Real estate is one of those industries that has been rather slow on the uptake of technology, which makes a lot of sense. Buying and selling a home is one of the biggest, most personal decisions in a person’s life, and the shift to online browsing, transactions, etc. was bound to take longer than other sectors.
Brokers, too, have grown accustomed to their ways and are usually hesitant to use technology to upgrade their processes.
But Agentology hopes to change all that.
According to Agentology, agents are 21x more likely to convert cold leads into clients if they engage with those leads within five minutes of the buyer or seller reaching out.
Unfortunately, many of these leads go unanswered. Agentology says brokers spend billions for lead generation and yet often leave around half of those leads unanswered, either because they can’t get to them quickly or because those leads don’t make sense for their particular skill set.
Agentology tries to solve this by using a combination of machine learning and humans to respond to every lead within five minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across multiple channels like text, phone, and email.
These conversations work towards qualifying the lead, and the full conversation around any lead is handed over to agents with full transparency, where those agents can check on all back-logged communication.
But even with a service that qualifies leads and keeps them warm right from the get-go, agents still can’t take on every single qualified lead that comes their way, either because they’re too busy or because that lead doesn’t fit into their wheelhouse.
That’s where Agentology really differentiates from other lead-gen services like Riley.
With Agentology, brokers are able to refer their leads to another broker with the click of a button. Agentology has more than 30,000 agents in their referral network.
Agents who refer leads get a 25 percent of the receiving agent’s commission once they close on that particular listing, which is essentially turning an interface button into a revenue model.
Of course, Agentology takes their own cut of the commission (10 percent), as well. The company also makes money on its core service, charging based on lead volume on a monthly basis, which turns out to be around $4 to $6 per lead.
The company just closed a $4.5 million funding round, led by Freestyle Capital, with participation from Entry Ventures Group and OurCrowd.
Agentology, based in San Diego, plans to use the financing to build out product teams and the technology teams.
The company says that it eventually wants to get into other verticals like insurance, lending, and property management, but has no immediate plans to launch for a new vertical.
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