Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Realtors: Sign your clients up for Branded Alerts

This is a Step by Step for Realtors to sign up their clients and watch their progress, and edit their saved searches. Many Realtors have asked how to do this, so here is a step by step. This assumes you already signed up for a free Branded FranklyMLS search site.

1) Start from a clean slate. Click http://franklymls.com/clear to make the site act like a new user/visitor (ie no cookies).

2) Hit your branded page. Aka www.FranklyMLS.com/YOURID

3) Conduct a search, for example Arlington Condos from $500k to $600k

4) In the middle of the page it lets you "Save Search" by entering in your clients email address. Enter their email and press Join/Login (no passwords needed)

5) It will ask the user (you) to confirm the link in their email.

6) If you signed up under your branded page, YOU, the Realtor will get a copy of the confirmation email. Either you OR the client can confirm the sign up.

7) Go back to FranklyMLS.com/YourID and if it does not say "Welcome: jon@jon.com" then
log in as them on the front page, upper right corner.

8) Conduct more searches and save those searches. Also if there are special homes you want them to get price change alerts on (you get a copy of all alerts) then click the RED HEART to save those homes.

9) Finish by logging out, by visiting http://franklymls.com/clear (or there is a Logout button on the search page, but don't hit the Unsubscribe button)

Done. Great! Your client will now get daily emails "From Realtor's Name" and you will get a copy of those alerts (which you should route to a folder to check periodically). They can change it to update every 15 minutes by following the directions in the alerts.

EMail me if you have any questions

To make changes to an existing account.
1) Clear out your session http://franklymls.com/clear
2) Go to your IDX Franklymls.com/USERID
3) Login with their email address
4) Conduct searches, save searches, save homes, delete saved homes, etc.
5) When done, clear out your session http://franklymls.com/clear

Let me know if that isn't clear. Let me know if you log in as a user and you don't see your branding on every page.

Frank

Coming soon, a live tutorial demo.

New Mobile Idea, Done in 4 minutes. Suggest yours!

Chris W. emailed me about some ideas for the site and it sparked a no brainer. I was able to get it live in 4 minutes! And a blog post up in another 5 minutes. A new record.


In mobile mode, FranklyMLS.com/m, I am working on a "Near you" button so you can drive up to a home and in 1 click see all the homes near you. (I know, pretty standard in the app world).


In the meantime, I made it so the mobile mode will list the subdivision and let you click on "See more" to see all the other homes that are active/UC in that subdivision.



Try it out: http://franklymls.com/m/FX7665108, you can test it from your computer too.


I also moved around some things on the cell mode to make it easier to see more data (less indenting).


Thoughts? So keep sending in your ideas so I can expand on them, or just flat out steal them and take credit. ;-)


Frank

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

10 Tweaks today

Been making a bunch of changes today to the Full View (1 home per page) http://franklymls.com/FX7665108
including,
1) Clearing out the junk in the upper left and right
2) Moving the HEART saving option next to the Status=Active (before it made no sense to be in the upper right part of the page since it didnt look like part of the listing),http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
3) Add a Mobile mode icon and moved it down near the multiple photos
4) Moved the Neighborhood reviews and House Wiki comments to another location lower on the page
5) Added a printer Icon to let you know you can print a 1 page version of the site
6) And for people that are NOT on a branded version of the site, I added more Frankly logos and chat windows.
7) Moved private notes and View Count to middle left of screen
8) More details for what Under Contract means. (We get a ton of "Can I see this home that is Under Contract")
9) More ads featuring recommended local buyers agents (if you have your owner agent, great, but have them get a free IDX so their name is on each page)
10) Annoying photo of me lurching on the left side of the page ready to chat (already got one complaint on this today, you hate it too?)

Friday, September 16, 2011

What's In It for You? Realtors Ask In Fear

FranklyMLS invites competing firms to join the site. Why?

Update: Don't Miss Peggy James' great comment on how she profits from FranklyMLS.

I offer several free services for Realtors in other firms. Easy to convince them because it is free? Nope, I spend a lot of time easing their fears & untrustingness (is that a word?).

So here I will list what Realtors from other firms can do with this site to help themselves and WHAT IS IN IT FOR ME.

Ways Realtors can benefit from FranklyMLS.com:

1) Join and get your free branded banner on FranklyMLS. Even if you "already have an IDX."
With the branded Version of FranklyMLS (Technically NOT a true IDX), the logos of my firm get dropped and replaced with your image and banner. All "request a showings" go to you. When your client signs up for email alerts you are notified and each alert has YOUR branding. Also you get a BCC of each email alert of your client.

Over 250 agents have joined. Many stopped paying their 2003 garbage $50/mo IDX and others have dropped even the "high tech and latest" IDXes.

Why do they ditch their IDX?
a) FranklyMLS.com does so much more. I can't list them here, but recently an "I already have one"-type agent got the "oh mine doesn't do that" moment about 5 times and finally the lightbulb went off that this might actually help HER and her client.

b) Your clients are probably already using the site anyhow, so why not have your name on each page (and stop having them bug me instead of you, but I will get to my benefits later)

2) Contribute to the MLS Wiki (Rules). 200,000 Photos already added by buyer's agents!
Land free clients. No referral fees. A couple agents have closed $1M clients from this.
Buyer agents can add reviews (once your client decides not to buy it) and photo albums (this is why you should be taking buyer agent photo albums for your clients anyhow) to most MLS homes (about 95% of MRIS listings allow blogging/comments).

With these reviews a buyer agent can add photos from the buyer agent perspective. Add information about distance to a noisy highway or something the listing agent might have left out. This is REALLY killer for photoless REOS. This can even save a Realtor (and their client) a 1 hour drive if another buyer agent took 30 photos of a photoless listing (this happened to me once). Hum, imagine agents helping agents. A novel concept.

Agents get points for adding reviews (10 with photos) and top contributors get featured on the front page. With this service, many get more traffic than Google! And if a buyer is looking in a particular area and they keep seeing helpful comments (not annoying ads) they say "hum, maybe I should use that agent".

Also agents can LINK to all of their reviewed homes in 1 click. So people on your blog can see the areas you have recently visited and your comments.

3) Join the referral network. FranklyMLS.com is a hugely trafficked site, but FranklyRealty.com is a smaller firm. So having a network of agents in other areas, I can send clients your way.

Ok, finally, the big question. FRANK WHAT IS IN IT FOR YOU?

Again, I have no interest in stealing your client. It isn't some trick.

Benefits to ME:
1) Your clients are already using the site! So brand it & save me time.
It is kind of annoying to get a request for information on a home, for the user to say "I love my buyer agent Patrick." Ok great, so why did you contact us? It would be easier on me if Patrick had his branded FranklyMLS so I wouldn't waste time with a happily represented buyer. And yes this happens a lot. Recently at a [Large Real Estate Firm's] technology meeting it went like this: "Are you all noticing that half your clients are using FranklyMLS?"

2) A Branded Agent might start contributing to the WIKI.
The Free Branded Version of FranklyMLS is also the bait to come check out the site. Once agents get their bannered version of the site and give their custom link to their clients (that are wildly happy with the link see one non-Frankly agent's review). And even though the Wiki sends THEM tons of traffic, it helps build a better site for all to use. Having 200,000 MORE photos than ANY other MLS... that is valuable since photos are key. Why go anywhere else?

3) Expanded referral network
Those that I see contributing, are perfect candidates to send business their way. It lets me meet agents from areas I would never have reached out to.

4) Frankly brand respect amongst other agents.
Helping my full time agents have a respected brand to work under is huge.
By offering a free Branded Version of FranklyMLS to 250 agents, and helping other agents get a ton of free business, it helps build the FranklyRealty.com brand. When my agent has a bidding war against 3 other no-name firms... it helps when the listing agent is like "Yeah I know about Frankly Real Estate, your company, you help other agents out." Or "Oh you guys only have the highest quality full time agents with gorgeous 30 photo listings 100% of the time" That is a big plus.
Come on, you know when you get a contract from a firm with a bad reputation, or all weekend warrior agents. You are like "darn, this might be a nightmare deal."

5) Recruiting.
AHA! Ok, everyone will now probably ignore all of the above and say "AHA". Well it isn't like that. While I have interest in growing Frankly Real Estate, I only want to do so SLOWLY and in select areas. Like maybe adding 1 great and high producing agent a year that is looking to upgrade from their "national brand" firm. (note that most firms recruit 20 agents to get 1 real producer). This site lets them get an introduction to Frankly and 1 in the 200 might join (I turn down many requests). But that is NOT my main motivation. Prove it? In 4 years of this free service, last month was the first time I emailed them in batch about an update to the site.

6) Doing Cool Stuff
I just love doing cool stuff. Like building the Frankly I Wish concept in 24 hours from idea to creation to Agent Genius featured story. And it is more fun to do stuff in a large scale with many agents. If I can come up with a way that helps everyone, then why not! And it does create indirect and unexpected benefits like winning the 2009 Inman News Innovator of the Year award. Couldn't have done it without everyone's cooperation.




Ok, so I hope you will join FranklyMLS and see what you are missing. It is free.

Thank you for your time, please report typos

Frank
Founder FranklyMLS.com
Broker FranklyRealty.com Better Technology, Better Agents



Photo Credit Fear

Days on the Market Explained, in the Shower

Excited to learn more about what Days on the Market is, and specifically the difference between DOMM and DOMP? Well check out this video I made to explain it to FranklyMLS users.






Or you can read the longer version over here about DOMM and DOMP



Frank