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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.
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6 Months Free for New Agents!
IXACT Contact’s Vital Statistics:
Company name: IXACT Contact (pronounced iggs-act-contact
Features: ♦♦♦
Out of beta & started selling: 2009
Support: M-F, 9:00 – 8:00 EST, phone or email
Updates & Fixes: N/A
What kind of sales is this for?: Residential, Agents, Teams, Brokerages
Have you used this CRM? Rate it – but please be professional. Thanks!
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! :)
Unique or Notable Features
♥Easy Setup – Best 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!
♥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!
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.
IXACT Contact has formatted Trans-Plans such that all the plans/emails/letters install automatically. All you have to do is start using them!
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
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.
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