Any experience w/ Max Maxwell's "REI" Rail lead generation?
Raleigh, NC · Member since 2018 · 46 posts · 34 votes
I'm currently conducting discovery on the various Software and tech tools that will help my business grow. I'm adopting the integrated Podio/Call Rail package and other software. However, Max's REI RAIL (Lead generation through RVM) has caught my attention and I was curious to know if anyone has had any sharable experience with it.
Hi everyone,
thought I'd share my experience with you guys and hopefully, someone finds it helpful :)
I am familiar with SlyBroadcast, CallRail, REIReply, REIPro, Propstream, Podio, Salesforce, CallTools, Carrot website, Twilio, ListSource & REIRail.... just to name a few.
The rep from Reirail was absolutely correct on comparing apples to oranges with CallRail.
ReiRail is a marketing platform, CallRail is just for your phone numbers that you'll use for offline marketing, website numbers, campaign numbers etc... Quick tip on your number here: Callrail allows you to switch your numbers out as often as possible. WHY am I mentioning this you might ask? Well, you know that pesky little "Scam Likely" you see pop up on your phone from time to time...? Well, that's someone else who is also using a method of marketing for whatever list you might be on (beauty products, bill collector etc) and that number has already been flagged.... What that means for us; Change your numbers every so often when doing Cold Calling & RVM . Otherwise, you'll have a spike in receiving someone's VM when cold calling or when doing RVM, your missed call will just show up as scam likely- and they will def NOT listen to your msg.
At the end of the day all it boils down to is what type of marketing you want to pursue and how you'll execute it.
First, decide on where to get your leads from- ListSource, AttomData, or a third party site that includes all kinds of bells and whistles like map view, skip tracing etc...
I am the type of person that prefers getting my things directly from the source. And i tell you this because of the following: ListSource and AttomData are the source. Most other platforms purchase their data from these guys. I won't name names here because that's not what's important here.
Yes, we're all calling "Potentially" the same lead, but if you're not purchasing from the source, your list isn't fresh! Some platforms update their list every 30-60 days! THIS IS A PROBLEM! If you're calling on someone who's sold already, now you've added an extra angry caller on the list :(... I've played with various platforms and I always come back to list source- give me the data and allow me to decide on where to go and get the best deal for my budget....
Second, skip trace and get the info on these potential leads. Same rule applies here guys but be super vigilant. Skip tracing is highly important. You need the most ACCURATE** info on these properties for a reasonable cost. This all adds up to the cost per lead at the end. I, again, have used various platforms "Oh this offers all in one place" etc and end up paying wayyyyyy to much overall.... I use Batchskiptracing. Solid deep search, accurate info- well, the most accurate I've found at least.
Here I'd like to add- We are all in this community together and we all give and take advice... Maybe we've seen a few different Youtuber's giving advice on REI tech things that will help automate and grow your business but please know this- Everyone is offering a course or a platform to use because they've built it tailored to how they want THEIR business flow to be. Everyone thinks and does things differently, so one person's platform may not be the best for the next person.
Third, you'll need to decide on the type of marketing you'd like to do. RVM, Cold Calling (TTP), Mailers, GoogleAds, Texting campaign, Driving for Dollars etc... You get the idea.
I've used various different ways and all have been offline marketing (Basically everything but the google ads I mentioned above.....wait no, I use my carrot website but I don't pay for ads)
With RVM keep in mind that when you skip trace, you won't be able to use the landlines. So either be prepared to lose more than half of the numbers you wanted skip traced or be prepared to tackle this obstacle with a different marketing strategy.Also also, (yes meant that twice), a good amount of the people that call you back are calling because they had a missed call- not because they've listened to your msg.
Again, platforms etc....
I won't get into all of these individually as this post is way longer than expected, but feel free to msg me directly with any questions or clarifications. I am currently using a RVM, Text and cold calling approach that I absolutely love.
Finally, you'll need to decide on the CRM you'd like. Again, lots of platforms offer some form of crm. but if you're doing multi-touch marketing, you'll want to have a central place where it all links up, know what I mean ;)
for this, after trying out different options I taught myself some basics in Podio and then added as I learned. It allows complete autonomy of everything.
So to summarize it all up, just decide a few things; do you have the time or the money?
The time to learn basic things to get your flow started or the money to throw away at all these different platforms that at the end of the day the course or platform you've bought into is a different stream of income for the owner, which means you'll pay extra for what you actually need and have lots and lots of bells and whistles you don't need or are just on the platform but you have to pay an extra fee to use the dang thing.
I use ListSource for my leads, REIReply for my RVM and Texting Campaigns, Calltools for my cold calls and I tie it all up with podio and callrail :)
Tried keeping this brief smh*
Hopefully it was helpful!
Thanks for your valuable input. You seem to hit on every single point that I was interested in... and more. I really hope you're not an undercover Slybroadcast agent.
Does SlyBroadcast integrate with Call Rail? Or do you have to export/import the Lead data?
Thanks for your valuable input. You seem to hit on every single point that I was interested in... and more. I really hope you're not an undercover Slybroadcast agent.
Does SlyBroadcast integrate with Call Rail? Or do you have to export/import the Lead data?
I know right.. Although there were some interesting points made about reirail I had to ask myself that same question if theyre a slybroadcast agent. It's ashame you can't trust anyone these days. I don't have any experience with Max's system as of yet but, I was thinking about actually purchasing it today. I'm still kinda of reluctant. Everybody makes these big promises but never seem to actually come through. I tried Sean Terry's RVM Lead machine and got duped. $800 for the rvm, over 10,000 drops with their trash Data from datazapp which costed me about another $1000 with not one convertible lead. I received nothing but angry voicemails/DNCs out of 10k drops that's crazy. So I'm kinda at a stand still at the moment trying figure out my next move. Just wish I had more proof of these systems actually working.
@Donnell Gardner Your work and investment is not in vain. Wholesaling is like the Wild West these days and you have a feeding frenzy going on with these Motivated Sales List and people are being preyed upon. I have been sitting on the fringes studying before going full fledge since a lot of the gurus promote their flavor-of-the-month which amount to being undercover paid advertisements.
That's why I'm encouraging more and more individuals in the community share their experiences and their numbers. Because Numbers won't lie and ultimately they are great artists... who can paint a very accurate picture.
We just signed up with REI Rail and ran our first campaign. I agree with the poster way above, its very buggy, very particular, and the first few days I was pissed because if im paying several hundred just to get access to a product it better damn well work flawlessly and it did not. Support on the app is **** however if you jump on facebook the actual owners are very quick to respond inside the facebook community and get your issue resolved.
The amount of frustration I had the first day was pretty incredible. I was trying to run a test campaign to make sure I had all the bugs worked out and every thing was working as it should and half the time I couldnt get it to run, I had to delete and redo my test campaign several times, just an overall huge pain and I consider myself pretty tech savvy. I had even watched all their videos before going inside the program.
After running a campaign here is what ive found:
Of a list of 2650 leads, only 670 were actually eligible to have RVM's dropped. They arent able to drop to land lines and I wasnt aware of that, its not advertised anywhere to my knowledge. Once your in the system it explains that to you. You dont pay for leads that arent dropped though. They also appear unable to drop to ATT phones as my partner and his wife only showed 4 missed calls and a blank voicemail. We also heard from others when they called in this was the case.
They have a sort of drop scheduler built in where you schedule how many total drops you want done over a period of time each day. It doesnt appear to work well. It overshot our max by about 100. The second day I just let it run to the end of our list so I dont have any further experience yet.
They advertise 3 cents per drop but thats only if you buy 10,000 at a time, otherwise their lowest purchase of 500 drops is 10 cents per drop.
Deep trace really doesnt work very well, sometimes it does, other times it shows me data on someone who is not even who I am calling.
As far as results, we sent out around 250 the first day and got 10 call backs with 1 lead. The next day we sent out the rest of the 679 and got a ton of call backs and a couple leads. So that seemed positive.
One thing we really like is how it pulls up the property of the person calling, that is awesome and the main reason we subscribed.
We'll continue to use it for now but knowing what I know I probably wouldnt recommend it to anyone else at this time. They definitely shouldnt be charging an onboarding fee as there is literally no onboarding, ive had zero contact from anyone and received no support when I needed it. Thats just a cash grab plain and simple.
Anyway hope that helps.
@Chuck Sumner Awesome review. I wish you had more positive results but I certainly appreciate you giving myself and the community your unbiased experience. Thanks for the transparency and the stats. Loving all the numbers you dropped on us.
What I take from this is that RVM as an additional marketing channel is quite valuable and could prove to be valuable/profitable if the proper tool to implement it was utilized. I asked the original question because I was considering SlyBroadcast vs REIRail.
@Chuck Sumner I'm on the fence about rei rail. You think that startup fee has been worth it since you started? looks good on the outside, but i haven't seen any other reviews about it.
Horrible. It doesn't work, there are better systems out there. I cancelled after about a week and am still waiting to get my money back. It's been over 3 weeks. Been talking with one of their reps (who is a manager) and they keep trying to get me to come back and keep giving me the run around about my money being refunded and that it's in "processing".
Hello All - Just wanted to chime in here briefly. I'm part of the management team at REIRail and I have to say I'm disheartened and quite surprised to see the negative experiences noted here. We are not a perfect organization. And like all software products, we've got our challenges. But our customer satisfaction scores are overwhelmingly positive. So your comments are particularly tough to read. That said, I believe they can also be instructive, and helpful as I plan to take them back to the engineering and customer support teams for review.
I don't want to get into a tit for tat (never productive), but I do want to clarify a couple of points made above. Then I will gladly respond to any specific questions anyone cares to ask me.
Re: Cost- Our $397 license fee is half that of the comparable product (RVM Lead Machine) that was referenced by another user. It's a one time charge, as our license is perpetual. No annual renewal. After that, you're just paying for data with the subscription plan you choose. You can cancel at any time.
I'd also point out that we are the only platform on the market that is a seamless end to end system that handles outbound as well as inbound. Sounds like some of the folks on this thread are pretty sophisticated marketers. But the prospect of cobbling together multiple systems to administer an RVM campaign, and also maintaining efficient list management is completely overwhelming for the vast majority of our users--in fact most REI's in general. The simplicity of having all under one roof is a major part of the REIRail value proposition.
Also, not to quibble. But Call Rail's $30 product mentioned above is not an apples to apples comparison. I'm sure the writer wasn't trying to be disingenuous, but since the original question was posed by @Brookshire Harris, who I presume is new to all these systems, it's important that we are precise in our comments. That $30 plan provides only 500 minutes and zero text messages. It gives 5 local numbers NOT 10 (they used to offer 10 numbers for this price). REIRail's $97/mo plan gives 750 minutes + 250 texts + 3 local phone numbers + 3 lead pages + access to our Deep Trace technology which no one else in the world has (more on that below). To be clear, I don't believe in selling based on price. But again, I just want to be accurate. We may not be the lowest price. But I think if you look closely, you'll see we are the best value.
As for alternate products, sure a user could combine Sly for outbound and Call Rail for inbound and get something that works. But like I said, it's a clunky experience and requires some technical savvy to pull off. And again--the apples :) Sly is a good system, but not nearly as robust. If you've ever tried to do a custom schedule or rehash your drop campaign with that product you know what I mean. And by the way, their cheapest RVM drop rate is 4 cents each. Our rates go as low as 3 cents. And our drops don't expire. You can roll them over indefinitely.
I've looked at every system in our space closely and I feel confident that for the level of functionality and ease of use, our system is fairly priced. The more important (and frankly more concerning) thing is that some on this thread felt the product did not perform as advertised. I'd like to address that head on.
REIRail's Deep Trace technology is an innovation in REI tech. Anyone who's used RVM before knows the frustration of stumbling through a call with a prospect who expects you to know who you're speaking to and what property they own. DT solves that problem and then some. It also tells you personal details to help you build rapport with that caller, and property details so you sound professional and prepared. It does all of this instantly. That said, it is subject to the same constraints of all data mining products. It is not 100% accurate 100% of the time. Nor is any other data product on the market.
The algorithms that power Deep Trace are built on the same tech stack that powers our Skip Trace product. Our accuracy for both products is just shy of 83%. This is based on over 1 million queries at this point. If there's any data nerds on the thread you know that's pretty dang strong! I recognize that's little comfort if you're part of that other 17%. Just trying to bring some context here.
Re: customer service - we take full responsibility for any bad experience any user may have had. There's no excuse for it. However, we did find ourselves crushed by new signups following Max's launch webinars. We have since ramped up capacity and tightened QA for all support personnel. That said, one resource that has been in place since Day 1 is our customer success manager. The CSM's job is purely to delight and empower users. One user above said he was never contacted by a CSM for onboarding. If that's the case, again, I apologize. I'd appreciate the opportunity to rectify that for you.
Not only is there formal onboarding but there are other small group trainings for users who are a bit more advanced in their use of the system. I won't post the link here bc I think it violates BP rules. But any active user can sign up for that. Just shoot a note to support.
Lastly, another user mentioned that despite a bad experience with support, he noted the quick response and hands-on approach of senior management inside the FB group. First, thank you for recognizing that. We take customer happiness very seriously and monitor our community closely to keep tabs on user sentiment. We have over 1,000 users in that FB community group and it's become a primary vehicle for gathering feedback (as well as providing tips and tricks to our users). Candidly, I don't spend much time here on BP. But I'm glad that a friend encouraged me to check in. This is a great resource and I know the people in these discussions are earnest in trying to find the best tools for their business. That said, I get a little concerned that a small number of dissatisfied users here might skew a reader's impressions of the product. I hope that you will all take my showing up here at 2am on Christmas Eve as a show of our seriousness about seeking feedback and continuing to improve our product. LOL. Thank you to all who weighed in. And sorry for the long note. Feel free to reply here with questions or to DM.
Happy Holidays.
I also used REI rail for a month and quit due to the buggy platform. My final straw was after I ran a campaign and realized that none of the text messages from my leads were coming through. Overall I thought their idea for a one stop shop platform was great but execution was poor. As noted above, their landing page system didn't work so I couldn't stop using on carrot. Also, their tracking numbers were very buggy and lacked IVR functionality, which is critical to RVM in my opinion, so I couldn't quit CallRail.
I was really rooting for Max on this one but thought the software was released prematurely and I can’t say my experience with customer service was great either. I’d save my money as there are better alternatives out there.
@Vincent Harris
Thanks for weighing in on your product. I think it’s important to get both perspectives from the User community as well as Management. Actually, you highlighted some features that I wasn’t even aware that REIRail even offered. So I’m grateful to this BiggerPockets forum that allows this discussion to take place.
Yes you are correct. I genuinely *would* like to know what are some of the pros and cons of the software before making a heavy investment of time and money into it. I’m an IT guy and a geek for software/apps that improve both life and work. And I earnestly would like to know what tools, out of all the garden variety of choices, are the most efficient to setup and scale my real estate business for the optimal performance. And that’s a very subjective and personal journey, but one that would greatly benefit from the experience and advice of others to avoid roadblocks and pitfalls. I’m typically the person that will wait 6 months before buying the new iPhone, PlayStation, or new gadget. Just so that all the bugs are worked out by the early adopters. I don’t like the feeling of paying to be a Beta Tester.
Nonetheless, I’m a big fan of Max and I too believe that REIRail has some phenomenal features. The 83% success rate on SkipTracing (I trust you in that), Integrated Outbound/Inbound, and the Caller recognition.
I do want to give it a try and will indeed sign up. But as is my nature, I will wait 6 months for all of the growing pains to fade away. And in all fairness to the REIRail team I will return back to BiggerPockets to give an update and what I hope will be an awesome review.
I was on the fence about using the software too. I see that similar software programs give you a Free trial for a couple of weeks or more. I sent an email to reirail support to ask for a Free trial to try it out and got a message back: "If interested in seeing exactly what the system can do, request for a demo schedule yourself click on this link.....".
To me, that is not what I asked for and thus it is not good customer service. I will also wait about 6 months too and see how it evolves. I would like to support Max and his product but I need something that will work for me and I can't just shell out "sign up fee's" for a product that may not do what I need it to do. I am glad I read these reviews!
We used to for a short time and is currently "paused" for a few reasons. I wish it wasn't hyped up so much to be "powerful" and "revolutionary". I have a hard time believing that Max himself used it in his business for months before releasing it.
- It was buggy from the start. I wasn't able to record voicemail recordings for a week until someone completely deleted my account and recreated it. Not a big deal. But then every time we would tag a call after it came in, the tag would disappear when we go back to the call activity page. Then we have to re-tag it. This isn't fun when you have calls coming in back to back.
- I'm not familiar with how RVM tech works on the back end but a lot of people were claiming that they have a bunch of missed calls from us and no voicemail. And it actually rings! And only about 30% of the attempts to drop a voicemail were successful.
- So we have a system where only a small % of your total prospects are actually being reached and many of those who call back don't even listen to the voicemail. This isn't necessarily REI Rail's fault but more of an inherent problem with RVM.
At this point, I've decided that Cold calling, direct mail and online advertising are the best marketing avenues.
thanks for everyone's input. I was ready to commit today to reirail even after asking couple of times to try the software and getting no response back. i'd continue using needtoskip and add to my marketing the two softwares mentioned above.
@Brookshire Harris This post is a good dialogue and was very informative as I was also looking at REI Rail.
I made the decision last week to hold off as it’s really important to vet new software and based on posts here, does anyone know if they did beta or soft release with limited sign up to work out some of the issues mentioned?
I've seen multiple REI software companies do multiple beta trials before going live.
I think they have a good concept and hopefully it continues to deliver and get better.
Just wanted to take the time to thank everyone that has shared their experiences with REIRail here and given feedback on the product. I myself looked into it and had been heavily considering it, and the information shared by those who have already given a go has truly helped.
I was considering reirail also but as a newbie to RVM I’m skeptical of the software. Will continue to monitor and take advise of several more experienced than me and wait. Thanks so much for all the input here!
Hey everyone m, since it’s been 7 months since the opening of this thread, does anyone else have a new perspective?
I am following this thread as I'd also like information on REIRAIL updates, if any @Brookshire Harris Your help is greatly appreciated!
These comments and experiences have been very insightful. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to chime in and share your thoughts.
Hey everyone, This was a great thread to read as I too was looking into REIrail. I am a huge fan of Max and would like to give this a try, so any updates on if the bugs mentioned above have been resolved?
@Brookshire Harris have you had a chance to give this a go?
What are the alternatives? I have yet to see anyone say what is better out there that is a 1 stop shop. That you can do everything that you can in reirail?
I would like to know of any updates as well. Also who might actually have great results with any other products. Please no sales agents or employee trolls.
I'm just getting started and I was on the verge purchasing multiple individual softwares to make life easier until I ran into Max and heard about this one stop shop (ReiRail); which sounds great but, after careful research and DD, the sizzle is more than the steak but, I love the efforts and info that Max gives and kudos for that and, hopefully he'll be the first to the market with a more efficient one stop shop technology.