I’m excited to announce that Automation is officially live in REW CRM! This has been one of our most requested features, and we couldn’t be more excited to get it into your hands. At its core, Automation is about simplifying your daily tasks and eliminating the repetitive ones.
It saves you a lot of time plus ensures your workflows are consistent and efficient. There’s no need to juggle too many tasks and worry about forgetting something – automation helps you handle leads promptly and with care. They also reduce the chance of human error and allow your team to focus on what really moves the needle: building relationships!
Triggers – These are the “if this, then that” rules that kick off your automation. Triggers can be things like, deal stage changes, inquiries on a property, tags being added, or meeting a calendar date.
Conditions – Think of these as filters that fine-tune your automation. Conditions help ensure that your rules only apply to leads that meet specific criteria. For example, you might want to create automations that only apply to leads from a certain city, who have had certain interactions, or belong to specific groups.
Actions – Once the trigger and conditions are met, you can decide what happens. You can automatically email or text leads, notify agents, reassign Leads, add notes or enroll leads in action plans.
To set these up, just log in to REW CRM, head to “Automations” beside the “Sources” tab, and fill out the triggers, conditions, and actions for your automation rule.
You can check out our Automations blog post for a deep dive on the setup guide and how to maximize automation’s potential.
I’d really love to hear your thoughts on Automations. Would you use it? Which Automations would you like to set up? Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve this tool? Don’t hesitate to share them!
@Mheanne This is a much needed feature! So glad the team finally got this one live. With this being in beta, is it safe to assume there will be new triggers, conditions and actions being tested and potentially added?
Thanks @MattFranklin! We’re so glad you’re excited about it. Yes, we’ll be testing and adding new triggers, conditions, and actions in the future—feel free to share any ideas!
It looks like the automations engine was designed similar to Follow Up Boss’s automations which is great! You have covered most triggers and actions but there are a couple of things:
one that is a bit tricky is the “Stage” trigger. Stages aren’t configurable so only having lead, contact, and client is a little strange. I was a FUB user and stages were great to use for creating more specific labels(stages) for leads. Stages should describe what stage the lead or contact is in(ready to buy, just looking, active client, vendor etc). I know there’s a million ways to setup a CRM so it’s just my opinion on the stages field but it would be more useful for automations. Otherwise, you have to get real tag heavy.
When I was testing I couldn’t get any registration event to trigger an automation. Will this be something added? In FUB’s triggers they had a “New Inquiry” option and it encompassed registrations, seller inquiries, property inquiries, and general inquiries. It would be nice to trigger some things when a new user registers.
Adding tags as an action would be great too.
Adding a condition for days since last visit would be awesome. I think this is called “Last Active” in the filters. This way you could trigger an email/text to an agent if a stale lead visits your site after going cold for a certain amount of time. Unless this is already in there and I missed it.
Another built in automation that I’ve seen with other CRM’s(FUB and Lofty specifically) is blocked or bounced emails and bad phone numbers. If at any point the lead is sent an email that bounces then the system automatically adds a tag of “Bounced” to the lead. Same with a bad phone number. Same goes for bad phone numbers. CRM checks the phone number against carrier registrations and also formatting and lets you know if it’s potentially a bad number. Again, a tag would be auto added as well.
Hi Matt! We really appreciate this kind of detailed feedback, it’s how we continue to improve! Your suggestions on stages, inquiry triggers, tags as actions, and features like “Days Since Last Visit” are spot on, and we’re actively working on addressing these areas. The current setup doesn’t cover everything, but we’re committed to expanding triggers, conditions, and actions to address more user needs. Thanks for sharing your input, we’re all really excited about working on this!
Hi may I add a suggestion? As I was just started to poke around with this, and a long time FUB user… an automation that would allow the contact to be added to a group and thus a campaign? So - when there’s a new registration, they are then added to a nurture campaign essentially?
Unless this exists and I just don’t understand some of the fine workings – very plausible!
Thanks!
Hi @asmcarlson! That’s a great suggestion, we do plan to expand the list of triggers, conditions, and actions, and group assignment would, more likely than not, be a part of that.
While this isn’t an action yet, we do have prebuilt groups in the CRM which get automatically assigned to leads based on the form they submit, this includes the registration form, so for your campaign you could consider adding these groups to it and the system will assign that campaign automatically to new leads, leads that submit a contact form, etc. The groups are global and can be accessed by all agents, this is the full list:
I’m back in REW CRM full time now. Love the automations but anxiously waiting for some new triggers and conditions. While the team works hard to put some new options out, do you have any recommendations on triggering automations based on last visit? Essentially, I have stale leads that I’m reengaging with. I’m putting out some campaigns to generate some movement from them to either A) qualify them again or B) move them into a long term drip/delete them all together. Right now I’m using lead created date as the condition but it only works if the lead is indeed stale. However, if they aren’t stale but created X amount of days ago(whatever the condition is set to) then I get emails when my leads that I’m actively working with view a listing. This is a great way to see if an old lead that hasn’t been seen in a while actually looks at listings. I have a smart list for this based on Last activity but would love to get notified when a lead who hasn’t been active in a long time decides to look at a home.
Hi @MattFranklin! That’s a really good suggestion, I can see the limitations that created date has, we can probably achieve more by using last active or last visit, I’ll be sure to bring your feedback to our team.
Something that could potentially work for your scenario, since you already have smart lists to identify those leads, you could create a tag and mass assign it to them in lead view, then your automation can have that tag as a condition. Your automation rule could be something like this: Trigger: Property viewed Condition: Tag = Stale Leads Action: Email myself
This way you would be notified if any of your stale leads becomes active again and is looking at properties on your website. Let me know if this makes sense!
@FernandoOrtiz thanks for the reply! Adding the tag I think is the best way to approach this for now.
Going forward, say a year from now, if the “last active” filter still isn’t a condition then I would have to refresh my smart list and add the tag again for this to work. If you have an automation setup then it stops the need to have the tag in place. By having to mass add the tag it becomes a management task or reactive. With the automation in place it becomes proactive which is the point of the automations in the first place.
For now, I’ll create the tag and then a complimentary automation. Hopefully, the “last active” will become a condition. Honestly, that’s the only condition filter that I would think needs to be added. You guys have a lot in place already. Thanks for the reply and thanks for continually building a better product.
Also, having some way for the system to tag a lead as stale would be awesome too. Obviously, the smart lists make it easy to do that but automating that would be great as well.
I totally agree, this alternative requires some upkeep and the end goal of automations is to reduce that. I think having an action to assign a tag or group to a lead would be really helpful too.
