IXACT Contact Real Estate CRM Review

I’m working on all my favorites first and IXACT Contact is right up there. With the addition of free responsive WordPress web sites on top of some of their other popular features, they’re without doubt one of the best values out there. Check out my new video review!

 

If you’re interested in trialing IXACT Contact I offer an extended 60 day trial. Just click here.

IXACT Contact adds FREE Web Sites!

Talk about great value in a CRM! IXACT Contact now includes a mobile friendly WordPress web site in your CRM subscription. These are for real customizable sites that feed the leads directly into the CRM. But it doesn’t stop with just the site. The site includes a blog and they provide blog content for you too. IDX is not included for free but can be secured through IXACT and they have several different levels of service in that regard. They have many templates to choose from and you modify them if you like. For more information or a 60 day trial of IXACT Contact – click here!

MontagnaDivano

IXACT Contact Increases Mass Email

IXACT Contact is one of the very few Real Estate CRMs that include blast email campaign reporting statistics incorporated right in to it. The primary benefit to this is that you don’t have to use a third party to see how your mailings are doing. And the statistics displays in IXACT Contact are specifically for real estate agents rather than a generic reporting system. It’s an incredibly useful and powerful feature and now it’s gotten better.

It’s important to distinguish between different types of emails. IXACT Contact allows you to send Displaying an unlimited number of day to day emails one at a time, and also allows unlimited emails when they are being sent as a result of an email drip campaign. Then you have blast, mass or bulk emails. Those are the ones you are sending to large groups of people all at once.

To date, IXACT Contact allowed you to send a maximum of 1,000 of these types of emails per month for free. After that number you paid a nominal competitive rate. Now they have increased that to 2,500 per month.  That’s one heck of an increase! So the bottom line is that if the number of people you are sending to is less than 2,500 per month, it’s all free. The emails themselves, and the reporting.

If you would like to trial or purchase IXACT Contact, click here for more information.

 

IXACT Contact adds Keep-in-Touch Features

I can’t say it better myself so I’ll just post essentially what they sent me…

IXACT Contact today announces new high-value Keep in Touch features including automated Spouse/ Partner Birthday Reminders, Move In Anniversary Reminders, and Keep in Touch Call Reminders.

What’s New:

Spouse/ Partner Birthday Reminders:

Now you can also get birthday reminders for spouses and partners. Reach out and wish them well! It’s a natural way to get in touch.

Move In Anniversary Reminders:

Get notified automatically when a past client is celebrating the anniversary of moving into their home. Offer your congratulations and remind them of your expertise in all things real estate related!

Keep in Touch Call Reminders:

Be reminded automatically when it’s time to give each client a Keep in Touch call. Activate with one click pre-configured keep in touch call reminders. Options include bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual.

For more information on IXACT Contact – click here!

IXACT Contact Gets Facelift, Synchs with Google

I’ve been anxiously awaiting this and happy to announce that it is here! You can see more screen shots of the new look on my review page here. It’s still the same great CRM but now it has a new look. Sometimes when a CRM improves it’s User Interface/UI, it also changes the buttons around and you have to re-learn where everything is. It’s like your favorite super market changing where their products are. It can be frustrating and time consuming. That is not the case here. It is virtually identical, but has a nice new clean look. If you passed on IXACT Contact before, primarily because of the aesthetics, you might want to take another look!

IXACT Contact Desktop

They have also announced that they now have a synch with Google. It now “allows you to easily establish an automatic 3-way synchronization between IXACT Contact, your Google apps and your other computing devices, including your smartphone, iPad/tablet, MS Outlook, and applicable Mac applications.”

Newfound speed is IXACTly what was needed

IXACT Contact has been one of the top sellers for a couple years now and with good reason. It’s a great overall CRM and very popular. Every CRM has its issues over the years though and in the past they had issues with speed. But that’s what this is about. They are a company that listens to feedback and acts on it and are now at least as fast as anyone else and it’s clear to see.

Some months ago I did a time test between it and its primary competitors and they came out a little behind. Their findings kept pointing them to people with slow internet connections that were affected but it seemed to be wider than that. After doing some time tests with other leading CRMs it was indeed slower. They’ve been working on it and in the past they have made some adjustments to improve the speed and maybe it did a little but not much. But that is now history. They cite a number of technical reasons for how it got faster and that’s all well and good but the bottom line is that speed is no longer an issue. I just logged in and checked it out after seeing their announcement and it is indeed much faster – for real.

Have you been trying CRMs and have not yet picked one? If you have looked at IXACT Contact in the past and bypassed it primarily because of the speed, check it out now. It is now a non-factor I promise. And they continue to add great features on a regular basis.

Way to go IXACT!

Get an extended 60 day free trial through the link they have provided for me by clicking here.

IXACT Contact Review

Get a 2 month trial instead of 35 days by clicking Trial or Purchase

6 Months FREE CRM for New Agents, Just click here to start and then ask for it.

Checklist

IXACT Contact may be the right

Real Estate CRM for you if…

Best bang for the buck bar none!  It’s no secret that people think some CRM’s have too many features and people walk away feeling intimidated. Most of the time it is because they don’t really understand what Real Estate CRMs have to offer and they want very little. But sometimes, like Goldilocks, they want more than just a little, but less than the layered complicated ones. For those agents, IXACT Contact can be just right.

IXACT Contact has continued to add features regularly since 2009, so it’s far from a bare bones solution. It has all the features most agents want. One outstanding feature is to include very nice responsive WordPress websites that have monthly content written by them for you. They now also have Social Streams to market on Social Media with lead capture forms and tons of free content that gets automatically posted to Facebook. They also just added SMS capability.

There are still some Agent Office users out there but they are gradually moving on to other CRMs. Out of all of the CRMs I have, I most often point them to IXACT Contact. It doesn’t look or feel like Agent Office, but its features just remind me of Agent Office more than any of the others. Especially the activity plans section. If you are satisfied with what Agent Office has done for you but you need to move on and you want a few more features than it has, IXACT Contact is a great place to look.

Years ago IXACT was slow. Not any more! Wow is it fast!

Content is King! Their sister company has been providing outstanding content of all kinds for many years and that means IXACT Contact has more free content and more types of content than anyone else by far. This includes Emails, printed letters, Facebook advertising content, activity plans and much more!

An important note- Agent Office does not export categories or notes. The only CRM I have that created a utility specifically to allow it to import the categories and notes from Agent Office using the backup file is IXACT Contact.

CRM Discount

60 Day Free Trial vs. the Regular 35 Days

FREE half hour consult with Gary!

6 Months Free for New Agents!

IXACT Contact’s Vital Statistics:

Legend of terms


Blog

Company name: IXACT Contact (pronounced iggs-act-contact

Facebook Community

Features: ♦♦♦

Help Section

Out of beta & started selling: 2009

Support: M-F, 9:00 – 8:00 EST, phone or email

Training

Updates & Fixes: N/A

What kind of sales is this for?: Residential, Agents, Teams, Brokerages

YouTube Channel



Have you used this CRM?  Rate it – but please be professional. Thanks!


3.02 / 5 (62 votes)

Stats

Dashboard/Desktop/Home Page

Completely customizable as to what modules you want on the Dashboard and where they are ordered? Just check a box or drag them to where you want. It’s a beautiful thing! :)

Features

Unique or Notable Features

Easy SetupBest in class!

This service ought to attract some attention. They call it their Concierge service! When you first get a CRM there are some things you really need to do in order to get rolling with it. Ordinarily, you are on your own for this. All CRMs will help when you have questions, but many agents don’t even know what to ask. You’re stuck in ‘Where do I start’ mode. I have spoken with thousands of agents over the years and I know many of you never pull the trigger on getting a CRM for this reason. You dread that initial setup. Well IXACT Contact realizes this so they hold your hand a little at the beginning. They don’t just show you how to do it. They do it for you, with you.

  • Unmatched ‘Concierge’ Setup Service – FREE of charge!
  • NEW Set-up Wizard
  • they upload your data
  • they set up your monthly e-Newsletter
  • they set up your email header & signature
  • they help you set up your Keep in Touch Coach
  • they synchronize to your Google Apps or Outlook
  • they set up your automated lead capture
  • they help you set up your Agent Website
  • they  have unlimited phone support Mon-Fri, 9am-8pm ET

AND there are little Video Help arrows next to a section if there is a video for it, and there are many!

Now what’s your excuse? :)

Social Intelligence

Powered by Full Contact, this is something I find a lot of people want. here you go!

Lead Capture

Another wow! Check out all the options in the images!

Keep in Touch Coach

They have both the Keep in Touch and for those of you who only want call reminders, Keep in Touch Calls only. Bear in mind that many of the actions you take update to the Keep in Touch Coach and log prospecting activity towards your Goals. It’s all tied together very nicely! From their site:

The key to driving the most business using IXACT Contact is to Keep in Touch and stay top-of-mind with everyone in your Business Pipeline.

IXACT Contact provides two different approaches to help you Keep in Touch.

You can turn on the “Keep in Touch Coach” Dashboard widget, and be automatically prompted to reach out to your contacts based on their Status and the configurable follow up frequency settings below. The Keep in Touch Coach automatically resets each time you record a prospecting activity for a contact.

Alternatively, you can enable the “Keep in Touch Calls” functionality in order to add recurring call reminders to your Task List and/or Calendar at a selected regular interval. You can search your Task List just for Keep in Touch Calls, turning it into your daily “Call List”. Unlike the Keep in Touch Coach, Keep in Touch Calls are not based on contact Status. Instead, you select the call interval for each contact.

While you can turn on both features, we highly recommend using one or the other in order to establish a consistent “Keep in Touch” strategy. If you’re unsure which approach to use, we recommend the Keep in Touch Coach.

This is a tab in the contact record, showing what is going on with that contact with regards to the Keep in Touch feature

This is on the Dashboard wherever you want it. Note how you are able to not only move to the contact, but see the name and Status

Once you click on Prospecting Update on the other screen, (red arrow), it opens this screen. The Activity Type integrates into the Goal Setting.

Click here to see the options

You can even have them send a Birthday email post card!

…or a Move-in Anniversary email post card!

Buyer Preferences

An absolute necessity. You need to know what your buyers want so you need to have a place where you can put their preferences. It has a nifty field I haven’t seen before. A Buyer Agency Expiration date to be posted on the calendar and shared with others if you like. Unlike some CRMs about which people complain that it seems it is geared for Sellers, this one is not. As you can see below, you enter the details into the contact record. Then in the search section you can find your buyers!

Ixact Contact Buyer Search

Business Directory – Best in class!

This is as it should be. A separate directory for Businesses versus the rest. Search by Keyword, City or Business Type and they have a box to check for Frequently Used Listing Related Parties List.

New Lead Display

This display allows you to click on any of the statuses to display what you need. Below you can then click on the icons on the right to make a note, activity, status update, prospecting update, or delete it.

Text Messaging

This has gained popularity recently and IXACT is ready. One advantage they have over others is that there is an easy way to send an SMS to a group of people at a time. You get 100 SMSs/mo. and then you can purchase more at an industry competitive rate. The service is $5/mo. Just be careful. Spam texting is just as expensive as spam emailing if you get caught.

Click on the SMS icon to send a text.

Email Campaign Reporting – Best in Class!

Best in Class! Staying in touch with groups of people using email is a great way to make sure people don’t forget you, or to simply get some information out to them. To do it right though, you need to know things like; how many people received the email?; how many opened it?; how many clicked on a link in the email; or how many times did they click on that link? These are just a few pieces of information which are commonly referred to as back-end statistics or campaign reporting. If you send 500 people an email and find that only 2% opened it, something needs to change. So you experiment and change the subject line. Lo and behold the open rate jumps up to 22%! Just because you changed the subject line? It can happen. But you won’t know it if you don’t have campaign reporting  available to you. Then, even if you do, the reports have to be laid out well so you can make sense of what they mean. One of the primary reasons they have the best one is that unlike the majority of its competition, their stats are displayed inside the CRM laid out specifically with real estate agent’s needs in mind.

One of my customers who just got IXACT Contact had this to say about the reporting:

“I just did my first mass email and I’ve been tracking the progress (openings and click-throughs), which is absolutely fascinating. The ability to do this is invaluable. I feel like I’d be emailing with blinders on if I didn’t have it.”

IXACT Contact allows you to do any regular and drip campaign emailing. Additional emails can be purchased at competitive market rates. For blast emails to groups, they give you the first 2,500/mo. If you go beyond that amount, there is an industry competitive fee structure depending upon the quantity.

The Free Monthly Newsletter – Best in Class!

Best in Class! Because staying in touch is so important, many agents are on the prowl for something to send their sphere of influence something that stands out. They want something for which the recipients have a perception of value so they actually look forward to receiving it. What you send is largely dependent upon who you are sending it to and for what reason. But for general use, a well crafted newsletter that comes included with your Real Estate CRM is a very desirable feature. How do you know how good it is? How many people are opening it, and how many are clicking through to the information provided? Sure is handy that IXACT Contact has the best email campaign reporting on the market because you will know by looking at those stats after you send out the newsletter. And now – it’s completely customizable. You can even edit the articles to add your URL or whatever tickles your fancy.

Social Streaming – Best in Class!

Best in Class! Exclusive to IXACT Contact! Wow! I mean WOW! Not only does IXACT Contact integrate with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but you can post curated, tagged, relevant news and magazine content straight into them automatically on a schedule, all of which is editable.

Here is where you choose when to post

Enable content auto select to automatically choose selected content when you don’t have anything queued. Several levels of automation are offered with varying degrees of intervention required. You then see the publishers to choose from. You can brand your posts and even limit how old the articles are!

Here you can choose what topics you want to post about

Here’s the biggy! If someone clicks to Read More, they are taken to a landing page asking for their contact information. This is something most social media posting services do not offer.

Sample Facebook post

Sample Facebook post

Goal Setting

Answer 15 questions and you get the following:

Web Site – Best in Class!

Best in Class – Talk about great value in a CRM! IXACT Contact now includes a WordPress web site in your CRM subscription. These are for real customizable sites that feed the leads directly into the CRM (which they set up for you). But it doesn’t stop with just the site. The site includes a blog and they provide blog content for you too. IDX is not included for free but can be secured through IXACT and they have several different levels of service in that regard. They have many templates to choose from and you modify them if you like. Their sister company has been providing professionally written content for many years, and you get that for free too, with this subscription!

Divano

Montagna

Referral Marketing System

For the same monthly fee, Morris Marketing will provide Social Media Marketing, Direct Mail Marketing, The Marketing Idea Hotline, and the Referral & Repeat Marketing Book. See more here.

Trans-Plans Activity Plans

IXACT Contact has formatted Trans-Plans such that all the plans/emails/letters install automatically. All you have to do is start using them!

Trans-Plans

How does IXACT Contact stack up with other popular features?

Activity Plans: – Capable of building activity plans: Yes Workflows:  No

Buyer Home Search: A very nice buyer preferences section is in the contact record. This provides the data for the buyer search you can do in the search section. See more detail above.

Call Center: No

Email campaign reporting: Covered in Unique or Notable Features above

Email – capable of building email drip campaigns: Yes

Email – stored with contact record: You can use any e-mail you want without exception. All you have to do is BCC or Forward to the IXACT Contact special email address that they provide. That dropbox email address is the same for everyone so it’s pretty easy to use.

Included Template Content: A large selection of template emails and letters. Virtually all template emails in any CRMs need a little tweaking to make them fit your personality and market. The true value in any canned content is that the subject matter and structure are already there. If you don’t particularly like the way something is worded, tweak it!

Integrations: Bomb Bomb, Five Street, Zillow, Zapier.com is on it’s way!

Internal email software: No

Lead Capture: IXACT Contact has had a lead capture form to build for your web site. It is not customizable and is pretty basic. That said, it is now also capable of automatically creating a new contact when you get a lead in an email by using email parsing. This is the overall best method as it will work with virtually any email lead. They also have an open API meaning if any other vendor wants to make it’s contacts available for automatic population into IXACT Contact, they make it simple by providing the coding to do so.

Lead Display: At the bottom of the screen under Imported and Synchronized Contacts is a link to click to get to the new leads.

Lead Notification: By email from IXACT Contact if you choose to be notified.

Lockbox Field: Yes

Phone/Tablet: IXACT Contact uses an exchange server to share data between the devices. In English, that means that your phone’s address book, calendar and task list will fill in the appropriate fields with the information from IXACT Contact. People get confused on this issue so let’s make it clear. The CRM does not change anything in your phone’s address book or calendar. It can only display whatever fields are already in the phone. If you have six phone numbers in IXACT Contact but your phone is only capable of displaying four, then it displays four. Appointments can be related to contacts or transactions in the CRM, but not in the phone’s calendar or in Outlook’s calendar. Confused? Call me and I’ll explain.

Social Media: Currently no Social media interfaces BUT – you have the ability to send emails with social media sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This means email recipients can share the content of the email on their social networks. This helps you expand the reach of your email marketing. People who normally wouldn’t see their e-Newsletter for instance, now can.

Synchs:– Google and Outlook Synch. You can synch their contacts and/or calendar.

Team Capabilities: IXACT Contact has the ability to have team members with individual calendars. Administrative rights include the ability to limit Export, Delete, Synch, or importing of contacts. Currently all team members can see all contacts with no option to limit them, so if you have a buyer agent for whom you wish to limit to see only their contacts, listings or sales, you can not currently do that.

If you’re on the fence about it, don’t be bashful. I’ll be happy to do a live online screen sharing demo to show you some of the great features of this CRM.  Gary David Hall

CRM Comparisons

CRM History

IXACT Contact History

Alan Goldstein’s grandfather started the original company in 1929! They are one of the oldest ongoing businesses in Canada! They had nothing to do with CRM as it didn’t exist until 1982, when Howard and Friends came out. When Alan got involved in 1992, they got into providing content/marketing for real estate agents. Eventually, when it just made sense to, they announced IXACT Contact in 2009.

I started working with this group before they opened their doors! Since then I have consulted with them a few times and they continue to be one of my top favorites. Many years ago I was approached by Alan, who wanted to build a CRM. We discussed what he had come up with so far and he sent me a picture of a paper mockup, then I didn’t hear from him for a couple years. Then came IXACT Contact! Since then I’ve worked with the owner, the CTO, and have had an ongoing relationship with the VP of Sales and Marketing. IXACT Contact is a top flight organization filled with good people who are a pleasure to work with.

I relatively rarely recommend a newer Real Estate CRM because it takes a while to get to the point where they are financially viable so you don’t know if they will survive. That said, I started recommending IXACT Contact very quickly. That was many years ago and I never regretted it. IXACT Contact already had a well established real estate related company to shore them up.  As it turned out, they didn’t need it. They started in 2009, got into the black quickly and are one of the top sellers in the industry today. I would classify them as one of the most solid CRMs on the market.

IXACT Contact is pronounced  iggs-act contact.


Do a screen sharing session with me and see this product or any others in which you may be interested.


60 day free trial when going through this site. Theirs is a 35 day trial. In order to trial this CRM you sign up for it but you do need your credit card. They just start billing you automatically after the trial period unless you call them and cancel before hand. There is no contract. It is month-to-month.

IXACT Contact’s pricing is very straight forward. It’s $39.00/mo. (billed monthly – $33/mo. billed annully)  for an agent license and $23.00/mo. for an assistant license (annually). No one anywhere is authorized to offer it for a different price.

New Agents – 6 Months Free! Have you been in the business less than one year? What a great deal! Just contact Ixact after you subscribe and tell them you’re a new agent. They’ll set you up on the 6 months free. 

The price includes 2,500 blast emails per month. If you want to do more than that there are additional fees tiered by quantity that are competitively priced.

This is a direct link to their site to a page created for me. No promo code is necessary to ensure any benefits provided here.


Have a question? Click here and ask away!

IXACT Contact adds two huge features!

IXACT Contact has been coming along very nicely in it’s five years of life. It has continued to add great features over the years and now there are two really significant ones that I’ve been waiting for. I think they are two that you need to have to compete with the big boys, but even more importantly, to be a great CRM. I’ll let their announcement cover it from here.

“With our new Email Correspondence Capture, REALTORS® can now capture all email correspondence with their clients and prospects right into IXACT Contact! No more copying and pasting emails into the contact history or having to type in manual notes!

This new feature will help agents get more organized and free up time. And next time they’re on the phone with a contact, they’ll benefit from the convenience of being able to see all past email correspondence with them. Now, everything they would need to see about a client or prospect is in one consolidated system – IXACT Contact.

With our new Lead Capture via Email, Realtors can now capture all the leads they receive via email automatically into IXACT Contact. Lead Capture via Email is a simple and versatile method for capturing leads from a wide variety of sources, including existing forms built into one’s website and third party lead vendors. In addition, Realtors can set-up their lead capture process to automatically assign new leads to a specific group and auto-responder drip email campaign. They can even have all new leads automatically added to the distribution list for their monthly e-Newsletter.

This new feature saves agents time and helps them become more organized. All of their leads will automatically be flowed to their database – saving them time and letting them view all of their leads in one consolidated place.”

I offer an extended free trial of 60 days if you want to take a look at it – just click here!

IXACTContact now officially offers team capability!

A great product just keeps getting better. You were always able to use one logon for several people, but you had to share everything including the calendar. That’s fine for some small teams but not for others. Now you have a choice. Below are features that have been added.

For a specially negotiated 60 day free trial – click here.

 

IXACT Contact® – Teams Feature List

  • Calendar and task list for each team member
  • Visibility to other team member’s calendar and task list (if authorized by team owner)
  • Private appointments and tasks hidden from other team members
  • Ability to create appointments and tasks for other team members
  • Ability to re-assign existing appointments and tasks to other team members
  • Team member restrictions on importing, deleting, exporting or wirelessly synching contacts
  • Visibility to the team member that entered each contact
  • Assignment of buyer agent from list of team members
  • Assignment of Keep in Touch event, as well as each related tasks, to a selected team member
  • Assignment of individual activity plan tasks to a selected team member, including selection of team member branding for emails and letter tasks
  • Visibility to team member assignments in contact pending activities and activity history lists
  • Assignment of applicable listing agent, seller closing agent, and buyer closing agent to active business listing from a list of team members
  • Ability to add all key date calendar appointments and reminders for active business listings to additional team member calendar
  • Set up of separate email header and email/letter signature for each team member
  • Set up a separate website lead capture form for each team member
  • Selection of team member branding to use when creating mass emails or letters
  • Sharing of all mass email and letter templates and uploaded images library across all team members
  • Team-member specific, or aggregated, task and appointment reports
  • Team-member specific, or aggregated, active business transaction reports
  • Wireless synchronization available to all team members
  • Each team member will sync their own calendar and task list
  • All team members will sync the entire team contact database

Pricing:

 Team Leader $34.95/month

 Team Member $24.95/month

Teams Capability is coming to IXACT Contact

Below is their announcement.

“The TEAMS Module is still on track for release to production around the end of this month. We are currently planning to launch TEAMS in two phases. Phase 1 will be a “soft launch” to our existing customer base and to prospects who have requested notification when TEAMS is available. In May we’ll do a “hard launch” entailing all the PR and marketing communications we normally do to promote major new enhancements such as this.”

I offer  IXACTContact with an extended free trial. For more information go to http://IXACTContact.GaryDavidHall.com