You have the ability to create custom searches, or listing alerts, for your clients using our agent admin under the tab labeled Recommendations. Check out this video tutorial for more information. We have two options to choose from. We'll focus on the Searches option here.
Recommended Search Subscriptions
On this page, you can see all the searches you have recommended to leads. You'll see things like:
- The lead the search was recommended to
- The name of the search (which pulls from the Search Library)
- The filters/criteria of the search
- 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
- The frequency of which the lead will be receiving updates
- The status of the search
- When the recommendation was created
- When the last update was sent to the lead
- Options to preview the search (see the listing results) or delete the subscription
- Create a new search recommendation
Sending New Search Recommendations
On the Recommended Search Subscription page, you can also 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 admin
- Create a brand-new search
You'll also decide the email frequency you would like leads to receive updates on.
- 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 on a monthly basis.
- Instant will not fire a new email the moment an update happens. The email job runs in 1 hour intervals, so 'instant' is really 'hourly'
- Daily, Weekly and Monthly intervals fire accurately to their names
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)! Please note, 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.
What do the emails look like?
Emails will be branded with your website name and logo as configured under Settings > General.
You can also tweak 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.
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 on a regular basis. 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.
How do I prevent status changes in 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 status of Active. Then they will only receive emails about newly active listings.
How do I prevent price changes in 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.