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How to modernize digital communications in your PropTech app
• 4 min read
New technologies have modernized the property technology (PropTech) landscape, including virtual tours, iBuying (institutional house flippers), blockchain, and more. Now, complex real estate transactions of the past are transforming into seamless, digital experiences. PropTech applications are feeling the pressure to offer frictionless, intuitive experiences to their end-users, and ultimately, provide an exceptional real estate customer journey.
Increasingly, real estate clients expect the same level of convenience they receive from other mediums of shopping and investing — yet 40% of Americans still say home buying is the most stressful event in modern life. Meanwhile, real estate agents and brokers need solutions that automate manual, low-effort tasks so they can focus on engaging and converting clients. Still, most commercial real estate teams spend 15% or more of their time managing and organizing data. And property managers are leveraging data analytics to proactively identify portfolio risks and opportunities; however, Net Operating Income (NOI) per unit dropped 3.3% year-over-year in 2021.
Source: HousingWire
PropTech applications across the entire journey of property ownership and management stand to benefit from modernizing their end-user experience:
By leveraging the power of your customer communications data, you can create engaging in-app experiences that reduce context-switching and curb churn.
So why are embedded communications features the key to increasing engagement and improving your platform’s real estate customer journey? Digital communications channels, including email, calendar, and video conferencing are where you conduct real estate business. 92% of tenants prefer to communicate through digital channels such as email or SMS, and 99% of all consumers check their email inboxes daily. By facilitating and enhancing those communications experiences, you can turn your application into a hub for interactions across clients, agents, brokers, property managers, tenants, and other key stakeholders.
Source: NMHC
Still, building communications features in-house can come with a hefty price tag. Between upfront investment from your already resource-constrained product team, ongoing maintenance to account for customer edge cases, and additional work to ensure reliability at scale, these critical features can drain resources from other important initiatives. Luckily, CPaaS solutions empower property technology companies such as LionDesk to save hundreds of development hours using pre-built solutions that allow you to connect with any email, calendar, or contacts provider.
Learn How Nylas Helped Real Estate CRM LionDesk save hundreds of development hours
Let’s explore two ways PropTech companies are building embedded communications experiences that deepen engagement:
Real estate agents and mortgage brokers exchange countless emails with clients throughout the home buying process. And every time an agent needs to schedule a tour, send a file, or conduct outbound outreach, they’ll need to use a different application. This context switching translates into friction, poor user experiences, and wasted time.
Your application can unlock new value for your users by embedding communications, including bi-directional email, calendar events, and scheduling capabilities. Agents can follow up with leads faster and convert more clients, all while up-leveling their experience in your platform. Property management platform Funnel added native email and calendar functionality to their platform in just a few sprints, turning their application into a must-have communications hub for property managers.
Learn How Nylas Helped Funnel increase ARR 150% YoY
Most brokers and realtors need to maintain detailed documentation of any interaction pertaining to a transaction to comply with regulatory standards. But with broker-client communications occurring across a widening variety of channels (58% of millennials and 46% of Gen X found their homes via mobile devices), maintaining records for each client can become a significant time sink.
Instead of requiring users to manually log their client interactions, you can build differentiating, features that sync records from email and other channels. Doing so will create an up-to-date history of messages in your app, fulfilling your users’ compliance requirements.
Nylas empowers PropTech applications to create engaging experiences, unlock insights from previously inaccessible communications data, and modernize core real estate business processes. If you’d like to learn more about how Nylas can help you power communications connectivity, intelligence, and experiences in your app, speak to a platform specialist.
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