Remember when we announced our expansion to the Queen’s Country? We mentioned that exciting things were coming your way. Well buckle your seatbelts, friends. It’s begun. Our developers have been working hard on lots of new features, and we’re proud to announce that the first one is ready. Introducing: Delayed Portal Uploads! This functionality allows you to set a programmed default upload delay for the portals of your choosing, so you can set and forget. Once the specified number of hours has passed or a specific date reached (whatever you’ve chosen), Rex will automatically upload the listing to that portal.
What this means for your agency
Used right, this new functionality could save one in five of your vendors thousands of dollars they’d otherwise spend on a portal ad. More on this soon. Before we jump into how it works, here are some ways a programmed delay to marketing your listings on portals like realestate.com.au and domain benefits your sellers, buyers and ultimately, your agency.
Leverage your database and alternative forms of advertising
“But all the buyers are on the portals!” some of you might protest. Well, no - they’re not. You have an entire database of active buyers. You have their email addresses, their phone numbers, and perhaps even the name of their first-born children. With this feature release, we’re giving you a programmed default window to carry out pre-market advertising to your database - much of which can be automated by Rex. You just have to take advantage of the functionality. When you create a new listing, you could have Rex automatically:
- publish it on your website (This means you’re offering access to stock exclusively on your website for a period of time before it goes to the portals, giving you a point of difference. Potential purchasers will have a real reason to browse your site, rather than going to the portals); and
- send buyer matching alerts and email newsletters, so potential buyers hear about it 7 - 14 days before it appears anywhere else.
You could also pick up the phone and let buyers know you’ve got something that might tickle their fancy.
Generate more interest in your listings
In a difficult market, you want to generate the most interest you can. With greater interest comes more competitive offers, and a higher price. You can use tools like Spoke to cost effectively generate as much awareness as possible in that same window, before going large with a listing on one or more of the portals. Spoke can target ads for your listing to the buyers most likely to be interested in properties just like it, on Facebook, Instagram and websites across the Google Display Network. Then, it can make sure they see more, different ads for that same listing on social media and websites like Brisbane Times and Gumtree. People spend an average of 334 minutes (or five and a half hours) a day on the web. We spend 100 of those minutes on social media platforms, and the rest watching puppy videos reading online news, researching, ordering online shopping, etc. Advertising on these platforms and websites is a cost effective way to reach the best buyers for a property before you launch on the portals.
Save your sellers’ money
A number of Rex users are clearing 20% of their new listings within the first week of an off-market, pre-market or sneak peak campaign. These agents are saving one in five of their sellers thousands in advertising spend on portals and other areas (if you sell in the first week - you probably don’t need glossy brochures…). You’re offering your sellers a better service, cost savings and a point of difference (access to your database). The upshot? More referral business and return clients.
Strengthen your relationship with buyers
There’s also the collateral benefit of adding value for your buyers. For active buyers, a ‘sneak peek’ before a property hits in the portals creates a sense of uniqueness and exclusivity; they are being shown a house they literally will not see anywhere else. This also gives you an excuse to keep in regular contact with what should be a targeted list of hot buyers, and own your relationship with them.Best of all? You can power this with the features you already have access to: the automated listing alerts that come out of the box with Rex.
Build your brand online
Delaying your portal uploads could also substantially increase traffic to your website. Heard of the saying, ‘build it and they will come’? Well, if you’re consistently publishing new listings on your agency’s website a week or two before they’re published anywhere else, interested buyers are going to come. That means more eyes on your brand, rather than the portals.Here’s how to do it.
Setting an Upload Delay
True Rexperts probably know that you’ve always had total control over where and when your listing will be available, and been able to stage the release of listings from within Rex so that properties can appear on some channels before others. This has always been helpful to work around public holidays, for example, but you still needed to remember to sign in and action it later. For this reason, you probably didn’t bother staggering your portal uploads. Well, now you don’t have to - Rex can do it for you. We’ll start in the Portals and Publication Defaults tab of the Admin section. The first thing you’ll notice is a new column in the Portals table: upload delay. This is the number of hours after publishing that a listing will be uploaded to that particular portal. Only Super users (and users with the Manage Portal Setups privilege) will be able to set an upload delay. If that’s you, hover your cursor between the name and portal columns - and a drop down menu will appear. Click Auto Activation / Upload Options, and you’ll see a dialogue like this:
Simply pop in the number of hours you would like to delay the publishing of your listing by, and hit Save. The number of hours you entered should now appear in that new upload delay column next to the correct portal. It really is as easy as that - just be aware that this will not affect any existing portal upload delays you have previously set. Want to add an upload to delay certain listings only? That’s also incredibly easy.
Overriding a Portal Delay
Only Super Users or Users with the Update Portal Settings privilege can override a portal delay. If you work in a closed office, you’ll also need ownership of that particular listing. From the Listing record, click the Edit icon next to Portal Settings. If there’s an active portal delay, there will be a countdown in the time until upload column. The countdown starts when you publish a listing. To override the portal delay and upload the listing immediately, simply click the blue arrow that appears next to the portal name when you hover your cursor near it. You can also pause or stop the upload this way. To edit the portal upload delay, click the dropdown menu and then Edit Portal Upload Delay.
You’ve got two options:
- delay the upload by a number of hours, or
- set a specific date and time to publish the listing on this specific portal.
Pick whichever suits you, and click Done. See, we told you it was simple!We built this feature because our UK users are often contractually required to publish a listing on one portal before another. We went further beyond facilitating those base requirements and have created a feature that takes just a little bit of power away from the portals, and puts it back in the hands of the agents and vendors. If you run into any problems, please reach out to our support team at support@rexsoftware.com.au.
