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Links. Integrations. Partnerships. Zapier.
Real estate technology companies are looking for every possible avenue to access new customers. One way is by connecting with colleagues who already have a lot of them.
It made sense, then, for extremely popular automated marketing collateral company Zip Your Flyer to shake hands with dotloop, one of the most funded real estate tech firms in the industry, according to the latest Inman Special Report.
Zip Your Flyer users can now import property data from their dotloop “loops.”
The company then broadcasts the collateral to an agent’s contact list, which can be selected by Zip Your Flyer’s robust database tools or customized for more accurate segmentation.
This also allows dotloop to keep track of marketing data for each listing and ensures the agent that all the information is being managed from a single location.
The connection requires only a few steps and data sharing approvals — nothing you don’t agree to regularly.
Stand-alone third party apps that are commonly used to create flyers, such as Adobe InDesign, MailChimp or Microsoft Word, require manual input of property information and images, often leading to production delays, information errors and inconsistent business processes.
Granted, those firms with full-time marketing staff aren’t often a part of the outreach process. But that’s not a common position in real estate offices.
This partnership helps agents streamline the listing-to-market process, something customers will no doubt love to hear.
Those who leverage this agreement would be smart to discuss it in their next listing presentation.
What I find unique about this partnership is the contrast of corporate cultures. Zip Your Flyer was founded in 2004 by a husband and wife agent couple seeking a better way to ensure their listings were exposed to cooperating agents throughout the market.
Today their company employs a number of family members who help facilitate more than 1,000,000 listing emails and printed flyers every day. It’s grown to be much more than a flyer company.
Dotloop has become the transaction management darling of the real estate industry and Wall Street tech investors. And being acquired by Zillow Group didn’t hurt its exposure.
In a phone conversation yesterday, Zip Your Flyer’s executive vice president of sales and marketing Caitlin Thornburg (daughter of CEO and co-founder Kristin Thornburg) told me that “dotloop was wonderful to work with, and really helped us give agents another route to use our products. We’re always looking to help agents get things done faster.”
Companies like Matterport, BombBomb, Facebook and Spacio are also showing up in a multitude of dashboards and partner pages.
All said, these kinds of integrations are helping agents do more without having to add plates to their juggling routine. That’s a highly valuable proposition for brokers who want to minimize software investments but ensure their agents can compete.
As a result, I’m predicting we’ll see more acquisitions and consolidations in the real estate tech sector during the next 18 to 24 months. The Wall Street to real estate cash train can’t have too many stops left to make.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
