Agent 3000
CRM
Inman Rating

Marketing and CRM solution Agent 3000 is big on features

Now an inactive broker because his software has taken off, Shawn Sommer developed Agent 3000 largely around his own best practices; it's now accessible to more than 250K agents
by Craig C. Rowe Staff Writer
November 01, 2019
Agent 3000
Your success is our goal

Agent 3000, developed by one-time South Florida broker Shawn Sommer, is all about execution over fluff, now accessible to 250,000 agents.

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Agent 3000 is a web-based marketing and CRM solution for real estate agents.

Platforms: Browser; mobile optimized
Ideal for: Small to mid-size brokerages, teams and individual agents; multiple listing services

Top selling points

  • Familiar, Windows-esque user experience
  • Accessible to up 250,000 agents through board partnerships
  • Developed by broker
  • Personal support
  • Easy Facebook content publishing

Top concerns

Best described as home-grown, Agent 3000 might have trouble with support as it grows. Its developer and CEO is very hands-on, a rare benefit that could challenge the company down the road.

What you should know

Agent 3000 is all about execution over fluff. This is a good thing, but opens up the software to a few caveats.

Its developer and creator is Shawn Sommer, a one-time active broker in South Florida who had to rest his license once his software gained traction.

His coding efforts are absolutely to be commended because Agent 3000 is stable, practically designed business software that’s been adopted by a sizable list of boards around the country and tens of thousands of their agent members.

Sommer is quick to defend his product against the likes of BoomTown, Brivity and LionDesk because his, like those, features:

  • Agent websites
  • CRM tools
  • Lead routing
  • Landing pages
  • Action plans
  • Video email
  • Map searches
  • Facebook posting
  • Social meme generator
  • Reporting
  • Website chat
  • Text marketing/communications
  • Custom contact groups
  • And more

What makes Agent 3000 stand out is that it doesn’t concern itself much with visual elegance or how front-end interface design encourages usability. Programming efforts are put toward agent needs.

Agent 3000 doesn’t want its users to fret over choosing a website design or drip campaign theme, so they get very few options for either.

Likely a result of Sommer’s pronounced self-sufficiency, Agent 3000 eschews a modernized user experience.

In that respect though, it’s a very comfortable environment. Contacts are delivered in a sortable, spreadsheet style; there are lots of radio buttons and text compose windows emulate Microsoft Word’s menu design.

The layout is a common weighted two-column, with the left-hand nav offering feature access and the right-center screen delivering the data.

Sommer inserts his own work practices into the software.

Not a fan of overnight messaging or email that isn’t personal, Agent 3000 asks its users to setup their own email accounts within the system, asking for all technical user credentials from your standard account.

The byproduct of this extra step is improved delivery confidence, especially when your emails will only be sent at 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. It also comes with only one drip campaign design because, again, I suspect, Sommer finds them to be impersonal and primarily deletable nonsense, especially when sent at 2:30 a.m.

Agent 3000 also does a nice job with its Facebook marketing. In fact, its URL-to-screenshot posting is one of the more streamlined ways to get listing content on to your feed. It also covers the ad in a “Click to View” banner.

You can also select from an array of multi-image grid layouts for a slick collage post of property images.

Videos can be dropped into emails, too, using their URL.

Agent 3000 remains steadfast in providing the option to leverage some dated marketing tactics, such as QR Codes and Craigslist ads. Ads published on the latter are compliant, cleanly published and categorized. I’d use that feature if I was selling again.

The QR codes? Not so much. Don’t make people work to get information, and I don’t remember the last time I updated a code scanner app (or had one, actually).

The single property pages aren’t particularly compelling, resembling a web version of an MLS listing sheet.

I think it’s smart of Agent 3000 to limit the transaction feature to merely a compiled list of recent deals and details. By design, it’s more a deal record than transaction manager.

Sommer told me, in short, that he isn’t trying to replicate what so many third-party marketing tools already do so well. If you need hundreds of templates and connected e-commerce, MailChimp is better for you.

Thus, he emphasizes productivity and business support, even going so far as to work personally with each new agent he onboards, helping them set up Zapier connections to their favorite apps and quickly publish websites.

Agent 3000 is a member benefit for the Fort Myers MLS and the Miami Board of Realtors.

All in, more than 250,000 agents have access to what a single broker managed to code.

Although Sommer might be an inactive broker, he’s clearly still working as hard as ever to support agents.

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