THE BEST CRM

A CRM (which stands for contact relationship management) is essential for agents, and the most useful systems keep contacts organized, send e-newsletters and emails out for you and can integrate with countless other programs and platforms.

Winner: Contactually

“Even though it’s not your standard CRM program, Contactually is my pick for the best and most applicable for most real estate agents,” Matt Dollinger, president and founder of Gearbox Consulting, says. There are a lot of positive qualities about Contactually that make it convenient and easy to use. Nobu Hata, director of digital engagement for the National Association of Realtors, agrees with that. “It easily integrates with Salesforce, MSExchange email, Gmail, social media – almost anything agents are using nowadays,” he says. “That, combined with intuitive user experience right off the bat, makes it an affordable and usable software that works.” Contactually also monitors your interactions and keeps a record of them in the application with a user-friendly dashboard, and makes it very easy to follow up with people by allowing you to create simple buckets or types of contacts, and send you daily reminders to follow up with them.

It’s important to note that Contactually is simply an overview of communication with contacts, which means it is a separate destination from your inbox. Some say it also lacks the depth of automatic social awareness of email features, such as LinkedIn messages.

Price: Plans cost $19.99 per month, $39.99 per month and $99.99 per month, depending on how many features you’d like to use; free trials are available.

Where to buy: http://www.contactually.com/pricing

Runner Up: Infusionsoft and Top Producer

Infusionsoft

Not only is Infusionsoft a CRM program, it’s also a program for e-commerce, social media and email marketing, making everything very easy to manage. According to Bill Harney, president of Keeping Current Matters, the system is very powerful and automatically converts leads into new clients and grows sales from existing ones. “For top producing agents who are interested in automating personal follow-up and attracting leads to them instead of chasing after the next customer, this is a solution you should look at,” he says. When you consider all of the above, plus the free technical phone service, it can be a great program to use.

Because the system is so detailed and powerful, it is not for everyone. Until you become used to it, the layout can be confusing and overwhelming. It also is not the most affordable CRM program, with the cheapest edition costing $219 per month.

Price: Ranges from $219 per month to $379 per month, depending on which edition you get. Adding additional contacts also costs extra.

Where to buy: http://www.infusionsoft.com/pricing

Top Producer

The future is platform technology, meaning different types of technology will have to be able to “plug in” to each other, communicate with each other and work together for agents to get ahead. Top Producer is not brand-specific; you can upload all your data, manage transactions, listings, documents and leads, and it’s an open platform for all agents to use, according to our panel.

A cloud-based CRM system, Top Producer allows agents to manage their leads and businesses via desktop and mobile access that impressively integrate with many of today’s most frequented websites and features. Not only does Top Producer’s real estate database work with Google and Outlook, but it also consolidates all of the Facebook and Twitter contacts and manages leads from national sites, including Realtor.com. And it features free support and free upgrades. In addition, “Top Producer pricing depends largely on your number of contacts, if you want the market snapshot portion and how many you want to send emails to,” Barbara Haran, the branch manager of Coldwell Banker in Evanston, says. “It can start at under $100 a month, but this can stretch closer to $1,000 if you add a lot of their a la carte options or have a large number of contacts.”

The release of Top Producer’s HTML5 platform remedied many of the problems users had experienced with the program, and its Facebook page today is overflowing with positive comments about it. Some commenters, though, have noted difficulties in managing the program, and some have expressed desire for a document management section and property management features.

Price: Prices start at $19.95 a month for a one-year contract. There is also a one-time fee of $149 to connect to the MLS.

Where to buy: www.topproducer.com/pricing