When searching for homes on your website, your leads can save a search, which will then email them updates, such as new listings or price changes. We call these Search Subscriptions, but you may also refer to them as Listing Alerts. Agents can also set up a Recommended Search for their leads, as well as send individual listing recommendations!
Agent Recommendations can be found in your IDX Control panel, under the Recommendations tab.
Recommended Search List
We have two options to choose from. We'll focus on the Searches option here.
On this page, you can see all the searches you have recommended to leads. You'll see things like:
- Search: Search for a recommendation by the lead or search name
- Recommended To: The lead the search was recommended to
- Search Name: The name of the search (which pulls from the Search Library)
- Filters: The filters/criteria of the search
-
Recommended By: Who the search was recommended by
- If you're an admin, you'll see all the searches recommended by anyone on your team
- If you're not an admin, you'll only see the searches you recommended
- Frequency: The frequency at which the lead will be receiving updates
- Status: The status of the search
- Created: When the recommendation was created
- Last Sent: When the last update was sent to the lead
- Action Menu: for options to preview the search (see the listing results) or delete the subscription
- New Search Recommendation button: Create a new search recommendation
Agent Search Recommendation
While the customer can create and subscribe to searches on their own, the agent can always create Recommended Searches for the customer as well. On the Recommended Search Subscription page, you can create a new subscription by clicking the blue 'New Search Recommendation' button on the right side.
When creating a new subscription, you'll select a lead (or create a new one if they don't exist in the system yet).
Then you'll pick the search you want to recommend. You have two options here:
- Pick a search that was already created in your IDX Control Panel Search Library tab
- Create a brand-new search
You'll also decide the email frequency you would like leads to receive updates on.
| Instant | Once every hour |
| Daily | Once a day |
| Weekly | Once a week |
| Monthly | Once a month |
- For example, if you have a hot buyer, you may want them to be set up on an instant search.
- If it's a past client, you may want to send them property alerts on what's happening in their market every month.
When you're finished, click the big, blue Create New Search Subscription button, and your lead will start getting alerts based on their email frequency (once new listings are added to fit those criteria)!
An initial email will not go out once the subscription is created. They will receive their first email when a property matches the search criteria.
Lead Search Subscription
After your leads perform a search on your website, they can use the blue 'Save Search' button to subscribe to a search and receive updates on listings via email. Clicking on the 'Save Search' button populates a form on the page that prompts them to name their search relevant to their criteria and decide on the email schedule they would prefer.
Once a lead creates a search, they can find that search to view or edit it in their Registered Lead Dashboard.
Lead Registration
If the lead has not registered on the site before and they try to save a search subscription, they will be prompted to sign up. Once the lead signs up on your website, you will receive a notification and they are entered into your Lead Dashboard, where you can view their saved searches and search activity.
If they did register and are not logged into their accounts, they would need to sign in to continue with saving the search.
Otherwise, if they are logged in, they can subscribe instantly.
How To Edit Search Subscriptions
Agents can edit searches they have recommended or even the searches that the lead has created for themselves. The process is the same for both.
From the Leads tab, access your lead's profile page. From there, select the Search Subscriptions tab and click the Edit link next to the search subscription you wish to edit. On the following screen, you can then add, remove, or change the criteria of the search, as well as the email frequency at which email updates are received.
What Do the Emails Look Like?
Emails will be branded with your website name and logo as configured under Settings > General.
Emails will be sent from no-reply@homesearchupdate.com email address. This domain is not currently editable on a per-account basis. You can change the name that will appear on all emails so that these are more recognizable to your leads when they receive them. You can also edit the subject line of the email and add a generic message that goes out with every email update in your Email Settings.
There will be ribbons on the listings in the emails that identify what update happened. This could either be a status change or a price change.
Within the emails, you'll also find call-to-actions in the form of buttons to see more details about an individual property and to request a tour of the property. These buttons link directly to the listing detail page on your website. The address itself will be a clickable link that also links directly to the listing detail page.
Finally, there is a button at the bottom of the email that links to the full search on your website. The lead can then look at any of the properties already in the search.
The CSS of these emails is not currently editable.
What Kind of Alerts Will They Get?
Leads will receive alerts for New properties that recently came online. We'll match the listings to the search criteria to give them the most accurate listing results.
Leads will receive alerts for Price Changes on properties already in the search. We'll show the last list price as well as how much of a decrease or increase happened.
Lastly, leads will receive alerts for Status Changes on properties already in the search. If they had their eye on an active listing and it just went pending, we'll tell them about it.
Click the image to see multiple examples!
How Many Listings Will They Get?
The number of listings in the emails entirely depends on the search! A recommended search that has broad criteria (such as just a city) will most likely have more newly updated listings in the emails regularly. A recommended search that has several filters applied to it (such as property type, price range, etc) with likely have fewer email updates and fewer listings in the emails.
Also, the frequency at which the recommended search is set for could affect the number of listings sent in each email. For example, if the recommended search is set to weekly, and has broad criteria, there will likely be a high number of listing updates in the email.
Can I Prevent Status Change Emails?
To prevent a lead from receiving status changes in the emails, you can change the criteria of the search to only include the status you want. In this case, it is most likely that you don't want the lead to receive an update when a listing goes from Active to Pending, so you can simply update the search to include the status of Active. Then they will only receive emails about newly active listings.
Can I Prevent Price Change Emails?
There isn't a way to prevent price change updates in the emails. However, if a listing experiences a price change and the listing then falls outside of the search filter range, then the listing will not be in the next email to a lead.
For example, say you set up a search for Los Angeles, CA from $500-$600K. A listing that was in the search was updated from $535K down to $485K. That listing would not be sent in an email update to the lead subscribed to that search.
Listing Recommendations
Sending a listing recommendation is a great way to let your leads know about a particular listing that is new and that they might be interested in.
To send a listing recommendation, click on the Recommendations tab and then select Listings.
Previously sent listing recommendations will live in this library. The various headers display general information about the listing, who it was recommended to, and who it was recommended by.
Click the blue New Listing Recommendation button to start a new listing recommendation. From the new screen, select the lead you wish to send a recommendation to or create a new lead if they don't exist yet.
You can add one or more MLS numbers in the following field. When adding more than one, you should separate them by a space. Once you send the recommendation, the lead will receive 1 email per listing, and these emails will look similar to the emails shown above.
Video Tutorial
You can also find more information and a video tutorial of these instructions!