Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Magic.
What goes through your mind when you see that word? Or hear it?
Depending on who you are, it could be anything from Cinderella’s fairy godmother to Harry Potter’s wand. But, I think I’m safe in saying that you probably didn’t think of either email management or schedule management.
Am I right?
If you did think of those two things, then comment below…we’ve got to talk.
Anyway, I use the term to describe the cool app that’s a hybrid of email and schedule management that feels like magic in the way it can make a difference to your business.
Recently, I sat down to speak with Boomerang’s Marketing Director, Barry Enderwick, about this tool that every realtor should have on their radar.
Realty Biz News: “How do you think Boomerang can help real estate professionals?”
Enderwick: “We make productivity tools that are focused around human beings, helping them take care of tasks that get in the way of what they really need to get done. And, for real estate agents, that’s taking care of things like managing emails and scheduling meetings.
“To the extent that relationships are such a key part of real estate agent's livelihood, it helps to make their relationship start off on a good foot if they use something like one of our tools, Bookable Schedule.”
Realty Biz News: What do you think sets Boomerang apart from the other offerings out there?
Enderwick: “For one thing we’re a hybrid of both email management and meeting scheduling management. We’ve effectively handled two of the biggest sticking points of time wasting for people in any business, let alone real estate, right?
“So for us, the combination is very powerful. Before the meeting schedule, it really comes down to people sending five to eight emails back and forth to try and find a time to meet. Or, one person sends out a scheduling link that makes the other person who’s invited do all the work.
“We think that technology should be leveraged so that both sides have an easier time of things.
“So if you send one of our calendars using one of our scheduling features, all they have to do is click and confirm the date and they’re done. If they happen to be a Boomerang customer themselves, they can overlay their calendar right onto the calendar in the email that you’ve sent them to see what time slots are available.”
Realty Biz News: How difficult would it be for a buyer or seller to connect…someone who’s not a real estate professional?
Enderwick: “Anybody can install and use Boomerang. We have Boomerang for Gmail, and Boomerang for Outlook, iOS, and Android, so it’s as easy as installing a browser extension, and in Outlook, it’s an Add-on.
“It’s very easy to just add it and start using it, and you can use it for free. We do have subscription tiers as well, but anybody can use the scheduling feature right now and a lot of the email features as well.”
Realty Biz News: That’s cool…does Boomerang work with any other apps besides SalesForce?
Enderwick: Not presently, but we’re working on integrations. I’ll have to get back to you on that, and where we’re at on that.
Realty Biz News: “But adding more features is part of the plan?”
Enderwick: “We want to help people conduct business as efficiently as possible, anywhere they need to be, so we’re definitely always trying to constantly improve. We do a lot of customer calls to get feedback and understand how our software might or might not be working for them or might need to be improved so that we can make changes, because we want to make things as frictionless as possible for everyone.”
Realty Biz News: So I’m assuming Boomerang probably has templates?
Enderwick: “We don’t have email templates, but we do have an AI-backed tool we call Respondable and it helps you write emails that are more likely to get a response.
“It basically takes a look at all the emails that have been sent using Boomerang, not in detail, but as an aggregate, and then it learns things like “okay, when people use these kinds of words, or this kind of tone, they’re more likely to get a response.”
“We’ve had sales folks tell us that when they used our scheduling features and sent the Magic Live Calendar link that’s clickable (and it’s always up to date, no matter when the email is opened), they get responses twice as fast as they did before.”
Realty Biz News: Can you think of any specific way that realtors would benefit from Boomerang as far as their day-to-day tasks are concerned, besides the scheduling feature?
Enderwick: “Yes. One of our email features is Inbox Pause. Basically, this allows you to pause the influx of emails that are coming in for a certain amount of time. You get to decide how long and you can even have emails that you definitely don’t want to block, be able to get through if you want.
“So that’s one way to focus. Another thing you can do is use our Boomerang feature, which allows you to say, “I would like to deal with email tonight at five o’clock instead of now.” And the great thing about that is it saves you from having this sea of unread emails.
“I think we all do this where you’re reading your emails and you see something and you go, “I can’t deal with this now”, and so you mark it unread.
“Then suddenly, you’ve got a stack of them.
“With the Boomerang feature, you can actually send the emails away and have them come back at the time when you want to deal with them, so nothing falls through the cracks.”
I was intrigued with this tool, so I dug a bit deeper, and this is what I found:
Bookable Schedule allows you to share an up-to-date snapshot of your calendar, showing what times you’re available.
This tool works with any email provider. The clickable link opens up the Magic Live Calendar, making it easy to share your availability information with your guests, without compromising your privacy.
Once a meeting is scheduled, both you and the person you’re meeting with receive confirmations, and the event is placed on your respective calendars, complete with either a Zoom or Google Meet meeting details within the calendar notes.
Your calendar will be immediately updated, preventing double bookings. and also, because the person viewing your link only sees those times you’ve marked as available, there’s no concern about privacy.
This tool puts the power of emails back in your control.
Whenever you want (or need) to stop the flood of emails, turn this feature on. Your emails will be hidden from view for as long as you need them to be.
If there’s something you’ve really got to buckle down and do, Inbox Pause can help.
Other features:
This clever AI assistant uses machine learning (gathered from millions of emails (including yours) to help you write better emails and improve your response rates.
Respondable can give you useful tips like how to open your email; “hi there”, “hello”, or “dear”, spam filter rules to avoid, what lines work best for closing, and what you should - and shouldn’t - do with your subject line.
Do yourself a favor. If you don’t have a fairy godmother (and if you do, lucky you!) take a minute to click this link to learn more about Boomerang and all of its email and schedule management features.
What have you got to lose…a glass slipper?
