Dotloop’s Most Popular Marketing and Automation Integrations
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June 11, 2019 | comments
Have Fun Building Automation and Smart Marketing Campaigns by Connecting Your Real Estate Apps
In this part 2 of a 3-part series, dotloop’s leading marketing and automation integration partners detail how syncing to their systems saves real estate pros time and money. (See part 1.)
From digital advertising and marketing systems to productivity tools that connect apps, Dotloop’s API simplifies the integrations puzzle and allows users to easily sync data between its transaction management platform and its integration partners.
Here, we’ve listed dotloop’s most popular advertising and interface integration partners and the benefits they offer real estate pros. At the end of this blog, there’s a link to a short survey where we invite you to tell us which software systems you’re using in your real estate practice, which will give us insights that will help us to better serve you with future integrations.
What the Integration Offers
According to NAR data, the vast majority of home buyers say they would use their real estate agent again, but only a small fraction of them actually do.
While most real estate agents understand the importance of staying in touch and generating repeat and referral business, what they actually do after the deal closes can significantly determine how effective they are in earning that business.
BombBomb, a leading real estate video app, teamed up with dotloop to help agents maintain those relationships by syncing their accounts and easily reaching out to clients with videos.
The BombBomb and dotloop integration allows users to leverage the contacts that they have already synced in their dotloop account, along with specific dates, to reach back out to past clients in personal and relevant ways.
“Reaching out to past clients on notable key dates via dotloop makes it easier, more timely and more relevant,” says Rebecca Svoma, BombBomb’s VP of Partnerships.
There are a number of ways agents can use BombBomb’s personal video emails to stay front and center with their clients, including home anniversaries, birthdays, video walkthroughs and listings that meet clients’ search criteria. Many agents create a library of videos that they use on a rotating basis to stay top of mind and face-to-face with clients long after the transaction has closed.
“Once you connect your dotloop and BombBomb accounts, we’ll ‘automagically’ sync your contacts and build a buyers and sellers list for you,” says Svoma.
Points of Differentiation
BombBomb videos help agents “rehumanize” their communication with clients. In a relationship-oriented, referral-based business, getting face-to-face easily and more frequently is especially valuable. Agents can also create visual stories using screen recordings, webcam and mobile videos and deliver the videos via text, email and social media.
Future phases of the BombBomb and dotloop integration will include content initiatives to improve communication between all parties involved in a transaction, in addition to the home buyers and sellers.
How to Integrate
Customers can activate the dotloop integration inside their BombBomb account or via the dotloop site.
Log in to your dotloop account with your credentials and click “Sign In” to continue. Once you log in to your BombBomb account, visit the Integrations page. Scroll down to click on the dotloop icon and then click on the “Connect” button to begin the connection process.
Automated Sync Made Easy
There are a variety of connectivity tools that “bridge software” between dotloop and just about any front- or back-end app that agents and brokers might need to complete their tech stack. API Nation, Piesync and Zapier are three of the most popular, each offering distinct features and benefits.
What the Integration Offers
API Nation connects real estate agents and brokers with 2-way syncs between dotloop and hundreds of their favorite apps, most notably the Google suite, which includes Gmail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar and Google Sheets.
In Gmail, agents are able to create loops using API Nation’s Loop-It plugin, and in Google Calendar, API Nation can sync important dates from agents’ loops, including contract agreement and closing dates, offer dates and listing dates. Agents can fine-tune and select which dates they want to sync or default to all.
The syncing tool also automates and syncs data with QuickBooks, MailChimp, Propertybase and Facebook Lead Ads, to name a few.
Points of Differentiation
API Nation focuses solely on the real estate space, therefore the app is designed with the average user, a 53-year-old female, in mind.
When we designed our product, this is who we think about. They have a love-hate relationship with technology. So we don’t try to build, ‘sync files to Google drive.’ We built, ‘Back up for all your transaction documents, because you need them for seven years.’ When we set out to build this platform, we started with the desired results: Help agents to never miss a closing, track all important dates on a calendar and never miss an important task or transaction — that’s what we sell the customer.
Agents of any skill level can flip the switch connecting dotloop with other applications and immediately start following up with those leads smarter and faster. For instance, Trevor Schade of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Ambassador Real Estate in Omaha, NE, says he relies on dotloop and API Nation’s combined integration for all of his company metrics.
I feed all my information from dotloop for Teams, admin custom fields and loop fields to a Google Sheet. This is used to run our team’s motivational and sales goals dashboard, lead purchasing and performance reports, as well as pending sales reports. The only alternative I’ve seen to this is the expense of a $40,000+ yearly salary.
Davidovich adds, “Instead of looking at a bunch of data, we see a property, a deal, the people involved — when we design our integrations and our syncs, we try to look and solve for the core business issue.”
Another example: When API Nation syncs to Google Sheets, rather than simply “dump data,” it breaks out documents, financial data and the people involved to provide visibility into important facts like when the home was purchased and what role a person played.
How to Integrate
For the full directory of API Nation and dotloop syncs, including free trial offers, click here.
What the Integration Offers
Most agents have a CRM, maybe a separate lead gen software, an accounting tool and possibly a marketing app for videos or virtual walkthroughs. PieSync ties it all together with 2-way sync between dotloop and nearly 200 apps. When the data in one app is modified, it’s auto-updated in the other.
The connectivity tool focuses on contacts syncs with a new release every week. Syncing with CRMs and accounting apps bypasses the need to import and export data off spreadsheets. According to PieSync Solutions Engineer Frans Leys, PieSync confers huge time savings when onboarding agents to teams.
For me, the best thing about PieSync is how much time it saves me. I don’t have to export/import contacts between apps or do dual entry anymore. Everything’s working in the background, which gives me more time for my clients and allows me to deliver the experience they expect.
Points of Differentiation
Filters and rules allows users to configure the syncing of data in an experience that works for them. “This allows teams to sync their contacts in an intelligent way,” says Leys. “In the real estate agent’s sync stack, automation and personalization needs go hand in hand, and PieSync’s rule engine enables them to do just that.”
Additionally, because PieSync uses full, 2-way syncing data between apps, agents are able to work with the same contacts data in different tools; whereas, 1-directional triggers require the agent to follow a strict workflow or risk corrupting data, says Leys.
It’s designed to synchronize contacts in both directions, in real time. For Dotloop, that means one identical address book in Google, iCloud, Outlook, your CRM, your marketing platform and so forth.
How to Integrate
To integrate your PieSync and dotloop accounts, log in to PieSync. Then start a new connection and select dotloop from the apps list.
Once dotloop is selected, you can select a second app to sync with dotloop. Both dotloop and the second app will need to be authorized to sync. Click “approve.” For more information on the benefits and how to sync dotloop with PieSync, click here.
What the Integration Offers
The newest addition to dotloop’s integration partnerships, Zapier serves as an “API middleman” connecting dotloop to more than 1,500 other apps in the directory, including Zillow, Keller Williams, Big Purple Dot, Mojo, Chime, Top Producer, Paperless Pipeline, Move, Facebook Lead ads, Salesforce and more.
Of course, there’s obvious upside to having such broad-scale connectivity: less churn, for one. “You can retain customers using any integration or API. They’re two or three times stickier and churn less than non-integrated customers,” says Cody Jones, Head of Partnerships for Zapier.
Points of Differentiation
With Zapier, agents have the ability to customize fields and direct the platform to pick up specific information according to their integration needs, such as a zip code or lead source.
On this platform, triggered events set off multi-step workflows. For example, when an agent creates a loop in dotloop, it might trigger a workflow that updates the information in the CRM and then add or update that data to a spreadsheet and send an email through Gmail. Triggered workflows work between dotloop and about 1,500 different apps, ranging from accounting tools and spreadsheets to CRMs.
How to Integrate
To build a custom workflow between dotloop and Zapier, click here. To try pre-made dotloop integrations and learn more about how dotloop works with Zapier, click here.
What the Integration Offers
What began as a platform to give musicians the ability to promote themselves locally online spun off into a strategic service for real estate agents.
“After a brokerage approached us to help promote properties in Chicago and automate their ads firm-wide, we saw immediate impact on agents winning more listings,” says West Hubbard, VP Enterprise and Business for Adwerx.
Today, the Adwerx Enterprise integration targets sellers on behalf of their agents with digital listing ads of their properties. Home sellers see the digital ads contracted by their agents as well as reports showing the number of impressions and clicks received.
“This integration is one of many ways that Adwerx and dotloop help brokerages recruit and retain agents while helping agents win more listings by using the magic of dotloop,” says Hubbard.
Points of Differentiation
Within seconds, Adwerx creates customized, optimized digital ads complete with listing details and images for Facebook, websites and mobile apps.
Real Estate brokers love the service because, with a single click, they’re able to offer their agents polished video or display ads with a wide field of impressions cultivated on Zillow, Facebook and Instagram as well as leading media sites.
Agents are able to post a property on the MLS or dotloop, and Adwerx will pull the seller’s information from dotloop and automatically notify the seller when the ad will run. The seller then sees the ad natively as they’re navigating the Internet.
So an agent might post the listing to the MLS on Friday, hold an open house on Saturday and the seller could wake up Sunday morning and see their home in an ad on an ESPN site as they’re checking out the Mets score. The seller calls and thanks them when all the agent did was what they always do — without anything special.
Hubbard estimates there’s a six-time greater chance that a client will see their ad online with the dotloop integration. “It’s a win-win value add for the agent because they have their time back, and it’s a win-win for the broker for instilling retention because their agents are more productive and winning more listings while helping recruiting efforts,” he says.
While the advertising criteria can vary by brokerage, in general, the ads post to a 15-mile radius around listings and target people who are online searching mortgage calculators, moving companies and listing portals — in other words, those people who are likely to move. A retargeting pixel ensures those who visit the landing page of the listing see the ad as well.
As Hubbard points out, the integration provides a huge boon to agent adoption and is leveraged by forward-thinking, tech-enabled brokerages like C21 Vanguard and Hodnett Cooper of St. Simons Island, GA, who largely drove the dotloop integration.
“They know it’s not about the brokerage having tech,” he says. “It’s about the agent using the technology. All around, this integration helps with agent adoption.”
How to Integrate
Dotloop admins may visit their Adwerx portal to begin activating the dotloop/Adwerx integration. Then click the “Link with Dotloop” button and log into dotloop and accept the connection at the prompts. For more information on Adwerx, click here.
Integrating your favorite marketing and automation systems with dotloop will help save valuable time and improve efficiency while diminishing costly compliance errors. Visit our directory for a complete list of dotloop’s 60+ integration partners. And don’t miss next month’s Integrations Part 3 blog, when we discuss the benefits of syncing dotloop with many favorite back-end systems.
