Salesforce for real estate: functionality, case studies & solutions

Salesforce for real estate: functionality, case studies & solutions

April 18, 2024

Nikolai Denizhenko

by Nikolai Denizhenko,

Head of Salesforce Practice

For real estate companies, Salesforce offers an extensive set of lead management and customer service capabilities to launch effective marketing campaigns, optimize sales or maintenance operations, and build stronger customer relationships.

Itransition’s Salesforce experts provide key use cases, benefits, and real-life examples of Salesforce adoption in the real estate industry, along with additional solutions to help realtors, brokers, and property owners get the most out of this platform.

Table of contents

Salesforce capabilities for real estate

The Salesforce suite of products contains numerous capabilities for customer relationship management and automation that realtors and other real estate companies can use and even further tailor to their needs through configuration and customization. Here are some of the most popular Salesforce features for the real estate sector:

Marketing

Listing management

Gathering information on property type, features, and occupancy from the company’s systems and external sources to create accurate listings on real estate portals and other promotional material.

Lead segmentation

Segmenting leads according to their browsing data, search criteria, or other personal information.

Campaign management

Marketing plan and assets management, including campaign types and hierarchies, budget allocation, and campaign performance and ROI tracking.

Marketing personalization

Creating personalized customer journeys through targeted property listing ads, custom email messages, and dynamic content based on their behavior and preferences.

Marketing automation

Automating social media posting and triggering email message sending based on predefined criteria.

Sales

Opportunity scoring

Rating opportunities via Salesforce Einstein based on the probability of closing a deal to focus on the most promising deals in progress.

Lead scoring

Assigning a score to each lead based on the company’s conversion history and patterns, and lead behavior and demographics, helping brokers prioritize high-value leads.

Lead routing

Automatically appointing leads to real estate agents based on their location, deal size, availability, and other factors.

Sales pipeline management

Monitoring prospect progression through different stages of the sales cycle via visual dashboards and estimating the volume of deals closed in a given period.

Quote & contract management

Speeding up document generation and price calculation via templates, tracking contract statuses or renewal terms, and sending invoices to clients.

Property management

Property data management

Collecting property information, such as documentation, pictures, responsible employees, and status (new, booked, sold, etc.) into unified data storage for easier pricing, visit scheduling, and maintenance.

Property visit scheduling

Arranging property viewings automatically based on real estate agents’ available time slots and clients’ visiting hours.

Self-service customer portals

Enabling customers to access contract information, open customer service tickets through the service desk, and receive automated property-related updates.

Field service scheduling

Planning inspections and repair and maintenance activities based on priority and teams’ availability for efficient resource allocation and service routes.

Analytics & reporting

Marketing intelligence

Tracking the historic performance of your ad campaigns via analytical dashboards to optimize media plans, including marketing budgeting.

Sales analytics

Tracking sales volumes, property days on the market, sales prices, and other metrics to monitor KPIs and identify successful sales patterns that maximize the likelihood of closing a deal.

Location intelligence

Providing real estate agents with a clear picture of their sales territory, including lead location and last-visit data.

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The benefits of adopting Salesforce in real estate

By implementing Salesforce CRM, residential or commercial real estate companies can get the following payoffs.

A single source of truth

Salesforce serves as a centralized data repository to consolidate information on properties, customers, leads, and business processes, helping agents make accurate real estate valuations, effectively manage leads, and better coordinate different teams.

Profit catalyst

Using marketing initiatives personalization, lead assessment and prioritization, and matching prospective buyers to suitable property listings, real estate agencies can maximize lead generation and conversion and increase sales and signed leases or rentals.

Better customer experience

Salesforce enables realtors to provide more efficient and personalized services throughout the customer lifecycle, from offers tailored to buyers’ unique needs to faster case resolution via support automation and field team coordination. This allows real estate management companies to build stronger, long-term client relationships.

Reduced workload

Thanks to Salesforce’s automation capabilities, real estate agents, marketers, accountants, and other specialists can be relieved of time-consuming clerical tasks, such as retrieving data, creating promotional content, or drafting contracts.

Real-life examples of Salesforce adoption in real estate

+ 15%

conversion rate

Salesforce implementation for Bruntwood

One of the leading commercial property management companies in the UK turned to Itransition to replace its outdated and poorly integrated CRM toolkit with a new solution based on Salesforce. Our team created custom pages and business logic and integrated the platform with third-party tools like DocuSign and CheckFront to meet Bruntwood’s sales process automation and tenant relationship management needs. The resulting CRM functionality includes lead qualification, property visit scheduling, quoting based on clients’ aggregated contract history, and tenant onboarding.

5,000+

listings rated via Einstein AI

Salesforce solution with analytics & automation capabilities for ERA Belgium

The Belgian branch of ERA adopted a customized Salesforce solution to analyze property and customer data from its real estate portal and automate time-consuming manual tasks. The solution enables brokers to personalize listings based on metrics like property type and occupancy rate. It also helps them schedule property visits with customers to minimize downtime between appointments. Furthermore, Salesforce Einstein AI can score listings based on the likelihood of selling at the asking price and flag slow-selling properties that may need price adjustments.

35,000+

homes delivered

Cloud Salesforce CRM with advanced sales features for DAMAC Properties

A major real estate development company operating in Dubai chose Salesforce as a highly scalable, cloud-based CRM solution easily accessible to its agents traveling abroad. The platform enables agents to access an inventory of up-to-date real estate listings and analyze customer interactions (calls, emails, etc.) to match clients with properties they may be interested in. Agents can also initiate calls directly from Salesforce or have multiple outbound calls automatically placed by a predictive dialing system. For residents and owners, DAMAC implemented a Salesforce-powered facility management platform that sends 24/7 property-related updates and provides a service desk to manage maintenance requests and other issues.

+ 15%

conversion rate

Salesforce implementation for Bruntwood

One of the leading commercial property management companies in the UK turned to Itransition to replace its outdated and poorly integrated CRM toolkit with a new solution based on Salesforce. Our team created custom pages and business logic and integrated the platform with third-party tools like DocuSign and CheckFront to meet Bruntwood’s sales process automation and tenant relationship management needs. The resulting CRM functionality includes lead qualification, property visit scheduling, quoting based on clients’ aggregated contract history, and tenant onboarding.

5,000+

listings rated via Einstein AI

Salesforce solution with analytics & automation capabilities for ERA Belgium

The Belgian branch of ERA adopted a customized Salesforce solution to analyze property and customer data from its real estate portal and automate time-consuming manual tasks. The solution enables brokers to personalize listings based on metrics like property type and occupancy rate. It also helps them schedule property visits with customers to minimize downtime between appointments. Furthermore, Salesforce Einstein AI can score listings based on the likelihood of selling at the asking price and flag slow-selling properties that may need price adjustments.

35,000+

homes delivered

Cloud Salesforce CRM with advanced sales features for DAMAC Properties

A major real estate development company operating in Dubai chose Salesforce as a highly scalable, cloud-based CRM solution easily accessible to its agents traveling abroad. The platform enables agents to access an inventory of up-to-date real estate listings and analyze customer interactions (calls, emails, etc.) to match clients with properties they may be interested in. Agents can also initiate calls directly from Salesforce or have multiple outbound calls automatically placed by a predictive dialing system. For residents and owners, DAMAC implemented a Salesforce-powered facility management platform that sends 24/7 property-related updates and provides a service desk to manage maintenance requests and other issues.

+ 15%

conversion rate

Salesforce implementation for Bruntwood

One of the leading commercial property management companies in the UK turned to Itransition to replace its outdated and poorly integrated CRM toolkit with a new solution based on Salesforce. Our team created custom pages and business logic and integrated the platform with third-party tools like DocuSign and CheckFront to meet Bruntwood’s sales process automation and tenant relationship management needs. The resulting CRM functionality includes lead qualification, property visit scheduling, quoting based on clients’ aggregated contract history, and tenant onboarding.

5,000+

listings rated via Einstein AI

Salesforce solution with analytics & automation capabilities for ERA Belgium

The Belgian branch of ERA adopted a customized Salesforce solution to analyze property and customer data from its real estate portal and automate time-consuming manual tasks. The solution enables brokers to personalize listings based on metrics like property type and occupancy rate. It also helps them schedule property visits with customers to minimize downtime between appointments. Furthermore, Salesforce Einstein AI can score listings based on the likelihood of selling at the asking price and flag slow-selling properties that may need price adjustments.

35,000+

homes delivered

Cloud Salesforce CRM with advanced sales features for DAMAC Properties

A major real estate development company operating in Dubai chose Salesforce as a highly scalable, cloud-based CRM solution easily accessible to its agents traveling abroad. The platform enables agents to access an inventory of up-to-date real estate listings and analyze customer interactions (calls, emails, etc.) to match clients with properties they may be interested in. Agents can also initiate calls directly from Salesforce or have multiple outbound calls automatically placed by a predictive dialing system. For residents and owners, DAMAC implemented a Salesforce-powered facility management platform that sends 24/7 property-related updates and provides a service desk to manage maintenance requests and other issues.

Salesforce integrations with third-party real estate services

Salesforce can be integrated with major real estate portals, marketplaces, and data providers to gather relevant information on properties or market trends (sales per area, average price, etc.).

Real estate services

Ingested data types

  • Home valuations
  • Property rent estimates
  • Property photos
  • Property sales history
  • Mortgage data
  • Neighborhood and community data
  • Walk, bike, and transit score data
  • Market trend charts
  • Geocoding and localization

Best real estate solutions on AppExchange

Real estate companies that need more specialized capabilities can turn to Salesforce AppExchange. This marketplace provides third-party apps that expand the platform's functionality, as well as full-fledged SaaS CRM tools based on the Salesforce Platform, namely Salesforce’s PaaS service. Here are some popular options focusing on the real estate industry. Our experts can help you choose the best solutions among these and other packages or add-ons according to your specific needs.

Propertybase

A CRM solution with real estate-specific capabilities for lead management (such as lead aggregation from Zillow and automated sending of follow-up emails) and listing management (including unified search across multiple MLS databases).
Pricing
Starting at $79 per user per month

AscendixRE

A CRM system for commercial real estate firms and brokers equipped with extensive functionality for contact and lead management, including prospect list generation and targeted email marketing.
Pricing
Starting at $79 per user per month

Left Main REI

A Salesforce-based real estate CRM system providing realtors with pre-configured dashboards, automated email marketing tools, and other features to streamline lead acquisition and disposition.
Pricing
Starting at $50 per user per month

Zillow Home Value Connector

A sales intelligence tool enabling real estate professionals to monitor Zillow Zestimate’s home valuations and other property metrics directly from the Salesforce lead, account, or contact detail pages.
Pricing
Free application

Formstack Documents

An add-on that allows sales teams to automatically generate various documents, including proposals, quotes, contracts, receipts, and reports based on the data from Salesforce.
Pricing
Starting at $92 per user per month

Asperato. Payments solved.

An add-on that enables your real estate company to record and track payments executed via multiple gateways, such as Braintree, Paypal, and Stripe, directly from Salesforce.
Pricing
Starting at £480 per company per month

Our Salesforce services

As a certified Salesforce Partner with experience in real estate, Itransition can help you build and adopt a Salesforce-based solution tailored to the operations of real estate companies.

Salesforce services

Salesforce consulting

  • Audit of your current CRM system, if any
  • Definition of functional and non-functional requirements
  • Selection of a suitable Salesforce edition and set of features
  • Establishment of the implementation roadmap and budget
  • Assistance throughout the configuration and customization process
  • Integration and migration advisory
  • User training and support

Salesforce implementation

  • Salesforce solution configuration or customization
  • Connect Salesforce to your corporate software ecosystem
  • Deployment to the company’s environment
  • QA and user acceptance testing
  • Data migration from your legacy CRM system to Salesforce

Salesforce integration

  • Business logic integration via Apex Web Services and Apex Callouts
  • User interface integration
  • Data integration

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Adopting Salesforce to meet the needs of real estate

While Salesforce’s off-the-shelf functionality does not focus specifically on the real estate industry, its remarkable range of CRM products and features still represents a valuable addition to realtors’ digital toolkit. Besides, its extensive customization and configuration possibilities, combined with ready-to-install applications and custom tools available on AppExchange, can easily fill the gap between Salesforce’s generic offering and the needs of real estate businesses.

To identify the best customization opportunities for your real estate business scenario and streamline Salesforce adoption, consider relying on an experienced partner like Itransition.

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