[00:00:00] Zach Hammer: Welcome back to The Real Estate Growth Hackers show on today’s episode, we’re going to be talking a tech adoption, both from the consumer standpoint of getting them to use your technology and where and how that’s useful as well as agent tech adoption and how as a team owner. You can leverage the right technologies, the right strategies in order to make sure that you are getting tech adoption and why that matters.

[00:00:24] Zach Hammer: Today with us, we have Randy. Randy is a renowned figure in the real estate SaaS world. This is actually here’s what? Third time on the show. He’s been known for his exceptional skills in scaling businesses. He’s been instrumental in the growth and success of companies like Sync and Chime, bringing a wealth of experience and insights to our discussions.

[00:00:43] Zach Hammer: At Ruuster, where he is today, he’s leading the charge and revolutionizing client engagement for teams and brokerages. Randy, it’s fantastic to have you back. You always bring the heat. We’ve there’s a reason why you’ve been on multiple times. So glad to have you back on the show.

[00:00:57] Randy Carroll: Yeah, Zach. I appreciate it. That is an awfully kind [00:01:00] introduction. I don’t know that I’ve earned it, but I’m very excited to be back for the third time and hopefully bring even more value than before. Awesome.

[00:01:07] Zach Hammer: So yeah given that you’re coming back the last time we had you on, you had just started maybe not just started, but you had somewhat recently started working with Ruuster. So I think really a great place for us to start is a little bit of this is two years ago now at this point.

[00:01:22] Zach Hammer: Where have things gone since then, right? Where were you at the beginning? And then where are we now with Ruuster?

[00:01:28] Randy Carroll: Yeah, I appreciate it. So last time I was here with Ruuster I had just joined very recently and we had taken our, really our product roadmap and our vision, and we had totally ripped it up, so, I joined and we were thinking we were maybe a consumer first product, not necessarily going directly to agents and then we came to the conclusion that consumers don’t need another new brand that they don’t know that they don’t trust and buying [00:02:00] that trust was way more money than we had to spend. We’re a scrappy startup. Just like many of the folks who listened to this.

[00:02:06] Zach Hammer: Right

[00:02:07] Randy Carroll: And so ultimately we had to growth hack and we changed directions. We realized that we can actually leverage the trust that our clients have built with their clients to drive downloads, right? So we changed from marketing this Ruuster app to now personally branding our product to every one of our clients.

[00:02:32] Randy Carroll: So you’re welcome to go in the app store and download the Ruuster app if you want, but it’s really a relic of what our product used to be. You’re not going to know our brand on a day in and day out basis, but you are going to know. Or, if you’re in your local market, you are going to know certain apps like San Diego real estate or double layer reality, all of those apps that you download are personally branded to that client and takes the Ruuster brand out of the equation entirely.

[00:02:59] Randy Carroll: [00:03:00] So the idea being again, leveraging the trust that our clients have built with their clients in order to drive adoption, the, the theme of the episode and so we were just getting started moving in that direction with the company.

[00:03:15] Zach Hammer: Perfect.

[00:03:16] Randy Carroll: Since then. we’re super blessed. We’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth this past year was really good to us.

[00:03:23] Randy Carroll: And I know it’s been a tough year for a lot of people. So we’re blessed that we have been able to continue to grow through throughout the struggle. But we got started with a lot of hypotheses, right? And this past year, as much as it has been about growth, it’s been about affirming our hypotheses, or, hopefully not proving us wrong.

[00:03:46] Zach Hammer: Yeah it’s been about testing the ideas and luckily they’ve proven true, right? The, a hypothesis is typically an idea that you put forth based on not complete guesses, but based on what, so far, your guess is [00:04:00] about what might work in the world and, in the market.

[00:04:02] Zach Hammer: And so you guys put forth some of these hypotheses thinking, I think this is the right direction, but let’s test it. And so those tests of have largely proven true, right?

[00:04:10] Randy Carroll: Yeah, exactly and we didn’t guess right the first time I should point out. I just talked about how we failed building the Ruuster brand for consumers. That, hypothesis was a failure.

[00:04:21] Randy Carroll: This new hypothesis of our clients. Build trust with their clients. Let’s rebrand this to them and then take it to market and see how we get adoption.

[00:04:31] Randy Carroll: That has been quite a success. We’re really proud of that. But that’s no small part into the fact that our clients. Do, build, trust. We work with some of the best names in the industry now, and they’ve gotten to where they are because they’re professionals, their guides and they know how to convey their trust or use that trust that they build with consumers and use it to drive action to drive adoption.

[00:04:58] Randy Carroll: So that hypothesis, [00:05:00] yeah, and that’s what you build up trust for, and in a certain sense, you as an agent work to build trust with your clients so that when you give them guidance, when you give them direction, they say, okay, Zach, you haven’t steered me wrong. I trust you. You have a track record. I’m going to take your advice now.

[00:05:23] Zach Hammer: Yeah. And I love that just as a strategy in general it’s one of the things that I’ve learned in my own business and I’ve looked for opportunities for clients as well, that man, there’s a lot of power when you can strategically go after the people who make the connections, right?

[00:05:37] Zach Hammer: Like how can I make one of my ideal partners in this person that also brings the connections with them. And in the real estate world, it’s it could often be a lot better. If you want to serve the consumers, getting yourself an army of real estate agents who in their interest to make, their customers, your customers, right? That’s a great strategy to be able to get adoption, to be able to reach a large audience. Just as a quick [00:06:00] side note to that I found the same thing works really well for real estate agents as well, right?

[00:06:04] Zach Hammer: Where for them, whether you’re, whether you’re a team, brokerage agent in general. Who are the connectors in your marketplace, right? Who are the people that you build a good relationship with them and they want to bring their clients and customers to you as well, right?

[00:06:18] Zach Hammer: You’re, the local businesses, the people that maybe have an army of people that need your services, maybe it’s a divorce attorneys, right? Building relationships with those people who then, they have clients that need your help, right? Those sorts of ideas, but that is a strategy.

[00:06:31] Zach Hammer: It’s one of my favorites. So yeah, I love that. There can be a lot of value in going direct to the customer. But man, it’s nice to make those relationships, make those connections that then bring the connections, on autopilot for you. So that’s cool to hear that’s worked out for you.

[00:06:46] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. You can go straight to consumer. It’s easy come, easy go though. It’s expensive. There is no staying power. But when you invest the time into building the relationships, then those relationships will pay off [00:07:00] in their own ways. Including building trust, which allows you to steer the relationship in a direction that you believe is best for them and that they trust that you believe this is best for them, right?

[00:07:14] Randy Carroll: And ultimately, in our case, that has been in order to drive adoption of the products that best benefit the agent with the consumer in mind, right? So in all of my real estate experience, I’ve always worked for companies that have believed that real estate agents make real estate better, not worse for consumers, whereas all these lawsuits and all the news and everything that’s going on is going to try to convince you that agents make real estate harder, not easier.

[00:07:44] Randy Carroll: And we know that’s not true. The percentage of people using real estate agents. For the transaction are actually going up. It’s an increasing number of people are using real estate agents because they do in fact make it better not worse and so[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Zach Hammer: And that’s been my experience as well. It’s like the more that I’ve learned about the industry, the more that I value the real estate agent in the process rather than less, like, there are definitely agents that exist that they aren’t worth the commission that they take.

[00:08:12] Zach Hammer: But honestly that’s not the majority of the successful agents, right? The agents that are doing a lot of deals that are making most of the market move they earn every penny because they’re experts that know how to keep a deal together and know how to service at a high level and honestly take care of the most important parts of the transaction where they’re most likely to go wrong.

[00:08:34] Zach Hammer: Which is after an offer has been accepted, right? Everything that happens just to keep the deal together. Sure, there is help that happens in the lead up to that, for sure. That definitely matters and makes a difference for the experience. But just getting two people or two parties to agree to make this expensive transaction actually go through that process by itself takes a lot of expertise.

[00:08:55] Randy Carroll: It’s expensive and it’s emotional.

[00:08:57] Zach Hammer: Yep. Exactly. So, I love [00:09:00] that. Let’s talk about some of these hypotheses that you guys had and what the results were. I know you guys had a hypothesis around even just like where so let’s break this one down into two, ’cause I know we’ve talked, before this, we talked to a couple of ideas about what we’d be going into.

[00:09:17] Zach Hammer: So first off, let’s talk about. Like, why does an app matter, right? Why does that stand out in terms of like where does it fit for somebody, what you guys have learned about that through the data and where does it actually help in the in real estate sales process.

[00:09:33] Randy Carroll: Yeah, so why does an app matter? Over 60, almost nearly over 70 percent of all online activity in North America takes place from your smartphone. And I don’t think that is a hard number to believe. In fact. You may be surprised that it’s not more. people you can’t go out in public without seeing people glued to their phones.

[00:09:56] Randy Carroll: And we are in an attention economy, [00:10:00] right? You’re not just competing with the other real estate agents around you, but you’re competing with the companies with massive marketing dollars Right? The Z words and the R.com words of the world, right? This is an attention economy that we’re in. And you can’t afford to leave yourself out of the most active battleground.

[00:10:24] Randy Carroll: And so apps, it was a native, it was really a natural progression. I liken it to getting a website in 2007. I think Zillow came out in 2004. Maybe I’m missing up my years a little bit. But by 2007, in my early years at Sync, people were still fighting me about why they needed a website. It’s craziness. So as far as why we chose, an app is a way to launch our product. That’s where the attention is. And that’s where our clients need to be.

[00:10:54] Zach Hammer: And that makes sense. That’s my experience too. I am literally currently in the process[00:11:00] of getting a new home. We live in an RV, we’ve been traveling for about the past five, six years in an RV. It has come time where we figured out we need a home base.

[00:11:07] Zach Hammer: And so we’re in the process of getting a home, man. And, I could tell you I am very techie. I know various ways that I can, look on a website or via an app or whatever. And I’ll tell you, 9 times outta 10 I’m looking on my phone and I’m in an app, looking at listings.

[00:11:22] Zach Hammer: Like, that’s the way that I’m going. It’s the natural feel. And part of the reason why is because that experience tends to be better, right? Like when you’re in an app, things tend to load more correctly. They like sure, you could create a good mobile experience.

[00:11:36] Zach Hammer: But typically an app has just a couple extra bits of polish that make that experience better where it flows, right? It feels quick. It feels snappy. You know where things are in it and it’s laid out. And yeah, user behavior definitely is going to default to that, right?

[00:11:52] Zach Hammer: Even, as somebody like me, like I know about progressive web apps and I know the ability to essentially use a website as an app. [00:12:00] And I still end up defaulting to the native app experience because it’s quick, it’s easy, it feels right, it fits right. And that’s going to be what most people do at this point, for sure.

[00:12:11] Randy Carroll: No, there’s no question about it. And there’s also a whole new feature set that gets open to you when you use a mobile application. We know emails. That’s table stakes, right? You’re not even in the game. You’re not even in the game, if you don’t have some type of automated email system, right?

[00:12:28] Randy Carroll: Just, you’re not invited to this table if you don’t have some type of automated email system.

[00:12:33] Zach Hammer: Right It’s like a bare necessity the equivalent of having your real estate license, right?

[00:12:37] Randy Carroll: Yeah, exactly.

[00:12:38] Zach Hammer: It’s just part of it.

[00:12:40] Randy Carroll: Yeah, totally. That’s exactly right. And then the whole text messaging communication that is changing with various new laws. And there’s, that’s a whole, the FTC has its hands, it’s elbow deep in that. And you’re really opening up yourself to some serious litigation if you’re not careful.

[00:12:59] Zach Hammer: [00:13:00] And it’s not cheap either. We’re talking last I heard it’s so people may not be aware the requirements for email are still somewhat loose, right? Like, you can email somebody. Even without their permission and be able to do that legally in most places but you meet certain requirements and the email may not be received and you may get in trouble with your ESP, but like legally you could do it.

[00:13:22] Zach Hammer: Text messages. That’s not the case. Text messages. You like, you have to have confirmed opt in and people have to have indicated that they want to receive it. And there are some technical ways around that. Most people aren’t doing that if they’re doing it. And we’re talking in terms of legal ramifications, it’s 1500 hundred bucks.

[00:13:39] Zach Hammer: I could be off on this. 1500 hundred bucks per infraction, and that includes per message per person. That adds up pretty quick when you’re trying to do that en masse, right? That’s that’s not cheap.

[00:13:49] Randy Carroll: No, it’s not at all. It’s not. You send out 100 text messages and you got a one and a half million dollar fine. You’re in trouble, you’re in trouble or, yeah, exactly. you’re 150,000 dollar fine. I’m [00:14:00] hurting for math, but ultimately

[00:14:01] Zach Hammer: You do that, you do that to a hundred people and then you try and do that multiple times a month. Yeah, no joke, you’re getting up to that million dollar level pretty quick.

[00:14:10] Randy Carroll: Yeah, no, you absolutely are. So with a native mobile app, you’re opening yourself up to this new technology called a push notification. And everyone knows what that is, even if they don’t know the word, but anytime. Someone comments on your post on Facebook or likes your Instagram post. They feed you that dopamine hit of a push notification.

[00:14:30] Randy Carroll: Someone liked your message and you, and you generally speaking are hooked on it. It is crack. I just I’m, oh, that’s. We all get push notifications and we’re all super quick to reply to them or to open them up. There’s probably people listening to this who are a little OCD and hate that little red dot, right?

[00:14:50] Randy Carroll: So you close it out as soon as you can.

[00:14:53] Randy Carroll: That’s a that’s the value of a push notification. And you don’t get that from any other form of [00:15:00] technology. That’s how you cut through the noise. Again, attention economy. This is how you win in that type of attention style economy.

[00:15:08] Zach Hammer: And I love, with push notifications just the ability where you get like the the ability to message, not as often as you want, but you’re not worried about. Like messaging costs typically, right? Like, it’s just part of the system, right?

[00:15:25] Zach Hammer: Whereas sometimes, messaging costs on text messages can for some systems add up, even if you’re doing it correctly. For emails, maybe the messaging costs doesn’t add up, but your actual open rates and impact that sending the email makes is fairly low. So this is really, it’s like the blend of both where it’s like you get the power of a text message with the, cost rate of

[00:15:46] Randy Carroll: Yeah, the affordability.

[00:15:48] Zach Hammer: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I love that. And and further to your point around like the golden ability to message people really what we’re seeing happen is more and more of [00:16:00] these technologies are moving toward people only receiving messages that they want to receive right?

[00:16:08] Zach Hammer: And that’s starting to become clear. That’s what’s happening. And so texting somebody when they don’t want to be, there’s a reason why there’s like starting to become laws, right? Because people don’t want that.

[00:16:20] Zach Hammer: Emailing. There’s still quite a bit of a Wild West happening but what’s cool about an app is by downloading an app it’s a very clear signal that somebody is interested in this thing enough to have it on their phone, be notified about it, and I don’t know about you, but at least for me, if I start getting notifications that I don’t want I remove the app or I turn off the notifications, right?

[00:16:46] Zach Hammer: And so as long as I have the app, I’m saying, I’m okay with these notifications, right? Like, I’m okay to receive this communication and yeah, so I love that as if you’re able to send the notification, they probably want it.[00:17:00]

[00:17:00] Randy Carroll: That’s exactly right. It is them, in a sense, keeping their hand up, saying, yeah, I’m interested. And we have stories. We have a client in Wisconsin who told me that he has a client of his who will not text him back, but will communicate inside the app, will message with him in there.

[00:17:19] Randy Carroll: And that is not a bad thing. That’s going to keep you organized. And there is a component and maybe we get into this a little bit later, but there is a component of our product that keeps the app downloaded. You mentioned you get rid of the app or you turn off the notifications when you’re done with it.

[00:17:36] Randy Carroll: It would definitely be a mistake to position our product as just a home search tool. That’s like the sexy fun part. Everyone likes looking at homes. My wife loves walking closets and I love back porches, right? That’s what we like to look at.

[00:17:49] Randy Carroll: So, that kind of sets the hook, if you will. But there are reasons after the fact that the app stays downloaded and the notifications stay on right? The ongoing notifications. [00:18:00] That is the real secret sauce to ongoing usage and success after the fact.

[00:18:06] Zach Hammer: Yeah. I actually, I’d love you to talk about that. Cause this is, like I’m in the marketing space and I know when the app store first came out, there was definitely this flood of everybody saying you need an app and and the benefits were there in terms of the benefits to me as the person who owns the app.

[00:18:25] Zach Hammer: But what I love about what you’re about to talk about. Is the biggest thing that people were missing is yeah, sure. There’s great reasons to have an app, but you need to have an app. That’s actually worthwhile, right? You need to have an app that somebody wants to have. If your app is the equivalent of you have a website on their phone, that’s not going to do much. They don’t just need a very advanced contact record in their phone, right? That’s not what people need. So I love for you to talk about what you get. Cause like the home search part, I think that part’s pretty clear doing that. Is really solid.

[00:18:55] Zach Hammer: Maybe you guys have some extra features that make that extra touch being even better, but I’d love to hear [00:19:00] like what all of you guys figured out for how to keep an app sticky. Does that make sense?

[00:19:04] Randy Carroll: Yeah, it totally makes sense. And it’s not really any different conceptually than why no one comes to your website after they bought a house with you. If you see a client who just bought a house with you on your website, two weeks later, it’s is this person regretting what they did?

[00:19:20] Randy Carroll: Or what is going on here? Cause when I bought a house, I was sick of looking at homes afterwards. I absolutely hated it. Until, two years later, and then I’m not looking at back porches again. Why no one comes to your website and why people would keep using your app if it’s not just the home search app we have really put an emphasis on building a client portal. And someone doesn’t stop becoming your client after they close with you much of the disbelief of many agents who struggled to with that concept.

[00:19:52] Zach Hammer: There’s a reason why, what is it? The most recent NAR study that I can remember is so 80 to 90 percent of people say that they would [00:20:00] gladly use their agent again, but only 10 percent ever actually

[00:20:03] Randy Carroll: Yes.

[00:20:04] Zach Hammer: It’s because agents aren’t. Keep it up with them. That’s why.

[00:20:07] Randy Carroll: No. Yeah, that’s exactly why. And to their credit, it’s going to be another seven years before you get a paycheck from that person. So you can’t build a business by just breathing down that person’s neck for seven more years. So I get it. I really truly do. But that doesn’t mean that you should just abandon the effort entirely.

[00:20:23] Randy Carroll: And part of our product is meant to help you with that. And so client portal, right? And let’s think of it this way. If I say real estate app, what do you think of? There’s three names that come to mind instantly.

[00:20:34] Zach Hammer: Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com are the ones that came in mind.

[00:20:37] Randy Carroll: There you go . And Redfin for me.

[00:20:39] Zach Hammer: Okay, fair enough..

[00:20:39] Randy Carroll: There you go. There’s four names that come to mind instantly. But if I were to tell you real estate client portal, what comes to mind for you?

[00:20:46] Zach Hammer: Right now Ruuster.

[00:20:47] Randy Carroll: Nothing comes to mind. Nothing at all comes to mind. And there have been attempts at this, but they come from the other side of the transaction. And the problem is once you try to get someone to adopt new technology, once they’re under contract.

[00:20:59] Randy Carroll: You’ve already [00:21:00] lost them, right? So we come at the beginning of the transaction and the search phase and the education phase. But what we do to keep them engaged after the fact is we’re building in we’re integrating home value tools. So, once I transitioned from a home buyer, I’m now a home owner, which is only one step removed from a seller.

[00:21:19] Randy Carroll: And so by integrating your home value tools, I’m giving you a reason to stay around something that’s more proactive for the actual homeowner part of the experience is you get to build your own digital Rolodex of all the local services that you recommend, right? So it’s your own customizable version of Angie’s list, which I don’t know if you’ve seen they’re trying to make a comeback.

[00:21:44] Randy Carroll: They rebranded as Angie and they’re all over my YouTube ads. But it’s your own personal version of that. So throw in your own preferred contractor, electrician, plumber, roofer, tyler, locksmith, lifestyle type vendors. If you [00:22:00] have a personal finance person that you recommend, attorneys, we have a client who recommends a hairstylist and they’re in there in the app there is their recommended hairstylist.

[00:22:10] Randy Carroll: And that’s important. That’s valuable. You as a real estate agent, your objective should be to be the first person someone thinks about when they think of a home or a need for their home. Oh, I need X. I should call Zach. He’ll hook me up.

[00:22:25] Zach Hammer: Right.

[00:22:25] Randy Carroll: And I wish my, agent had this the first time I ever bought a house.

[00:22:29] Zach Hammer: Right.

[00:22:29] Randy Carroll: I was, it was October and I was tailgating at a Georgia Tech football game. My roommate called me and told me, dude, your kitchen’s flooded. I’m like, Bro, I had a few beers. I’m at the Georgia Tech football game. I don’t know what to do, right? So I called my agent and she helped me out and but I wish I could just whip open this app and call the person directly. That my agent referred me to and I could just cut this [00:23:00] step out, but I could see that Alex recommends this person, and I think, and Alex gets to see that I called that plumber, right?

[00:23:09] Randy Carroll: I talked to the plumber, I hang up and I’m getting a phone call from Alex saying, Hey, so I just spoke to Joe, the plumber, what’s going on? My kitchen flooded.

[00:23:20] Zach Hammer: Right.

[00:23:21] Randy Carroll: So anyways.

[00:23:22] Zach Hammer: Yeah, I and I love that. I know, like for me, it’s really interesting, in the digital age, one of the things that came online pretty quick was like was reviews, right? And there’s one thing that is fairly universally true, which is as soon as there’s like a digital technology Marketers and business people tend to just ruin it.

[00:23:45] Randy Carroll: Yeah.

[00:23:45] Zach Hammer: Like when reviews first came out, like they were really good, really useful. You have a digital way to get the the community’s feedback around what businesses are good or not. But I don’t know about you, but like for me, I have now gone back toward. [00:24:00] I’ll still read reviews, but I don’t have a high degree of confidence that just because something is well reviewed, that it means I’m going to have a good experience.

[00:24:10] Zach Hammer: But you know what I do trust really strongly? I trust recommendations for people that I actually trust.

[00:24:17] Randy Carroll: I know.

[00:24:18] Zach Hammer: Yeah, exactly. And so yeah, I’m the same way. I would much rather take the recommendation of, my real estate agent who knows the people in the area that keeps up with who’s actually providing a high level of service and who’s doing a good job and potentially even which plumbers are connected to the home warranty that I readily use.

[00:24:36] Randy Carroll: Oh, sure.

[00:24:36] Zach Hammer: Because very often real estate agents who are doing a good job often have the preferred partners for that. And maybe they’re doing that legwork of making sure that that those all connect up. Like I, need my plumber to take this home warranty because I’m recommending it.

[00:24:48] Randy Carroll: That’s good point.

[00:24:49] Zach Hammer: Yeah, and like, all of those things coming together, and then further maybe somebody’s new to your area, right? It isn’t just, to me, the services, gardening, and plumbing, and like, all of those things, but, [00:25:00] shoot I’d take, the local agent’s recommendation over a great place to eat, where should I be getting my pizza, right?

[00:25:05] Zach Hammer: Somebody who knows the community, right? Yeah, now, given, if you’re in an area where you’ve been for a while. Maybe you don’t need those recommendations depending on how big the area is. But but somebody new to the area shoot, you can make a difference, not just in the house portion, but the life portion, the life portion of living in that town.

[00:25:21] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. The lifestyle component, right? People buy homes and a component of that purchase is the lifestyle that they can live while living at that home. So if you have things to recommend for them in that area, it’s a no brainer. And ultimately when I go online and I see reviews, when I see the first name and then the first initial.

[00:25:45] Randy Carroll: Hey, in that review, Jason G, I don’t Jason G, that person is some made up dude in China. There’s probably some referral farm out there that just gets paid to go leave 10, 000 reviews on things. And I don’t trust those, right? So I’m [00:26:00] completely with you. I reach out to people that I know I can trust when I need recommendations for whatever it may be.

[00:26:07] Zach Hammer: Yeah, absolutely. So, that’s a great aspect. So, they cut like the, they’re in the home search part, very, let’s talk about this. Cause I know this is another thing. You guys had some theories around what makes somebody actually interested in downloading an app, right?

[00:26:22] Zach Hammer: In terms of our consumer side adoption one, we’ve talked about why does having an app matter? Like why is that good for you? Why does it matter with what’s going on in the world at this point of like how people use tools or not?

[00:26:35] Zach Hammer: We’ve talked a bit about how do you make an app that is actually worthwhile that the people want, but even with that even if you have the best app, if your strategy isn’t solid then you may not actually be able to get people to use it. So, do you want to touch on that for what you guys have seen in your experience and and strategically how to get people to actually use your app.

[00:26:54] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. This is the meat of meat and potatoes of the conversation right here for sure. The next hypothesis that [00:27:00] we tested out was how do we drive adoption of the app? How do we drive downloads? And our hypothesis was that our clients with their branded versions of the app, who take the time to be deliberate and deliver the app to someone that they’ve built some type of rapport with, whether it’s a brand new lead or client from the last 15 years, those folks are going to be able to drive adoption at a very high rate, not just get a few downloads, but drive adoption truly and get penetration into their database.

[00:27:32] Randy Carroll: And the clients who just slingshot the invites out there, left and right, new lead comes in, new PPC lead, you get, the Oprah approach, you get an invite and you get an invite, those folks. Without having any type of prior communication with that lead, we’re going to have a bad experience.

[00:27:51] Randy Carroll: They were going to get a very low percentage of invites. And so we had some clients who told us, we talked to them. How do you invite people? How do [00:28:00] you invite people? And so we segmented these clients and our hypotheses were once again, proven to be true. Our clients who are flinging out invites like Oprah, we’re getting a download rates in the single digits, our clients, however, who are very personal, who are very deliberate about, Hey, Zach, really looking forward to working with you next step.

[00:28:23] Randy Carroll: I’m going to send you a link to download my client portal. It’s important to me that you download this because it’s how I work with all of my clients. Those folks. We’re seeing a download rate north of 80%, north of 80% which is a phenomenal number. We’re really happy with that.

[00:28:41] Randy Carroll: And ultimately, that comes from the fact that you built trust, you had a conversation, you guided them, and you built value into that.

[00:28:50] Zach Hammer: That makes sense.

[00:28:51] Zach Hammer: All right. So if you’re watching this right now, we got cut off the last time that we recorded this. So we’re coming in on a new recording, a new day. I tend to [00:29:00] wear the same thing every day. I’ve got just a bunch of these black shirts. But I think Randy’s outfit has changed since we since we spoke.

[00:29:06] Randy Carroll: Different shade of blue. You’re all black. I’m just various blue shirts. That’s my entire wardrobe.

[00:29:11] Zach Hammer: There you go. So we’re back now and to bridge the gap of where we left off in our last recording and where we are now to bring this episode together. We were talking about getting users to adopt your app to actually make the download, to actually use it, those sorts of ideas.

[00:29:27] Zach Hammer: So simply put, Randy, what tactically have you guys learned for what should agents and team leaders be doing in order to get somebody to download their tools, download their app and maybe, also throw the context of what not to do. Put simply.

[00:29:43] Randy Carroll: Yeah, totally. And so one thing I want to emphasize is I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill and our clients have been really satisfied with the download rates and how much easier they expected it to be. It’s one of those things where it’s not a big deal to your client. If you don’t make it a big [00:30:00] deal.

[00:30:00] Randy Carroll: It’s not a huge request. People download apps on a daily basis and don’t think twice about it. But of course you do need to instruct them and you have to build value into it because that’s what you have to do to get people to do anything right. So do what you’ve been doing when you call your online leads, when you call your past clients and you set, build your rapport, you set the appointment, like you call somebody with a purpose, right?

[00:30:23] Randy Carroll: Continue to call them with that purpose. And at the end of the conversation, simply add to the conversation. Oh, and by the way, after we jump off the phone here, I’m going to send you a link to download my client portal. It’s something that’s really important. It’s how I communicate with all of my clients.

[00:30:40] Randy Carroll: It’s the easiest, most convenient way for you to contact me. And share properties with me, reach out to any of the vendors that I recommend. So it’s just an app that will sit right on your phone. I’ll send that to you right away. Look forward to seeing you on Friday for some coffee or whatever the next Appointment is right.

[00:30:58] Randy Carroll: And once you [00:31:00] jump off the phone, then you go into your CRM and apply your tag of app invite and it’s going to send that person a text that says your agent Randy has invited you to download the Carol home team app, right? Or whatever you decide to name your app. Alaska Connect is one of our clients. I think it’s cool because it’s more general.

[00:31:19] Randy Carroll: But anyways so that’s the most effective way.

[00:31:23] Zach Hammer: On that note, by the way, I’m just going to throw this out there for people. If you’re getting started with Ruuster and you’re looking for how might you name this app, I totally recommend throw a quick prompt at a ChatGPT say, I am putting together an app that does these things.

[00:31:36] Zach Hammer: I’d like a name that is no more than two to maybe three words that clearly conveys what we’re up to and the community generate a list of ideas. That’s going to make it much easier to have good options to select from.

[00:31:48] Randy Carroll: One of the things I find ChatGPT most convenient for is when I have an idea or I have something to say, and it’s harder to make short sentences than it is to make long sentences. [00:32:00] So I type out my long idea and then I put it in ChatGPT and say this and 280 characters or less.

[00:32:07] Zach Hammer: Yep. I do the same thing. I do the same thing. Actually chances are if you get a really long email or message from me or something that’s disjointed with typos in it, it’s probably cause I didn’t have the time to put it through ChatGPT first. But yeah, I’m the same way.

[00:32:22] Zach Hammer: I tend to be very long winded and I know that’s not ideal for clear communication. So ChatGPT is great for that. But but anyway back to the point about getting people to actually download these apps. Part of what I love about the strategy, it’s the same thing that I’ve seen in reality for most things in terms of like lead generation, right?

[00:32:38] Zach Hammer: Clear example that comes to mind for me is open houses. The standard strategy for open houses is you have like a sign in sheet and that’s how you’re collecting leads and that can work. And there are good strategies around how to do that.

[00:32:49] Zach Hammer: But one of the strategies that I learned that always worked best is, setting up these boards or having resources where like the boards show Hey, here’s the lowest priced or, at [00:33:00] this price range single story homes and you put a collection of 10 together on a board, just that people could look through them.

[00:33:06] Zach Hammer: And then homes with pools home like you think through the features that people might want in an area and you have the different price ranges that are fairly common in the area. And then what’s cool is for one thing, this is literally a physical solution, but somebody walks into the open house, you see what they’re interested in just by what they go and look and start flipping through, right?

[00:33:24] Zach Hammer: But then what happens next is that somebody will ask can I get a copy of these or can I take these and you’ll say, oh, sorry, no, those are my only copy, but I would love to send them to you.

[00:33:37] Randy Carroll: Yeah. I love it.

[00:33:38] Zach Hammer: What’s your best email? Because now in their mind before when you’re asking them to sign in, they don’t want you to reach out to them, but when they very clearly understand, I am going to get this list of properties. I know what I’m getting by you contacting me. So I want to give you my contact information. I want you to reach out to me. So similarly with what you’re [00:34:00] describing with this strategy, if you just send, Hey, download my app, that’s not going to work so well.

[00:34:04] Zach Hammer: But if you say, Hey, Here’s what we’re going to be doing. Here’s why it’s so important. Here’s how it’s going to help you. Then it’s going to make a big difference.

[00:34:11] Randy Carroll: Here’s the value you get.

[00:34:12] Zach Hammer: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I love that. It totally adds up and makes sense. Yeah, so I absolutely love that. Okay, cool. So we got a great way to get people downloading the app.

[00:34:21] Zach Hammer: But again I’m pretty sure you mentioned this, but I know when we were talking. When you don’t do that strategy, you guys were seeing about a 10 percent download rate. When you do this strategy of actually leading with value and making sure that people understand why they’re downloading it after building rapport, et cetera that you’re seeing about an 80 percent download rate. So, that’s awesome.

[00:34:39] Randy Carroll: It’s night and day.

[00:34:40] Zach Hammer: Yeah, exactly. Cool. So we’ve got we know why an app is important. We know how to get people to download our app. I forget if we talked about this in the first session or not. When you get people downloading the app, how often are you finding that users are getting into it, enjoying it?

[00:34:59] Zach Hammer: [00:35:00] Consumers specifically, are they just downloading it, then vamoosing, or are they actually getting in and using it?

[00:35:08] Randy Carroll: Yeah. So that’s a great question. And that during our hypothesis testing Obviously, we had a very favorable hypothesis saying people want to use apps, and so they will use them

[00:35:19] Randy Carroll: Now that we have two years of data. We’re really excited with the results. So the 1st statistic I’ll share with you is number of times they actually open the thing.

[00:35:29] Randy Carroll: How many times? Because it’s funny. The counter argument is people will download apps every day. No problem. And then on 10 percent of them. Fair. I hear you. Here’s my response to that. Our clients see that their clients, their buyers, sellers, homeowners are using the app three to four times a week on average, and they’re using it for four and a half minutes per session.

[00:35:55] Randy Carroll: So four and a half minutes. Is a very long time. [00:36:00] I would challenge you to go to your website provider and ask them if they can give you average user session and you probably won’t break a minute.

[00:36:09] Zach Hammer: It’s nowhere near four and a half minutes. That’s for sure. That’s for sure. Yeah. And that again, we may have touched on this again. We’re doing this on a second take. We may have touched on this earlier, but like that goes partially back to the reason why apps are so powerful as well.

[00:36:22] Zach Hammer: So that’s, that was part of the theory of the hypothesis here that, that you would see better. User adoption actual usage of the app through an app rather than a website. And that’s what you typically, that’s what you’re seeing. So you’re seeing, yes, if you did the same exact thing on a website, you’re seeing those usage rates drastically lower, not even getting close to that in terms of total session time versus in the app.

[00:36:44] Zach Hammer: You’re seeing they’re using it. Three to four times a week, and each time is on average four and a half minutes or so. And so what’s powerful about that is that’s the average, which means some people are going to be doing, drastically longer sessions too. But yeah, anyway.[00:37:00]

[00:37:00] Randy Carroll: Absolutely. And let me share this with you as well. One of our strategic partners is a website provider, and they got really jazzed about, integrating our product when they heard about our bounce rates. So a bounce rate is somebody goes to your website. And then they immediately X out, which is when they bounce or they visit a second page on your site that is considered them not bouncing at this point.

[00:37:23] Randy Carroll: So our bounce rate is less than 2%, meaning people open up the app and they visit another page. 98 out of a hundred people will visit a second page. That is a truly a tremendous number and our strategic partner. I got excited about that because their bounce rate was 70%. So that means only 30 out of a hundred people were going to the website and visiting a second page.

[00:37:48] Randy Carroll: You’re truly tripling the number of interactions you get when you have this mobile friendly or this mobile native solution.

[00:37:57] Zach Hammer: And to be clear, I might be doing the math [00:38:00] in my head. So 70 percent is what they were seeing. You guys are seeing a one to 2 percent bounce rate, right? Is that correct? And this is one of those metrics where the lower the number, the better, right? You don’t want a high bounce rate.

[00:38:11] Zach Hammer: It’s like churn. You don’t want high churn, right? So yeah. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. So yeah, that’s it. In terms of improvement what is that? 70 divided by let’s go with two. That’s a 35, yeah, 35 X improvement on bounce rate. And to put that in perspective, this is all part of a funnel, right?

[00:38:30] Zach Hammer: In terms of like a usage funnel if you could, so imagine right now, imagine you could get 35 times more leads, right? Imagine that you could get 35 times more of your appointments to turn to the clients, right? When you get 35 X improvement, that’s a that’s pretty drastic. So yeah, love it.

[00:38:50] Zach Hammer: Love that.

[00:38:52] Randy Carroll: It’s a great statistic. We’re really proud of it. It shows that we’ve built a user friendly app. It shows that we’ve built something that people want to interface with. And that [00:39:00] all again, this is branded to you. So the entire time it’s your logo, it’s your headshot, it’s your information. This is all value that you are bringing to the client. Meanwhile, you’re busy, working on your business elsewhere. And I think that’s just super, super important. I’ve said it on the first go round of this recording, but we are in an attention economy and you have to hold the attention of your clients if you expect them to work with you.

[00:39:26] Zach Hammer: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that actually brings us to a good another point to, continue with our theme of adoption here, tech adoption. So we’ve established. There’s tons of great reasons why you need an app in terms of what it does for being able to capture attention, leverage that attention we we’ve established how to get people to download these apps at an effective rate.

[00:39:45] Zach Hammer: What does that strategy actually look like? We’ve talked about that. We have shown that people are using these apps, right? That theory is holding true that when they download it, they are using it and they’re using it at a much better rate than they’re using, a typical website. But there’s the other end of the spectrum, right?

[00:39:58] Zach Hammer: Most of that’s been focused on [00:40:00] consumers consumers and a bit the the benefits that we would get as like a team owner or the person that actually owns this app. But there’s another potential wrench that we have in this machine that gets thrown in it.

[00:40:10] Zach Hammer: And that’s the adoption of, agents on our team. And actually getting them to use the tools that we have, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got an amazing tool, if it sits on the shelf, it doesn’t get used by the people who need to be using it, that it doesn’t do you any good.

[00:40:23] Zach Hammer: And one of the key key groups that needs to be using this for you as a team leader to get that benefit would be the agent. Can you talk a little bit about, you guys have an integration that I know is powerful, but also just the principle that you’ve learned for what matters for getting agents on your team.

[00:40:38] Zach Hammer: To leverage the app and why that’s so important.

[00:40:41] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. And so if y’all don’t know my background, I’ve spent the majority of my time in the real estate tech space, working for various CRM companies. So I’ve spent the bulk of my career bashing agents over the head, telling them to use their CRM, use your CRM, right? So I’ve been shouting this from the [00:41:00] rooftops for years and years.

[00:41:01] Randy Carroll: And so when I came to Ruuster, one of the mistakes that we had made was believing that agents are going to want to log into our product versus the CRM. And that was a course correct that I made pretty much immediately upon getting here. And so we’ve spent a lot of time and energy into building some world class integrations with some of the top CRM products in the marketplace.

[00:41:25] Zach Hammer: And the key there is just like you’re saying, right? It’s hard enough to get agents to use the tools that you’ve been trying to get them to use. And so what you guys figured out is strategically, how can we centralize as much of this work as possible into one place?

[00:41:39] Zach Hammer: So let, we know we’re not, you guys aren’t trying to be the CRM, right? So

[00:41:43] Randy Carroll: Not at all.

[00:41:44] Zach Hammer: So it makes sense. People are still going to need a CRM. Your product doesn’t replace the CRM. It’s a great part of the tool set of working with your clients. And so you guys figured out, Hey, we need them to use the CRM anyway. Let’s make sure that this tool is ready [00:42:00] and available in the CRM to make sure that works.

[00:42:02] Randy Carroll: Yeah. And one of the best endorsements that we’ve gotten since pivoting to this was a client of ours in San Diego. His name’s Dan Beer. He had an app from a different company that just sat on the shelf and collected dust because it didn’t do anything to integrate into his tech stack.

[00:42:19] Randy Carroll: And ultimately, agents are going to forget about it because it existed on an island again, collecting dust when he saw our product and the way we integrated with his CRM, he uses a follow up boss. He said, I switched to your product because I don’t feel like I’m adding a new piece of technology to my business.

[00:42:37] Randy Carroll: I’m just making the FUB follow up boss CRM better and to me, that says, good job. We figured out how to make. An elite level integration that makes your agent’s lives better. It makes the FUB CRM better and ultimately conveys all that value to your client.

[00:42:54] Zach Hammer: Yeah I love that. That’s been a lesson that I’ve seen come through a lot as well. It’s good to see you guys figuring [00:43:00] out how to capitalize on that knowledge for sure. I know a company that I work with Sisu they’ve learned a lot of the same things, right?

[00:43:06] Zach Hammer: A lot of the work that they do to bring things together is all about bringing these tools together and making sure that information is as seamless as possible because the reality is the more that you rely on humans to integrate complex systems. And remember to do an extra thing, the less likely it’s going to happen.

[00:43:25] Zach Hammer: And so the more that you can make that automated or right at their fingertips and the thing that they’re already used to using honestly that’s part of why on that same perspective, I know you guys at Ruuster you came out mobile first. And that’s important too, right?

[00:43:38] Zach Hammer: Because, agents are definitely they’re much more on their phone than they are in front of a computer At least it’s more reliable that they’re going to be out in the field doing that Anyway, so those kinds of things just that key lesson of what is the natural user behavior?

[00:43:51] Zach Hammer: And how do we step into that stream? That’s already going. That’s such a key takeaway. I’m glad you guys have figured out a good way to do that. So, what does that look like? What did you [00:44:00] actually put together in that follow up boss integration to make that flow really, powerful.

[00:44:04] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. And we have other integrations, but we’ll just for the sake of being specific we’ll dive into this one. Follow boss is a pretty unique feature actually called embedded apps. And if you’re a tech company listening to this and you don’t have your embedded app figured out in FUB, Stop everything you’re doing and figure that out because it is truly a game changing feature set.

[00:44:24] Randy Carroll: And if you’re a CRM company listening to this, you need to figure out how to add that feature as well. I can’t speak highly enough about it and how it’s helped our business and ultimately helped our clients is embedded app. Allows us to basically take our interface of our product and plug it into the lead profile page inside of FUB.

[00:44:43] Randy Carroll: So when you’re on your lead profile page, you’ve got their information, you’ve got your timeline of notes and history of interactions and everything that exists there. And then on the right hand panel, you have a view into Ruuster, which allows you [00:45:00] to send properties to your clients, perform in app chat messages directly with the client.

[00:45:05] Randy Carroll: Set up the saved searches for all of you fubbers. I don’t know if that’s a word they use, but I’m using it.

[00:45:11] Zach Hammer: I don’t know.

[00:45:12] Randy Carroll: For all you follow up bots users.

[00:45:13] Randy Carroll: Major pain point. Not having an MLS integration. We fixed that. And so that drives client adoption. Agents love it, right?

[00:45:20] Randy Carroll: Especially, if you’re transitioning away from a CRM that has an MLS integration, and you’re worried about your agents adopting this new CRM. Because of that missing feature, we found the solution for you. And ultimately all of the messaging that takes place inside the embedded app, all the properties you share with them, all the properties automatically get shared with them, all of the vendor interactions.

[00:45:41] Randy Carroll: If I’m a client using the Zack app and I contact his preferred locksmith, that interaction gets stored inside a followup boss as well. You get notified. It ultimately wraps the product into the lead profile page. So you’d never even have to leave FUB to [00:46:00] use the entire, and I’m saying the entire feature set.

[00:46:03] Randy Carroll: You’re not, it’s not a ZAP, right? ZAP has its place and I’m not disparaging that. This is.

[00:46:10] Zach Hammer: But Zaps are definitely limited, right? Like they’re useful when they’re needed whether it’s a zap or whether it’s make. com or even if you’re incredibly nerdy and you use innate in but whatever automations you’re using there, there’s a place for them.

[00:46:22] Zach Hammer: But but you’re right. It’s there. They’re more. They’re either incredibly complicated to set up to get to get the level of integration that you’re looking for, or they just don’t do enough. So having that full integration in there that’s super powerful. Yeah, I love that.

[00:46:37] Zach Hammer: And can you I don’t think you touched on this yet. Why is it so important? To have that in the app that people are using, compared to the alternatives, like what happens if somebody doesn’t have easy access? Cause like something like MLS integration or being able to send properties, let’s be honest, that’s going to happen, right?

[00:46:55] Zach Hammer: Like people are going to need to be able to send properties. They’re going to do that. [00:47:00] So what does it look like if it isn’t integrated into the CRM that they’re using,

[00:47:03] Randy Carroll: Oh, yeah. This this is really scary actually. And I spoke to a client or potential client yesterday who has two different website providers and his agents still use the MLS. That is a huge gap in your business and you may not realize it. So let’s look at it this way. I’m the team leader.

[00:47:21] Randy Carroll: Zach is an agent of mine. I spend a lot of money on leads. Zach is great at calling them. He sets the appointments, he does everything that I want him to do. But what he does that I can’t stand is he takes the leads and he sets ’em up inside the MLS. to share properties. Why does that bother me two days from now, Zach doesn’t want to be on my team anymore. Zach doesn’t want to be in the same brokerage anymore. Guess what he has access to? All of the clients that he has called, whether they’re hot, active clients now, or cold clients that may transact in 12 months from now, he has all of their information in the [00:48:00] MLS to go anywhere he wants.

[00:48:02] Randy Carroll: He can leave my team with all of those leads that I paid for, that I provided for him, and I have no recourse. My best shot at keeping that business is reassigning those leads in the database to a new agent and hoping that agent follows up with them better than Zach does.

[00:48:21] Randy Carroll: And that is, that’s a very scary reality.

[00:48:24] Zach Hammer: We’re not like, what’s interesting about this is that we’re not talking about like just everyday leads. Like typically if you are getting into the, getting to the point where you were actually doing the work of setting somebody up on an MLS search or.

[00:48:41] Zach Hammer: going through that process to start setting them properties. This is a fairly qualified lead, probably some of your hottest leads that are actually like actively in the process of working. And so even I’ve been involved with a number of teams like you may have some sort of a agreement where somebody takes, could [00:49:00] take the business with them and then your team just still gets the cut of it or whatever.

[00:49:03] Zach Hammer: Agents are going to go where they’re going to go. There’s, there isn’t a, there isn’t. A perfect way to to remove that. But like you said, you don’t even have optics on it as soon as it leaves it. Like you don’t even have the ability to know what’s going on and to know.

[00:49:16] Zach Hammer: Alright, this is a deal we should be paying attention to because it’s hot and active, right? So if they leave you, you may not even be aware that they’re leaving with this deal that should be, should be subject to whatever the terms are of you sending them the business, right?

[00:49:30] Zach Hammer: So yeah and then further You’re missing key data at the most important stage to be able to make decisions on who should be getting business, who should be getting leads, who should like how, where do you funnel more business to it? Your business, because you’re not seeing who’s creating the most active, engaged energy and man that, it’s not a good place to not have that data at that point.

[00:49:56] Randy Carroll: I completely agree. And to the, in the spirit of agents, not using more than [00:50:00] one piece of technology. Do you think that once they set them up in the MLS search, they’re going to be, fervently updating the CRM, right? Probably not. One of the things that drove me nuts was how bad the majority of agents are updating their pipeline stage and their CRM, right?

[00:50:19] Randy Carroll: Every, every lead gem company that you ever talked to when you asked them a conversion rate and they say, it really depends on you and your ability. It’s hard for me to give you a number. That is the agent community’s fault for not uploading, for not updating their pipeline stages so that tech company can then actually audit the performance of their clients and give you a real number.

[00:50:42] Randy Carroll: So if you want a real number from these companies, tell all the agents that, to update their pipeline stages so that you can see conversion. This is completely off topic, but it’s a soapbox that I’ve been waiting to stand

[00:50:52] Zach Hammer: It, it’s, it is very much in the adoption portion of this discussion for sure. Cause, and honestly, just like [00:51:00] anything if you put an expectation into place on your team, the only way that happens is if it is inspected and if incentives are set up to make it. Make it in alignment where your incentives drive the behavior that look that you’re looking for man to be that’s one of those like hey You want leads you update this thing?

[00:51:19] Zach Hammer: Because we’re gonna be we’re gonna be judging you based off of your rates in this and if I see a poor conversion rate of Lead to appointment you’re not getting leads right

[00:51:30] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:51:32] Zach Hammer: Yeah, so

[00:51:33] Randy Carroll: So it’s a meritocracy.

[00:51:35] Zach Hammer: Exactly. But the key is that you have to have those standard, you have to have those clear standards in place.

[00:51:39] Zach Hammer: You have to have the clear incentives set up to make sure that it drives the right behavior. And then further, you have to have somebody who is diligently like actually checking and inspecting it. Because if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t get inspected, if you don’t have a time in your calendar that somebody on your team is actually looking at these numbers and saying, Hey, what’s happening here?

[00:51:58] Zach Hammer: It. Then it’s going to [00:52:00] fall off. Even if we wanted it to be different we all need that. I know that’s the case for me, man. I have to set up systems where somebody is asking me for the thing, if I’m going to actually get it done, otherwise I don’t. So

[00:52:09] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. And you want to enable your agents to see the most amount of success. Cause that benefits you as well. So having these integrated systems, having the having them all into one place, one login, one user interface. That’s going to enable your agents to be more successful. And so that’s why the integration piece is so important.

[00:52:30] Randy Carroll: Some of the top teams in the country I talked to, they just tell me, flat out, I don’t consider any piece of technology that doesn’t integrate into my CRM, you don’t integrate into my CRM. I’m sure it’s a great product. I don’t have anything bad to say, but you’re dead to me.

[00:52:43] Zach Hammer: Yeah, I mean that, that’s so key. And I know we were touching on the integration with Follow-Up Boss, but just I’ll throw this out on your behalf. I know you guys at Ruuster, you’re not like, you’re not solely dedicated to follow-up Boss. It’s just that you’ve seen you’ve seen that integration being powerful.

[00:52:57] Zach Hammer: And honestly I think you would be just [00:53:00] as excited if. If and when any of the other CRMs start being able to make it so that you can integrate just as well, just as effectively with them as well. And you mentioned you do have some other integrations that you guys that you guys work with other CRMs too, correct?

[00:53:14] Randy Carroll: Oh yeah, absolutely. We’re using the FUB example for the sake of example, but here’s another feature that I, here’s another integration I think is just killer, so another one of our CRM integrations is CR interactive. They’ve got a great product, really SEO friendly websites. They’re a really good solution for you.

[00:53:30] Randy Carroll: If you’re hyper focused on, on lead generation and you have that craft. Figured out and one of the ways that our product and our integration makes their integration or their product better is the behavioral triggers. If you’re your interactive user, you probably have some type of behavioral trigger if a client views a property a certain number of times.

[00:53:54] Randy Carroll: Because of our integration, it doesn’t matter where they view the property. If they view it [00:54:00] five times, that behavioral trigger is going to fire. So if they view it twice on your website, and then three times on your app, that’s a total of five times, that automation is going to fire off. And and then of course any of the communication, any of the vendor interactions, all of that gets plugged into SEER Interactive as well.

[00:54:19] Randy Carroll: And any safe search set up in Sierra automatically reflects and Ruuster. So you only have to set it up once, but you get the benefit of the email and the push, like we talked about earlier and the, in the conversation. And so it’s a really great, powerful integration. And, I’m going to be I’m going to be passionate about any of our integrations because I’ve seen it make an impact in our clients business.

[00:54:40] Randy Carroll: And I’m just, I’m fired up about it.

[00:54:42] Zach Hammer: Yeah. That’s the key, right? So what you guys are all about is foundationally, you have this understanding that apps make a difference on getting consumers to actually do the thing that you want them to do. You want them to spend time with your brand, with your tools, right? Yeah. Doing their real estate process through you [00:55:00] and through things that you can have optics and automations on and those sorts of things. And there are a lot, there are a lots of great CRMs that help you in that process to help with the communication, to help with automations and other aspects, whether it’s the front end lead gen of getting those leads into your world or even just the long term follow up and automations that happen around that as well.

[00:55:18] Zach Hammer: So you guys are very actively. Working to integrate with plenty of different solutions. I know I know that sometimes people may we mentioned it, but I just wanted to reiterate, it’s more than just one integration. There’s lots that you guys are doing.

[00:55:30] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It would be a mistake for us not to.

[00:55:34] Zach Hammer: Yeah, absolutely. And awesome. Awesome. So we talked through the. Key concepts of why do you need an app? And we talked about how it’s the natural user adoption. We even threw in the idea that, that mobile apps and the ability to work with people mobilely is important, both for consumers and for your agents.

[00:55:51] Zach Hammer: Just all of us are using apps more often. We talked about the ability to do communication Okay. In, in a way that has a high open rate with, without the [00:56:00] downsides of email and text message, there’s lots of downsides to those with the push notifications in terms of app usage and why apps matter we talked about how to get people to use an app by leveraging, being proactive with our communication and building rapport and value before we actually send the link, that’s going to be your best strategy to get somebody to use your app and honestly, to use any of your tools.

[00:56:19] Zach Hammer: If you want somebody to use a tool of yours, make sure that they understand why. And put the work into doing that. Otherwise, you’re not going to see them using it. They’re not just going to naturally be like, Oh yeah, let me do this. Like you need to make it make sense. And then we talked about we talked about that, that users are using the app that we’re seeing drastically better utilization rates of the, of an app compared to, websites.

[00:56:40] Zach Hammer: So that’s awesome. And then we talked about how integrating and making the app part of the natural flow. That you’re working with your agents, why that’s so important and how you guys are doing that across multiple, multiple platforms.

[00:56:51] Randy Carroll: That’s true of every piece of tech in your business, right? Obviously we’re talking about Ruuster for the obvious reasons, but that’s something you have to do for any piece of technology in your [00:57:00] business. You have to consider that. So for folks who don’t care about mobile apps, there’s your nugget for the call.

[00:57:07] Zach Hammer: Absolutely. Absolutely. And then I think that covers, for the most part, like our key points, but I know just before we hopped on the second recording, you had something that’s top of mind right now that’s going on, right? You’ll love them or hate them. I think in general, there’s a general feeling that a lot of people of the real estate community have, but Love him or hate him you, you have some ideas based on what you’re seeing around what Zillow is doing for what’s on the horizon based on recent acquisitions of follow up boss and spruce.

[00:57:35] Zach Hammer: As we close out this episode, you want to like if you’re on the fence about, about apps and maybe why it might be important, what are you seeing on the horizon that you think might, Have people like take a second glance at why they should maybe be looking at having their own app.

[00:57:50] Randy Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. And quick disclaimer here. I’m pretty, I’m like chaotic neutral on this. I I love to see shakeups just in general and[00:58:00] our, Ruuster, we have a lot of top Zillow flex clients using our product and seeing, I’ve seen them have success. And then I also had some clients text me that Zillow is the devil the day the FUB news broke.

[00:58:11] Randy Carroll: So we, I see all of the opinions, I get them all directly fired my way, but there’s something that you need to be aware of and as an industry and you as an individual can decide if this is actually going to be impactful for you or not. But many months ago, probably years ago at this point, Zillow laid out this idea of the super app concept.

[00:58:33] Randy Carroll: They want a super app. Super app to me means every part of the real estate transaction can take place. In this one user friendly, beautifully designed mobile product powered by Zillow. And they’ve been working diligently towards developing that. So you mentioned it. They acquired Spruce. What is Spruce?

[00:58:54] Randy Carroll: Spruce is a digital title company. They’ve had Zillow Mortgage for quite some [00:59:00] time, and they’re actually like beefing up, investing into Zillow Mortgage, making that a better user experience. And also. I don’t know if I should say if it’s public knowledge or not, but they are rewarding flex agents with more business if the majority, if a higher percentage of their closings finance through Zillow Mortgage.

[00:59:23] Randy Carroll: So think of this.

[00:59:23] Zach Hammer: I’m pretty sure that’s public knowledge. At least it’s public enough, I’ve seen it across Facebook groups and

[00:59:29] Randy Carroll: Oh, good.

[00:59:29] Zach Hammer: So yeah.

[00:59:30] Randy Carroll: Okay, good. Yeah. I know I’m not the only person who knows that, but I don’t know if that’s something that gets said in public or it’s just understood. But yeah, so you have, agents who are going to get more business, the more business they send to the Zillow mortgage. And so naturally people respond to their incentives as an agent.

[00:59:48] Randy Carroll: I want more business who they finance with doesn’t really matter to me. So anyways, and then there’s the FUB acquisition, right? So you’re talking about the best in class [01:00:00] CRM in the industry. So Zillow already has apps downloaded on hundreds of millions of people’s phones. They’ve got the real estate search experience.

[01:00:08] Randy Carroll: They’ve acquired the title experience. They’ve invested in their mortgage experience, and they’re going to provide a CRM that bundles it all together for agents to make it nice and simple, right? So imagine as an agent, you have a CRM. Where you can very easily get your clients financing figured out I’m sure there’s a title interface that’s somewhere down the product roadmap.

[01:00:30] Randy Carroll: I know there are some other conversations Zillow is having about transaction management acquisitions and making that part of the lifecycle easier for the agent and consequently easier for the client. So all I have to say, they said, we’re going to do this super app idea, and then they took all the steps they needed to do to put the puzzle pieces together to create the super app.

[01:00:54] Randy Carroll: So they said they were going to do it. Now they’re walking the walk. And you as an agent [01:01:00] can hitch your wagon to them, which is fine. Again, I’m chaotic neutral. Do what you want to do. We have clients again, who will use the Zillow super app and they’ll continue to use Ruuster.

[01:01:10] Randy Carroll: Or alternatively, you can create your own version of the super app, build your moat, right? Build your digital moat, offer your value, take the best in class, title, mortgage, contractors that you know in your market, personally, all of you. Our powers combined, you’re now able to build a hyper local version of the Zillow super app, giving your consumers a hyper localized experience, which is really what everybody wants.

[01:01:43] Randy Carroll: And ultimately that’s food for thought. That, that’s something you have to consider. That’s current events. That is happening. It’s not some pie in the sky idea. And I’ve been watching it unfold and I’ve been raising the alarm bell on social media about this. To, to varied responses, but yeah, [01:02:00] it’s been on my mind this morning and I appreciate you letting me again, jump on yet another soapbox.

[01:02:05] Zach Hammer: You got it. Yeah. Honestly, like my basic feelings when it comes to Zillow overall is the same. I’m very neutral on it in the sense of here’s what I know. You do not get user adoption of anything unless you actually pay attention to what users want. And Zillow has been able to massively get in front of the real estate industry by doing a better job at that than.

[01:02:32] Zach Hammer: The real estate industry had and they’re sure there’s always the question of can you like where can you retain the control here? Where can you do that? But here’s the deal. They’re going to, they’re going to win as long as people left them.

[01:02:48] Zach Hammer: And the only way the only way to potentially try and compete against that is to actively try and compete being angry about it. Isn’t going to do anything right? Like you said, it’s like your [01:03:00] options are either bend the knee and just go with the flow and. And understand that you’re entering into a position where you do not have the leverage.

[01:03:09] Zach Hammer: You do not have much for leverage in that scenario, or you need to have your strategies for how am I rising up and competing and understanding that it’s not about what you want. And it’s not about this is the way it’s always been. It’s about ultimately consumers are going to decide who they’re going to work with.

[01:03:30] Zach Hammer: And whoever creates the experience that they actually want, that feels good, that gets them the result that they want, that fits with their natural behavior. That’s who’s going to win. And so you got to be focused on what are the ways that that you could be doing that, that you could be bringing that to the table and what you’re competing against with Zillow is you’re competing against a company that has put billions of dollars into user experience, into developing tools, into thinking about this process.

[01:03:56] Zach Hammer: And. And if you’re not bringing along at least some level of [01:04:00] tools that have maybe not the same extent, but have that same level of passion and dedication where people are putting effort into parts of these tool set and parts of this scenario and leveraging those, right? If you’re just sitting back and saying, Hey, this has worked for me so far and not trying to adjust and move forward.

[01:04:19] Zach Hammer: Man, I think I was just watching a video, you’re essentially, you’re dying slowly, is what’s happening, right? You’re not thriving you’re dying, but you’re dying slowly.

[01:04:27] Randy Carroll: Not, you’re definitely not thriving. And like you said, you can’t compete by deciding not to compete. You’re not gonna, you stick your head in the sand and say, put your fingers in your ears nah, like that’s not going to work.

[01:04:38] Randy Carroll: And so you have to just, you have to make a decision to compete because if you don’t make a decision, the default decision is to not compete. You have to proactively enter the race. And if you do not do that, and this goes, and this is true in many areas of life. So life advice, if you don’t make the actual decision to compete, then the default decision being made for you is [01:05:00] that you are not competing.

[01:05:01] Zach Hammer: And so what’s cool here is that, you’ve come on and you’ve laid an option at people’s feet to say, Hey, you want to compete, you want to make sure that you’re still entering into whether you’re working with Zillow or not, that you’re entering into this, where like you’re bringing value to the table, you have your own strategies, your own things that you’re leveraging in this process to have leverage in this, overall sort of market negotiation.

[01:05:26] Zach Hammer: Ruuster is a tool that’s available for that concept, for that strategy. If if you’re looking to compete, you better be looking for some tool. And if you got something that you feel like is better than Ruuster, then by all means use

[01:05:40] Randy Carroll: go ahead. We love competition.

[01:05:43] Zach Hammer: But but that’s the key is if not something like Ruuster, you gotta be putting some sort of strategy forth and not just going into Facebook and complaining about something, right?

[01:05:53] Zach Hammer: You gotta what are you doing? What do you, what are you actually doing to make the moves to get the result that you want? [01:06:00] And and there’s lots of different ways that you potentially could. We don’t need to go into them here, but but whatever you do don’t just sit and be angry.

[01:06:06] Zach Hammer: Put your anger into action and do something with it.

[01:06:08] Randy Carroll: Use that as fuel, right? Get up and fight, build your business. That’s the only option you have, because if you don’t, again, you don’t proactively make that decision, the decision made for you is that the big green monster, the big Z monster is going to come scoop up your business.

[01:06:24] Zach Hammer: Absolutely. Absolutely. There you go. We we covered a lot of good stuff here. I think folks hopefully are armed and dangerous with information on how to get user adoption, both from consumers and agents for things like apps, why apps are important. What we covered is relevant to just tool adoption in general tech and tool adoption in general.

[01:06:42] Zach Hammer: If people want to check out what you guys are up to, obviously they could check out your website at Ruuster. com, right? It is.

[01:06:48] Randy Carroll: That’s right. Yeah, Ruuster with two U’s instead of two O’s. Ruuster, of course, we gotta be a tech, we gotta be a tech company and make it weird.

[01:06:57] Zach Hammer: also, if you guys want to show that you came through [01:07:00] the real estate growth hacker show you can go to realestategrowthhackers. com Ruuster spelled the same way. R U U S T E R. That will actually take you to the same place. It’ll let them know that you came through here. But either way, however you get there, if if what Ruuster is up to sounds sounds useful to you, I highly encourage you check them out, see what they’re up to.

[01:07:18] Zach Hammer: They’re up to some really cool things. One of the other things that I would reiterate is that they’re, You guys are clearly paying attention to what’s working, what’s not working. And not every company seems to be doing that. Not every company seems to be adapting, right?

[01:07:31] Zach Hammer: Like you guys are still very much in the space of being willing to listen, being willing to learn, being willing to adapt as things are needed. That, those are the kinds of companies that I personally in my own business like to align myself with. I highly encourage any agents, team leaders listening here that You know, it’s a valuable thing to have in a in, in a partner company, service tool, whatever that you’re working with.

[01:07:51] Zach Hammer: So keep that in mind again, real estate growth, hackers. com slash R U S T E R. And that’ll take you there. Any any final parting words, Randy, as we close out [01:08:00] the episode.

[01:08:01] Randy Carroll: Oh, no, just, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here again. I always enjoy my conversations with you. Really, at the end of the day, whether it’s Ruuster or otherwise. arm your business with not just a shiny gadget of the week, right? But real actual technology. But don’t remember, or don’t forget, please remember, don’t forget that technology is not meant to replace you.

[01:08:29] Randy Carroll: It’s meant to empower you to be human, to more humans. If I’ve learned anything in the past several years, It’s that nothing can replace a handshake, a meal shared together, face to face interactions. Technology is meant to help you expand your voice to as many people as you can to identify the folks who are most.

[01:08:53] Randy Carroll: Ready, willing, and able to share that meal with you to spend time together. That, that is [01:09:00] what technology is meant to do. Don’t forget it. And we just are, we’re just glad to be a part of the journey. So

[01:09:07] Zach Hammer: Awesome. Thanks so much for for coming on to everybody watching or listening. Feel free to to check us out on the next episode, but until then, we’ll see on the next one.

[01:09:15] Randy Carroll: cheers.