This past summer, BoomTown announced a few new features as part of an effort to allow users more control over their marketing and lead management.
This week, I finally had the opportunity to see what some privileged folks had been beta testing the for the past few months. In short, I liked what I saw.
The lead management upgrades are packaged under a feature called Success Assurance, and its origins go back a year to when BoomTown acquired lead qualification company Real Contact.
The service, available as an add-on at any account level, essentially nurses new leads on a user’s behalf through personal interaction with a real live person.
Real Contact hires contractors around the country to certify the veracity of a person’s interest. It kicks in 90 seconds after registration and can run for up to a year per lead. BoomTown users can monitor the conversation to decide when to take over or check back daily to claim the lead from Real Contact.
In a few months’ time, Real Contact’s presence won’t be as evident, as the feature currently carries its branding.
Marketing Central is a set of features accessible from the main dashboard that hosts an interface for making it easy to create and manage digital advertising campaigns, primarily on Facebook.
BoomTown’s coders managed to craft a super clean UI (user interface) and an approachable experience for an environment that, in its native state, is much more cumbersome.
As a writer, I admit — facetiously — to not liking the ad builder’s ability to use tags and property characteristics to craft headlines. Because it works pretty well.
Users need merely click what characteristics of the listing they want in the headline, and its location, and Marketing Central spits it out: “3 Bed, 3 Bath Home in North Raleigh For Sale.”
Campaigns can be created to promote listings or sold homes, to re-engage olds leads or to go after “abandoners,” which are those have sniffed around a website or listing but didn’t register. They can be run on Facebook, Instagram or both.
To build an audience, Marketing Central uses the latitude and longitude of the listing to target a 15-mile radius and builds a “look-alike” audience based on those who have stopped by the site or webpage.
Ads can be single listings or use multiple images, and the software uses an agent’s MLS ID to pull their listings into the system.
Budgets are presented very clearly. A slider bar can be used to adjust numbers and scale ad reach.
The content and tools are nicely consolidated on the page, effectively making the creation of an ad campaign as easy as posting about your next open house.
BoomTown added some sleek website content features, too, such as a video headers, teaser widgets and call to action buttons. The control panel sits left, and edits can be seen instantly.
Marketing Central and Success Assurance (the latter term’s presumptuousness notwithstanding) are two more upgrades that show BoomTown isn’t moving away from what’s made it one of the industry’s more popular marketing and business tools for well over a decade — and that’s sales-focused business tools.
Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.
