Rental Property Investor · Clarkston, GA · Member since 2012 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votes
I'm in the market for a marketing platform: leads, skip trace, SMS, email. It must do at least; skip trace then SMS then campaign management (auto responders, auto repeat every NN days, reminders). I also need to upload my own other lead sourced lists and skip trace and SMS.
I don't think reipro does SMS, which to me is behind the times. Mailing post cards is expensive and not nearly as cost effective per deal as SMS nor as fast a response.
Other tools that I have looked at and terse comments. have no affiliation;
- propstream great lead source, so far I feel has the widest range of decent leads including MLS, expired, vacant, late on taxes (depending on zip) etc. A weak marketing back end, only email, ringless voice mail and direct mail. None of these support dynamic data which is completely lame! IE splicing in the sellers name and address. Integrated skip trace at $0.30
- freedomsoft - maybe the oldest and most mature and maybe the most features. But the skip trace was expensive at $0.45, i could not find the per SMS or voice mail per minute costs.
- Joe Crump's (great guy and teacher BTW) push button auto marketure (domain ?? google). His gig is just lease options, sub to and has built in craigslist and zillow ad scraper for leads, no othre source of leads. Then SMS + auto responder + campaign + lead management. Very targeting lease options to FSBO's. I don't know if has skip trace or good list upload features. I doubt skip trace due to this tool is focusing on scraped FSBO leads with phone numbers off craigslist and zillow. FWIW I don't know any other tool that scrapes off craigslist / zillow.
What CRM/marketing platform are folks using today 2019 that includes skip tracing and SMS and campaign management?
Here's my two cents.... I'm a software developer. I have developed a couple entirely autonomous programs that manage specific marketing/advertising life cycles. Those programs do generate revenue, but by no stretch of the imagination, are they laying golden eggs. I speak about these programs and their functionality with absolutely no one. Why? There are plenty of good developers out there that can reproduce the functionality, and my little niche would become very quickly saturated. Now, why did I bring this up? The software/platform you are looking for absolutely exists, but for the same reason I'm not peddling my software to the public, neither is the owner of that software.
So what about the software that seems like its what you are looking for? Where you are going to want to focus your attention is on the leads/skiptracing facets.
1st, unique and proprietary lead sources are hard to come by and expensive. The majority of data that is available through nearly all marketing lead systems comes from the same place. Aggregated hacked database records. Its quite easy to get your hands on hacked data like the linkedin database or the experian database. If you were to merge those databases on say... email address, and then, toss in a third point of reference like state voter records which are publicly available, you could easily start your own lead company. Lots of people have done it..... really... pretty much every lead company you would consider buying leads/data from.
So where is the truly useful data that is updated often and would provide accurate and recent data (on a mass scale) for skip tracing? Credit Bureaus, Utility data, Cell Carrier Data and USPS... mostly. Utility data, cell carrier data, and usps, your best bet is corelogic.....$$$ And credit bureau data... $$$ as well.
Now I'm not saying that every email address and phone number on every lead list is bad.... Some people, the responsible ones, keep their cell phone numbers, and email addresses for many years. Those people will not need to be skip traced, as you will have the correct phone number/email address. It is all the other people who just got a new cell phone number, or a new email address you are trying to reach, before everyone else who has paid for 3 year old cell numbers....
What does this all mean? Unless you are spending a lot... and I mean a lot, of money on skip tracing with the majors, the information that is spit back from a "skip tracing" service is just different old data, which has most likely been provided by someone else trying to skip the same person.
Now to make matters worse, a company that develops software to do many tasks...ie leads/skip/crm/email/sms is not a specialist in any of those tasks, and are likely farming out the service to the lowest cost source.
For example, lets take a look at sms.. thats an easy one. A crm software development company offers sms functionality in their software. Unless they also happen to be a telecom company, and are recognized by nanpa, as well as have sip trunking capacity (for voip sms), or happen to have a crap ton of gsm sim modems (true sms) and have been delegated their own npa-nxx (area code/local code) set, the number you purchase to send sms messages through their crm is actually being provided by another telecom company. The crm company is likely just reselling the number and the sms service to you.
While email functionality can be provided directly through the software, to my knowlege corelogic, at&t, and equifax do not develop crm software so.... the sms, leads, and skip tracing, need to be sourced.
So, my suggestion... Buy your lists from where ever you like. Skip trace on your own...ie, Search Google for names addresses of people you are interested in digging deeper on. And use marketing automation platform/software to handle your email/sms goals... you got 2 choices... hubspot, and mautic .. Hubspot is a little pricey, mautic you are going to need to learn how to build and manage a webserver. (both will use outside sms services with api integration for sending smss) Or... learn to code...
BTW... im not trying to discourage you from your goals. Unfortunately, the real estate game is quite heavily saturated with people/software trying to make money on people.... not houses. I was a mortgage broker for 6 years and have been a software dev specializing in data for 13+... I am simply trying to shed a little light on what is actually happening behind the curtain, and sincerely wish you the best of luck!
Here's my two cents.... I'm a software developer. I have developed a couple entirely autonomous programs that manage specific marketing/advertising life cycles. Those programs do generate revenue, but by no stretch of the imagination, are they laying golden eggs. I speak about these programs and their functionality with absolutely no one. Why? There are plenty of good developers out there that can reproduce the functionality, and my little niche would become very quickly saturated. Now, why did I bring this up? The software/platform you are looking for absolutely exists, but for the same reason I'm not peddling my software to the public, neither is the owner of that software.
So what about the software that seems like its what you are looking for? Where you are going to want to focus your attention is on the leads/skiptracing facets.
1st, unique and proprietary lead sources are hard to come by and expensive. The majority of data that is available through nearly all marketing lead systems comes from the same place. Aggregated hacked database records. Its quite easy to get your hands on hacked data like the linkedin database or the experian database. If you were to merge those databases on say... email address, and then, toss in a third point of reference like state voter records which are publicly available, you could easily start your own lead company. Lots of people have done it..... really... pretty much every lead company you would consider buying leads/data from.
So where is the truly useful data that is updated often and would provide accurate and recent data (on a mass scale) for skip tracing? Credit Bureaus, Utility data, Cell Carrier Data and USPS... mostly. Utility data, cell carrier data, and usps, your best bet is corelogic.....$$$ And credit bureau data... $$$ as well.
Now I'm not saying that every email address and phone number on every lead list is bad.... Some people, the responsible ones, keep their cell phone numbers, and email addresses for many years. Those people will not need to be skip traced, as you will have the correct phone number/email address. It is all the other people who just got a new cell phone number, or a new email address you are trying to reach, before everyone else who has paid for 3 year old cell numbers....
What does this all mean? Unless you are spending a lot... and I mean a lot, of money on skip tracing with the majors, the information that is spit back from a "skip tracing" service is just different old data, which has most likely been provided by someone else trying to skip the same person.
Now to make matters worse, a company that develops software to do many tasks...ie leads/skip/crm/email/sms is not a specialist in any of those tasks, and are likely farming out the service to the lowest cost source.
For example, lets take a look at sms.. thats an easy one. A crm software development company offers sms functionality in their software. Unless they also happen to be a telecom company, and are recognized by nanpa, as well as have sip trunking capacity (for voip sms), or happen to have a crap ton of gsm sim modems (true sms) and have been delegated their own npa-nxx (area code/local code) set, the number you purchase to send sms messages through their crm is actually being provided by another telecom company. The crm company is likely just reselling the number and the sms service to you.
While email functionality can be provided directly through the software, to my knowlege corelogic, at&t, and equifax do not develop crm software so.... the sms, leads, and skip tracing, need to be sourced.
So, my suggestion... Buy your lists from where ever you like. Skip trace on your own...ie, Search Google for names addresses of people you are interested in digging deeper on. And use marketing automation platform/software to handle your email/sms goals... you got 2 choices... hubspot, and mautic .. Hubspot is a little pricey, mautic you are going to need to learn how to build and manage a webserver. (both will use outside sms services with api integration for sending smss) Or... learn to code...
BTW... im not trying to discourage you from your goals. Unfortunately, the real estate game is quite heavily saturated with people/software trying to make money on people.... not houses. I was a mortgage broker for 6 years and have been a software dev specializing in data for 13+... I am simply trying to shed a little light on what is actually happening behind the curtain, and sincerely wish you the best of luck!
Rental Property Investor · Clarkston, GA · Member since 2012 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votes
6y
Update, I watched Joe Crump's going over his push button auto marketure marketing plateform live review last night. 1st; Joe Crump is one of the nicest, knowledgable teachers I have met. See my votes, years, I've been around the block, owan enough doors to have quit. But the other lease option teachers are also great people too. Its a crazy deal space that all the teachers are good and honest people; John Jackson (TX), Joe Bodeck, and Joe McCall (supper smart) who has come out with a brilliant educatoin help: 1 page deal training. LOL no 1" think manual and 8 cds, just one deal type that fits on one page. I've bought his stuff (A-Z) its good, but razor bladding out just one deal scenario and training just that is a huge help for new folks.
Back to marketing; I've looked at freedomsofts videos, myreipro and now push button marketer and feel Crump as a huge asset and the push button marketure is the better looking marketing platform. Its focus is SMS where other systems are weak or have zero support for SMS marketing. Unfortunately I can't offer hands on use feedback.
My only hands own, own it use is propstream which has a weak marketing set of features. Tops (very good) lead generation, maybe the best in the market; MLS actives, expireds, late on taxes, divorce, vacant, absentee (much more) plus comps, public records for liens and mortgage / equity data. It has skip trace for $0.30/lead and ringless voicemail and direct mail post cards built in. The weak part is the crufty campaign support. It does have squeeze page website creation for you and email of the URL to sellers. No dynamic data (merge fields into the email). All said I guess propstream has more features than I gave impression. Maybe its the lack of mail merge fields, auto responder for emails, and now the best tactic of SMS that leaves me not interested in using propstream for marketing, only lead gen and pulling per address details; mortgage, liens, owner, comps...
Crump's auto marketure does not have integrated skip trace and never will. This tool is focused at scraping zillow / craigslist for any keywords, scraping the phone number/emails then doing great job of SMS/email campaign/tasks to those leads. Crump focuses on lease option/sub-to/wholesale the lease option to a tenant buyer deal type. IMHO the easiest deal type for a zero experience investor to get into. Traditoinal wholesaling of high equity has long been very difficult.
Rental Property Investor · Clarkston, GA · Member since 2012 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votes
4y
Google SMS marketing system, lots of them today. I'm using reireply.com . Every feature known to marketing. ;( meaning its complicated but works. It even has a smart phone app to get the sms replies and to do most maintenance on y9our phone. $99/mo.
Read here re SMS efficacy!!!! Its very low. How many spam calls/sms do you get offering to renew y9our auto warrantee? We are now numb/immune to SMS messaging. Plus Federal laws re spam are clamping down. The network carriers are filtering SMS before it even gets to destination phones. Mine largely go throough I'm seeing, re the "no", "stop", "stop f******g sending this s***" :)
As always, marketing success is more a function of the quality of y9ur list vs the channel. IE if you had a list of folks who are today behind on their mortgage BUT the banks NODi has not been sent out (public knowledge) you'd have a golden list. But this list is not purchasable iin my searching. There are sources of 30-60-90 late on some debt and this list is dirty (lots of bad data). Bad data is the dirty secret in the data list sellers...\