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Usherpa is a marketing collateral creation and distribution service for real estate agents.
Platforms: Browser
Ideal for: New and mid-level agents
Top selling points:
- Marketing automation
- Rooted in real estate
- Multiple lead source connections
- Consistent post-sale marketing
- Simple, productive CRM
Top concern:
There’s a lot of good stuff here, but it’s all stuff that big name CRM and marketing solutions provide but at a higher price. Usherpa is best then, for new agents who need to broadcast services across multiple channels as opposed to established agents and top producers who can run much more targeted, streamlined marketing campaigns.
What you should know
Usherpa automates marketing for real estate agents. It can handle email campaigns with an array of custom, localized newsletter content, printing and mailing postcards and social media outreach.
While its value proposition isn’t anything totally new, there are some cool add-ons here that should entice agents needing to fire up their marketing to take a second look.
It’s worth noting that this is a family company, and its founder has a career’s worth of experience in lending and real estate lead generation and sales.
That should mean a few things to you, such as they know what kind of market information stirs consumers to take action, why it’s important to stay in touch with buyers after closing and why real estate agents should heavily work their colleagues in lending and other connected ancillary services. The software’s features are built around these concepts.
The application didn’t demonstrate any complexity to use, with easy to discern features and a contemporary interface. That said, the look of the newsletters wasn’t much to get excited about; they could use some graphic design updates. The subject matter is solid, though, with specific designs for long-term seller prospects, buyers, contacts’ birthdays, holidays and so forth.
Usherpa also has in-house staff to assist with database import, which includes assembling it from multiple sources when necessary. You only need to send them a file.
Usherpa offers social media marketing, too, and stats for tracking post performance.
Through an integration with the always popular BombBomb, users can distribute video email messages for campaigns or as more personal, one-on-one emails.
The CRM was a surprisingly nice touch. It’s clean and focused, and distributes information on Leads, Customers, Prospects and Business Partners across the screen in easy-to-read cards.
The My Radar module helps users understand exactly that: what they have coming up, from tasks and campaign launch dates to upcoming events.
Usherpa has an open API and works with Zapier, too, so there’s plenty of flexibility to work with other systems should you not be psyched on the marketing your brokerage-provided solution offers.
I think this software is good for new agents because it’s rooted in lead generation and nurturing — meaning it can help build a database pretty quickly. It’s aided in that effort by the fact that it’s virtually omnichannel; it spreads out marketing among print, social, web and email. There’s plenty of metrics and reporting, too.
I guess the name is pretty apropos, as Usherpa does a good job of burdening the weight of your marketing effort. Make sure you keep it organized though, as it’s easy to just see all these cool tools and send things off to contacts without any sort of strategy.
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.
