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Everything I said in this update on Cloze remains true. And now, there’s even more good stuff to talk about.
I try to be very cautious about how I communicate praise, primarily because I haven’t seen everything that’s out there. And, because software is constantly evolving, and sometimes, evolution can go backward. But until the team at Cloze gives me a reason to say otherwise, I’m confident in saying its relationship-first CRM product is an industry standard-bearer.
Cloze’s latest updates fortify long-term relationships using a unique newsletter builder that cleverly coalesces content automation with agent personalization.
Having grown frustrated with the stigma of stale drip campaigns, Cloze developed a solution that empowers agents to build expansive libraries of articles and resources as they go about their “normal” lives.
As users scroll through their favorite automotive enthusiast website or snowboarding magazine, it only takes a couple of clicks to save a page or intriguing story to their categorized Cloze Campaigns library.
Newsletters can then be assembled by merely selecting what was saved in the library. Cloze produces an article snippet, selects the best image to accompany it, and organizes the list for sending.
The idea here is to blend authenticity with automation, to allow agents to share more about themselves than the market. Do buyers and sellers really need you to tell them what’s happening with the market? Real estate data and news are everywhere, and no one — I mean no one — wants tips on how to clean gutters or spruce up a closet.
The Cloze team’s goal is to make its customers rethink the drip system.
In conjunction with the Campaigns module, the company’s new solution to Lead Management looks to shrink the “time to trust” window. With the ability to integrate hundreds of lead sources with an easy-to-design-and-deploy response structure, the tool emulates the newsletter feature by combining efficiency with original messaging. And those emails or texts generated from the software are written to be indistinguishable from one crafted by a human.
They accomplish this by not trying to over-complicate the message with pithy language or “deliberate” typos. The responses can also be contextualized from a previous client email, demonstrating an acknowledgment of their comments or requests.
As is the case with all Cloze messaging, agent responses will come from their personal business email, not a “@cloze.com” or other obscure domain.
The Cloze Text Sync App, a companion to the primary Cloze mobile app, gives users the ability to port all calls and texts directly into their Cloze account from any carrier, phone or country. All of that data is parsed into the appropriate client record and can be reported upon while separating all non-business information.
Perhaps the most impressive component of Cloze’s newest additions is its revamped reporting suite. Using several different graphs, charts and visualizations, agents, team leaders and brokers can pick apart a tremendous array of business activity involving Pipelines, Active Properties, Mail Sending, Leads and more.
In short, an entire office’s business progress can be monitored and forecasted. And this is where Cloze’s industry-leading user experience design proves itself once again. It’s not easy to make this much data visually palatable.
Granted, I’m seeing a lot of focus on business transparency these days, from back-office solutions to CMA suites. This effort is primarily because of the rapid influx of available data rooted in the rise of an ever-more digitized business world. Data is a currency, and real estate, for the most part, is doing a bang-up job of leveraging it, and that includes making it easy for practitioners to ingest and process.
It should come as no surprise, however, that Cloze excels at it.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
