According to reports, the marketing automation market is expected to continue growing at 8.55% and projected to be worth $6.4 billion by 2024. 85% of companies (including real estate) have upped their digital transformation since 2020, with over 67% saying they are now increasing marketing automation efforts in their processes.
The adoption of marketing automation softwares has steadily been on the rise over the last decade, but the global shutdown brought about by the pandemic proved that MA was able to provide a level of affordability and economies of scale that helped keep business afloat for many. This has translated to real estate as well, with MA technologies helping agents boost their marketing and sales efforts while significantly reducing their time and energy. While there have been scores of new marketing automation trends popping up over the last two years, some are widely considered by marketers in the industry to have more staying power than others.
- Hyperpersonalization
Although brands know that personalized content is key in marketing today, there is a level of personalization still missing from many of their correspondences with clients. Customers want increasingly relevant experiences and content from the brands they interact with, and this will not change in 2022 going forward. This is where MA software comes in, especially those that specialize in social listening and on-site behavioral tracking programs, giving real estate companies a chance to create highly informed customer profiles and segmentation that will in turn promote better predictive recommendations.
- Chatbots
Chatbots will continue to be one of the most used AI functionalities in real estate, having become one of the most popular and effective customer service channels. In 2022, it is expected that the use of chatbots with natural language processing will be one of the main tools to attract and engage with customers, becoming smarter and more capable of making ‘best recommendations’ even when integrated with other software partners. According to an Oracle survey of 800 top decision-makers around the world, over 80% are already using or are planning to start using chatbots for their business in 2022.
- More engaging emails
Real estate companies that use effective email marketing automation see a 26% conversion rate and it continues to be one of the most powerful tools in an agent’s marketing arsenal. Email marketing campaigns will continue to play an important role in getting in front of customers, but in 2022, email will become more engaging and proactive with the use of more advanced tools and robust analytics to help agents further understand the demographics of their prospect list.
- Automated Social Media Marketing
Many industries, including real estate, are set to increase budgeting for smart automation for their social media marketing, with the goal of achieving better targeting, smarter messaging, and greater engagement with customers. It’s been evident for some time now that the efficacy of organic visibility is decreasing on Facebook, with roughly only one in every 19 fans seeing a page’s non-promoted content. That means companies are looking to employ social media marketing automation tools that will help not only improve ROI and ad targeting, but also help prepare agents to counter attack with hyper targeted social media strategies that cater to their target audiences online.
- AI-assisted platforms
Recommendation engines that combine AI + machine learning are paving the way for predictive personalization, and 2022 onwards, real estate companies too will boost their adoption of machine learning in content creation, customer analysis, and behavioral tracking (to name just a few examples). These systems are designed to help especially in building smarter, predictive future campaigns that create a slew of important, intuitive and trackable touchpoints for prospects as they progress down the customer lifecycle.
- Mobile
Mobile continues to be the favorite device of choice for today’s users, and brands are placing more budget space for long-reaching engagement strategies using MA tools and softwares covering a wide range of features: mobile-specific content, push and web notifications, mobile wallet, in-app notifications and of course, mobile-based ad campaigns. These powerful tools are capable of collecting vast behavioral and transactional data that will then help companies create better tailored messaging and timely special offers.
What automation offers real estate agents
This list gives a glimpse at what the future of real estate looks like and why marketing automation is here to stay. It frees up valuable time by offering data scraping and processing capabilities so that agents don’t have to put in hours and days sorting through paperwork and monotone tasks. What’s more, not only is generic targeting a thing of the past, real estate is now harnessing the power of automation to hone in on customer intentions based on their online footprints, allowing hyper personalized messaging that speaks directly to purchase-ready consumer needs and meeting them exactly where they are.
