For the individual agent who needs to get off the ground quickly and affordably or who simply needs help writing listing descriptions, Agently is a good investment.
Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.
Agently is marketing software focused on automating listing descriptions, photography editing and social media management for real estate agents.
Platforms: Browser, mobile responsive
Ideal for: Individual new and mid-tier agents, and marketing assistants
Top selling points:
- Tagging system for property features
- Single property websites
- Facebook ads manager
- Easy Facebook ad execution
Top concern:
The photo enhancement samples I saw weren’t very good. Or at least, the edits were very easy to notice, like when your friend uses a “face-clearing” filter on social media. A number of existing industry photo services are superior.
What you should know
Agently is a marketing service that automates the creation of marketing copy and content for real estate agents, including listing copy, Facebook ad copy and listing photo editing. New agents looking to establish their brand and busy mid-level agents lacking marketing support staff could find a good deal of value in this kind of automation.
However, I’m not a fan of a service that automates copywriting for real estate agents. This is because I earn money as a copywriter for real estate agents.
I cringe every time Google offers to finish an email sentence for me, and that’s largely because it’s getting scary accurate and contextual. (I have to turn off that feature.)
Thus, I went into this demo skeptical of Agently’s capability to automate listing descriptions and cynical about the service as a whole. As someone who tends to seek conflict (Maybe that’s why I’m a columnist?), I was ready to pounce when the call started.
Unfortunately, my simmering ire had no real outlet. This is a pretty damn good tool for making marketing easy.
After entering a listing’s basics, like location and size, a tagging system lets users select a number of listing features categorized by room and area, such as the kitchen or a primary bedroom. The same applies for less specific, overarching characteristics of the home and the surrounding neighborhood.
Tags highlighted in yellow will be automatically included with each, and you can include a few custom adjectives, too. You can also add stuff about nearby schools and other public amenities.
If you don’t like the narrative Agently spits back, you can refresh it a number of times for different, slightly altered versions.
So, yes, I’m pretty impressed with the final, auto-generated listing descriptions. Yet, a caveat: These descriptions aren’t terrific at telling stories about homes or capturing your unique tone or approach — things that help you stand out among competitors.
Nevertheless, there are some dismal writing efforts that somehow make it into the marketplace (sorry, it’s true). So, if you’re willing to admit you’re part of the problem, Agently can help you look like a better writer to your sellers.
Once photos are uploaded, the listing description and accompanying visuals are saved for use in all other primary marketing endeavors, such as the Facebook ad builder, social media posts and listings that populate your included agent website.
You can instantly edit photos to fix poor exposure or bad outdoor lighting, but I found this to be the weakest aspect of the greater solution. The sky enhancements were obvious, unable to smooth out contact points along trees or roof lines. It’s as if this feature was an afterthought, and honestly, most of today’s latest in-camera editing tools can better it.
The Canva-inspired social media content creator is great for promoting yourself or your listings, and there are templates designed around attracting leads and general branding.
It also comes with editable infographics, blog post announcements, referral requests and a number of options for highlighting listing milestones, such as a price adjustments, under contract and closed.
Facebook ad campaigns can be based on categories such as market report updates, home evaluation calls to action or listing appeals. And of course, Agently generates all the ad copy for you. Choose a budget and location, and you’re ready to publish.
Agently also understands that these ads and listing promotions need a place to send leads, so the service offers an agent website. It looks good, modern and dynamic.
Listings will auto-populate the site and be paired with a map, a short bio, general branding imagery and lead interest forms. It’s light on content, but it does offer a sharply designed web presence for agents and their properties — and that’s a better start that what a lot of brokerages offer.
Agently’s roadmap includes the ability to incorporate video and provide brokerage-level enterprise accounts. At the moment, it’s best for individual agents, which I think will remain the best target for it. Most brokerages have similar systems offered to them by their franchises, many of which incorporate CRM software, deep lead management and other related business tools.
But, for the individual agent who needs to get off the ground quickly and affordably, or who simply needs help writing listing descriptions, Agently makes a good a investment.
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.
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