CRM-->skiptrace-->SMS-->campaign management; reipro, freedomsoft

[Curt Smith]

I'm in the market for a marketing platform: leads, skip trace, SMS, email. It must do at least; skip trace then SMS then campaign management (auto responders, auto repeat every NN days, reminders). I also need to upload my own other lead sourced lists and skip trace and SMS.

I don't think reipro does SMS, which to me is behind the times. Mailing post cards is expensive and not nearly as cost effective per deal as SMS nor as fast a response.

Other tools that I have looked at and terse comments. have no affiliation;

- propstream great lead source, so far I feel has the widest range of decent leads including MLS, expired, vacant, late on taxes (depending on zip) etc. A weak marketing back end, only email, ringless voice mail and direct mail. None of these support dynamic data which is completely lame! IE splicing in the sellers name and address. Integrated skip trace at $0.30

- freedomsoft - maybe the oldest and most mature and maybe the most features. But the skip trace was expensive at $0.45, i could not find the per SMS or voice mail per minute costs.

- Joe Crump's (great guy and teacher BTW) push button auto marketure (domain ?? google). His gig is just lease options, sub to and has built in craigslist and zillow ad scraper for leads, no othre source of leads. Then SMS + auto responder + campaign + lead management. Very targeting lease options to FSBO's. I don't know if has skip trace or good list upload features. I doubt skip trace due to this tool is focusing on scraped FSBO leads with phone numbers off craigslist and zillow. FWIW I don't know any other tool that scrapes off craigslist / zillow.

What CRM/marketing platform are folks using today 2019 that includes skip tracing and SMS and campaign management?

[Gavin D.]

Here's my two cents....  I'm a software developer.  I have developed a couple entirely autonomous programs that  manage specific marketing/advertising life cycles.   Those programs do generate revenue, but by no stretch of the imagination, are they laying golden eggs.   I speak about these programs and their functionality with absolutely no one.  Why?  There are plenty of good developers out there that can reproduce the functionality, and my little niche would become very quickly saturated. 
Now, why did I bring this up?  The software/platform you are looking for absolutely exists, but for the same reason I'm not peddling my software to the public, neither is the owner of that software.  

So what about the software that seems like its what you are looking for?  Where you are going to want to focus your attention is on the leads/skiptracing facets. 

1st, unique and proprietary lead sources are hard to come by and expensive.  The majority of data that is available through nearly all marketing lead systems comes from the same place. Aggregated hacked database records. Its quite easy to get your hands on hacked data like the linkedin database or the experian database. If you were to merge those databases on say... email address, and then, toss in a third point of reference like state voter records which are publicly available, you could easily start your own lead company.  Lots of people have done it..... really... pretty much every lead company you would consider buying leads/data from. 

So where is the truly useful data that is updated often and would provide accurate and recent data (on a mass scale) for skip tracing? Credit Bureaus, Utility data, Cell Carrier Data and USPS... mostly. Utility data, cell carrier data, and usps, your best bet is corelogic.....$$$  And credit bureau data... $$$ as well.

Now I'm not saying that every email address and phone number on every lead list is bad.... Some people, the responsible ones, keep their cell phone numbers, and email addresses for many years.  Those people will not need to be skip traced, as you will have the correct phone number/email address.  It is all the other people who just got a new cell phone number, or a new email address you are trying to reach, before everyone else who has paid for 3 year old cell numbers....

What does this all mean?  Unless you are spending a lot... and I mean a lot, of money on skip tracing with the majors, the information that is spit back from a "skip tracing" service is just different old data, which has most likely been provided by someone else trying to skip the same person.

Now to make matters worse, a company that develops software to do many tasks...ie leads/skip/crm/email/sms is not a specialist in any of those tasks, and are likely farming out the service to the lowest cost source. 

For example, lets take a look at sms.. thats an easy one.    A crm software development company offers sms functionality in their software.  Unless they also happen to be a telecom company, and are recognized by nanpa, as well as have sip trunking capacity (for voip sms), or happen to have a crap ton of gsm sim modems (true sms) and have been delegated their own npa-nxx (area code/local code) set, the number you purchase to send sms messages through their crm is actually being provided by another telecom company.  The crm company is likely just reselling the number and the sms service to you.  

While email functionality can be provided directly through the software, to my knowlege corelogic, at&t, and equifax do not develop crm software so.... the  sms, leads, and skip tracing, need to be sourced.

So, my suggestion... Buy your lists from where ever you like. Skip trace on your own...ie, Search Google for names addresses of people you are interested in digging deeper on.  And use marketing automation platform/software to handle your email/sms goals...  you got 2 choices... hubspot, and mautic ..  Hubspot is a little pricey, mautic you are going to need to learn how to build and manage a webserver.  (both will use outside sms services with api integration for sending smss)    Or... learn to code...

BTW... im not trying to discourage you from your goals. Unfortunately, the real estate game is quite heavily saturated with people/software trying to make money on people.... not houses.  I was a mortgage broker for 6 years and have been a software dev specializing in data for 13+... I am simply trying to shed a little light on what is actually happening behind the curtain, and sincerely wish you the best of luck!