Just in time for the holiday season: we completed and launched some new features for RealBird, some pretty cool ones in fact. Let's see the details:
Text message (SMS) real estate marketing for your RealBird listings
We integrated RealBird with Twilio, the leading and most cost effective voice and SMS messaging platform. The RealBird Text Message (SMS) Real Estate Marketing Service enables your prospective home buyers to send a short code (text message) via their mobile phone to your dedicated number and receive your property information instantly on their cell phone. The automatically returned text message will contain the brief information of your property, your phone number and a link to your RealBird mobile property website. The RealBird service will also capture the phone numbers of the prospects, notifies you instantly and save these leads for you. This is an additional option to the existing RealBird QR code marketing tool to supports mobile consumers who can not or do not want to scan your QR code. Together with the RealBird QR codes, you can now reach all different type of mobile users.
It's quick to get started and it is very cost effective:
- RealBird PRO membership (US and Canada): only $99/year for unlimited listings – if you are a PRO member, no additional RealBird fee applies
- Twilio local phone number: $1/monoth . That's right, only a buck per month
- Twilio text message charge: 1 cent per SMS received and 1 cent per SMS sent back to the consumer. So a captured lead is only $0.02 ( 2 cents/lead ). This is only due when you actually received a lead
You can be up and running in 10 minutes:
- Log into RealBird (if you are a free member, you can upgrade to PRO instantly from the member area)
- Follow the instructions in this tutorial to set up a Twilio account and to configure it with your RealBird service.
New Craigslist ad template
As a follow-up on the new RealBird single property website platform that we launched in October, the Craigslist ad template is now upgraded as well. Not only the ad looks much nicer, it also provides you with unlimited color themes and an option to turn particular links on and off. The RealBird code generator is also improved to reduce the time it takes from start to finish to post your RealBird listings on Craigslist.
There is nothing new to learn: You can access the code generator from the Listing Management page in the RealBird member area or through your RealBird Quick Share page. Just click "Post to Craigslist" and the new interface opens (example above). Just follow the onscreen instructions and your custom and beautiful ad can be on Craigslist in a few minutes.
Contacts and Leads export
A simple tool has been also added to your Contacts and Leads database on RealBird. You can export those databases now as comma delimited files (CSV) and then import the contacts and leads into your 3rd party CRM or newsletter service. Visit the "Contacts" and "Leads" tab in the RealBird member area and click the "Export" link. Just as a reminder, prospects in the Contacts database are those who created their own account on your RealBird Property Search and Leads are those who explicitly requested more information, market stats from you or asked to schedule a showing. These are leads collected through all of your RealBird applications, including your property websites, property search modules, your RealBird browser toolbar, mobile sites and so on.
Well, that's probably our last major launch this year, but there are much more to be introduced in the upcoming few months. Should you have questions about any of these new add-on features, please do not hesitate to ask.
Thanks and Happy Holidays !
** The RealBird Team **
Sending text online is not only easy, but is also reliable and cost effective when compared to messaging through our mobile phones.
We already use RingCentral for our phones. Can that be used instead of Twilio?
Currently, the SMS keyword marketing works with only Twilio . We love both Twilio and Ringcentral, but they provide different services. We are a user of RingCentral too for our business, but I don’t think that they provide SMS API which is required for this. Twilio is designed for the ground up for such integration and the $1/month cost of the phone number via Twilio is amazingly affordable. Plus, they currently offer $30 credit for new subscribers (as of 12/26/2011), so there is no upfront cost to try it. Thanks for the inquiry and Happy New Year.