help engage potential and existing clients, improve brand loyalty, and get people addicted to your services. But to get the most benefit, you need to know when to promote your app and how to use it within your existing workflow. Timing is everything.

Typical journey of buyers & sellers

First, let's talk real quick about the basic digital journey that almost every buyer and seller takes:

1. Search online

When someone decides to buy or sell a house, they tend to start in one of two places: referrals or web searches. In either scenario, the person is trying to find more information about the real estate process.

People who don't want to start with an agent will search terms like

Having your own home search app offers an unprecedented level of client engagement. Over the past few months, we’ve seen huge adoption of the branded REW IDX App by top agents and brokers.

But how do you get your branded real estate app into the hands of home buyers?

We’ve assembled a list of actions that you can take today to get more people downloading and using your app.

But First... What is REW IDX App?

REW IDX App is a branded home search app for agents and brokers.

We've previously discussed why every real estate agent and brokerage should have their own app.

In short, apps offer a superior mobile experience, they drive customer engagement and follow-up, and they showcase you as a market-leading innovator.

But, you don't receive

If there's one contentious issue when it comes to real estate websites, it's registration settings. Some agents swear by forced registration and others shudder at the mere mention of the words.

The purpose of this blog is to provide a powerful example of how forced registration can impact real estate lead generation in a big way.

What is Forced Registration?

Before we jump into our experiment, let's clarify exactly what it is we mean by "forced registration." In this case, we mean that users are required to provide their email and phone number before they're able to browse a single listing on your website. To be clear, this is totally non-optional registration—the user has to either fill out the form to view a listing or back out of the page.

Real Estate Webmasters recently hired a market research company to complete extensive surveys and interviews with Realtors, buyers, and sellers across North America. We gained a lot of valuable insight into the real estate industry, which we've shared throughout this blog over the past month.

In this post, we're going to summarize the research that told us how Realtors can turn their buyers and sellers into loyal, lifelong clients who will be happy to share their name with all their family and friends. (After all, referrals are still a top way to get new clients..!)

Most people only passively follow the real estate market when they aren't planning to buy or sell. However, they are motivated to stay in touch when Realtors send information that helps

We recently hired an independent market research company to interview 10 random people who have bought or sold a home worth at least $300,000 in the past 12 months, and ask them a series of questions over the course of an hour.

When asked to describe the best real estate websites they have seen, guess what they said?

Nothing.

Most respondents didn't have any awesome sites to share because nothing stood out to them. The few that did comment on a website referenced the major portals, including Zillow and Realtor.com.

This means there's huge opportunity for real estate agents, brokers, and franchises to make an impression in their local markets. All they have to do is create the best website visitors have ever seen, and we're here to help:

The

We recently interviewed 300 active real estate agents across North America to learn more about how they conduct their business and drive success. But we wanted to take it a step further and also talk to buyers and sellers to get a stronger understanding of what they're looking for in an agent.

By understanding the mindset of buyers and sellers, real estate agents are able to better serve their clients and develop marketing solutions that will be more effective in converting leads into clients, and clients into happy referrers.

We conducted in-depth interviews with 10 randomly-selected people who had either bought or sold a home between $300,000 and $1.5 Million within the past year. These interviews took approximately an hour each and focused on

Actions Plans are an awesome way to get organized and stay on top of lead follow up. They are essentially quick reminders to get in touch or perform a specific action, and can keep Realtors connected even when things get busy.

In today's post, we're going to outline some example campaigns based on marketing and sales best practices. But it's absolutely critical that you test and revise these campaigns as needed. What works for one business won't resonate with another, so it's important you use these Action Plans as a starting point to build your own tried and true strategies.

An Action Plan should mimic the overall lead follow up strategy you've defined for your agents or yourself, and serve as a series of reminders. If you've already put together a

If you've received a new subdomain from your broker or franchise, congratulations! This is an exciting opportunity to make your mark on the digital world and stand apart from the crowd.

The first thing you need to know about subdomains is that they're separate from the main domain. Subdomains are independent websites that build their own authority, share their own information, and require their own digital marketing campaigns. If you want to get all the awesome benefits that come along with a new website, you'll need to make a few updates to your subdomain.

You get to decide exactly how much effort you want to put into your subdomain and your reward will be a reflection of that effort. In this post, we'll start with recommendations for setting up a

A brand new website is exciting, especially when you have big plans for how it will make your team more efficient. But motivating teams to use new technology can be a challenge and that's why we're here to help! In this post, we'll share a few ideas you can use to help improve adoption of your new real estate site.

1. Start small with quick wins

We all love quick wins because they're motivating. One of the best ways to inspire your team is to help them make a small amount of progress on their own, so they're motivated to keep doing more.

When it comes to adopting new technology, like the REW website or CRM, the best way to get your team started is to show them how simple steps will improve their work.

For the website, ask your team members to

REW launched our new REW CRM last year and we were excited to bring a real estate CRM to market that makes lead management faster and easier.

Since then, we've received feedback and suggestions from our clients on ways to make REW CRM even better. We took those ideas, combined them with some of our own, and created a new update to REW CRM. Without further ado, we are delighted to share some of the new features and improvements you can now find in REW CRM:

Responsive saved search emails

A few months ago, several clients mentioned their desire to have responsive saved search emails. It was a great idea and we got to work! We researched existing saved search emails on the market, prototyped an even better version, shared it with several clients for