If your contact information is on any of the BloodhoundBlog Unchained interest lists, I spammed you last week with a form email that pitched the then-upcoming Seattle Unchained preview as well as the still-upcoming BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix event.
The form letter was sent out as bulk email from the Heap CRM software application, and I played a few games with the software: The letter asked recipients to click on a link that opened a web-based form that in turn solicited them to complete and update their contact information — not just name and email but also phone numbers and snailmail address. That form in turn fed its input back to Heap, in effect semi-automatically scrubbing our Unchained database.
The response rate is over 25%, so far, which is just astounding to me, but the essence of the thing was to put Heap through its paces. As I discussed a little while ago, I want a highly-programmable CRM solution that I can use to automate our databases. Heap seems to be the best solution for the work we need to do, as a compromise between power and cost–per-user.
I’m going to be talking about everything I do with Heap, going forward. I’ll make the tools I build with it available, starting with a new version of my universal contact form that will not only create new contact records within Heap but will assign those contact to the appropriate drip email campaign.
After that, I want to build code that will do a truly robust round-trip contact scrub, because I’m thinking you can get people who really want to do business with you to tell you anything you might want to know.
For now, I need some help from you:
If you are signing up for Heap, I’d appreciate if you would use this link. I will get credit in Heap’s affiliate program. We’ll donate the affiliate fees to charity, but with each new sign-up, I will gain clout with the developer. As always, I’ll be sharing every new idea I come up with, but if we can demonstrate that wired real estate professionals are a significant portion of the user base, we stand a much better chance of getting needed product upgrades in a sprightly fashion.
Watch this space for Heap news. I’m buried in data, so I’ll be building a lot of tools to dig myself out. And please don’t be shy about sharing your own ideas. Between Heap, the Heap API and the power of intelligent forms on web servers, there is a lot of CRM power at our fingertips. Let’s figure out how to leverage that power to best advantage.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Sean Purcell says:
Greg, I just wanted to be first in line to say: “Thank you” and “I can’t wait.”
February 16, 2009 — 12:52 pm
Michael Mullin says:
Greg, I haven’t checked out Heap yet but I’m an ACT guy and have been for a long time. The “perfect” CRM is certainly the Holy Grail and I hope Heap does it for us!
February 16, 2009 — 5:22 pm
ryan hartman says:
I’ve been demoing heap again and have still sorta been liking oprius more….but if you’re serious about making heap evolve, and you don’t mind being hit with my own feature requests, I’m down to play along and will cancel my current trial in favor of using your affiliate link.
Here are my first requests:
1. embedable web forms for use on lead capture pages.
2. taggable tasks
3. ability to forward email to heap and have it create a task. (on second thought, maybe I’m just missing the way to do this via messages & categories?)
4. ability to parse out “people” who aren’t leads or opportunities. Or the ability to auto-categorize all new people, so that they can be identified and grouped appropriately.
5. Auto assignmnet of event templates when a lead is assigned to a category. (oprius is great on this)
6. Pipeline reporting and goal setting by category (listings, buyers, etc.)
7. Once web forms arrive, it’d be great if they could trigger event templates.
8. For gmail integration, I’d love it if heap could be incorporated into a firefox sidebar extension or gadget like rememberthemilk. To take it a step further, it’d be even better if we could group a contact in gmail and have it auto populate the heap database with a contact in a similarly named group as it simultaneously kicked off an event template…
Guess that’s it for now… at the very least, this should be fun to watch. Heap will hit a big payday if they become practical enough to use for $40/month paying Toilet Paper … I mean TP crowd.
February 16, 2009 — 6:15 pm
Greg Swann says:
> 1. embedable web forms for use on lead capture pages.
Definitely not there. I will have a version of my universal contact form live shortly. I also plan to build a database scrubbing form, so you can clean up CSV files before pulling them in. Possibly also a repetitive entry form for clericals working from paper records.
> 2. taggable tasks
Not sure what that means.
> 3. ability to forward email to heap and have it create a task. (on second thought, maybe I’m just missing the way to do this via messages & categories?)
This is doable now. I think it can also be done from Jott.com.
> 4. ability to parse out “people” who aren’t leads or opportunities.
We may use “customers” for this, but you can also just apply a category like “friends/family”.
> Or the ability to auto-categorize all new people, so that they can be identified and grouped appropriately.
You can add people to categories on the way in.
> 5. Auto assignmnet of event templates when a lead is assigned to a category. (oprius is great on this)
That;s a two step process for now, and I don’t know of a way to do it in bulk.
> 6. Pipeline reporting and goal setting by category (listings, buyers, etc.)
This is a world I know nothing about, so you tell us what you figure out.
> 7. Once web forms arrive, it’d be great if they could trigger event templates.
I can do this by email, but I want to be able to do it through the API, which is more robust overall. It may be doable, but I haven’t gotten it to work yet.
> 8. For gmail integration, I’d love it if heap could be incorporated into a firefox sidebar extension or gadget like rememberthemilk. To take it a step further, it’d be even better if we could group a contact in gmail and have it auto populate the heap database with a contact in a similarly named group as it simultaneously kicked off an event template…
I don’t think I understand this.
I have wish lists of my own, as well, which I’ll take up in due course.
February 16, 2009 — 8:57 pm
Genuine Chris Johnson says:
In the spirit of not being a vendorslut, I would say that transparency in what happens to the cash is probably important, and to not benefit personally is probably important. There was a recent post that I seem to recall right around christmas that talked about this. Maybe Vlad’s legal bills or some cause du jour, but an affiliate link will dissipate your credibility faster than Inman can say “Top Producer.”
February 16, 2009 — 7:15 pm
Greg Swann says:
> to not benefit personally is probably important
> an affiliate link will dissipate your credibility faster than Inman can say “Top Producer.”
Bullshit. There is no personal benefit to me in working twice or three times as hard to create tools that are fully-documented and idiot-proof. I don’t need to work that way for my own purposes. I don’t care about the money, which won’t amount to a fart in a gale of wind, but I’m not willing to spend even more time dicking around with it.
There are two types of people who follow my work here: People who are serious about getting better at what they do and who follow through on that motivation, and mediocrities who live to bitch about how unfair it is to be held to high standards. I’m not going to move my own money into a Heap account so I can move affiliate money out. How about if I share my work product only by email, and only with people who sign up for Heap through the affiliate link? Or, even better, how about we let me manage my own affairs? I don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone says about me. What’s it to you?
February 16, 2009 — 8:37 pm
John Kalinowski says:
@Genuine Chris – I don’t have a problem with it going in Greg’s pocket, particularly with the amount of time I know he’ll spend on Heap. The ideas and solutions Greg provides free on this site would cost thousands elsewhere, so if I can return a few bucks, all the better.
February 16, 2009 — 8:34 pm
Chris Johnson says:
What’s it to me is that the standard you set in December wasn’t satire. Achieving the standards we set for ourselves is part of the 2.0 world. Throwing out a standard is well and good. But when you do it, only a loser finds weasel ways and exceptions that don’t apply to them. If it’s a bribe for the Geniuses, it’s a bribe for you. Heap is great. I pointed it out to you, but you’d eventually have figured it out. I don’t think that the money is gonna be much, either. But given the harsh stance you’ve taken…
But for $900 a year–best case–you’ll have the perception of having a double standard. You don’t want that. Don’t be obstinate for the sake of being right. You put–and welcomed–a target on your back.
I’ve been a loser and a weasel. I’ll continue to make errors. I’ve been grateful–and will continue to be–when people pointed out losery and weaselly ways. I never, ever lash out at advocates. There are unintended consequences to saying things like you said: here . You manage what you like, you always will without needing my permission.
February 16, 2009 — 8:59 pm
Greg Swann says:
If it turns out to be $90 I’ll be amazed. And the people who talk trash about me will talk trash about me anyway. I’m not taking a bribe from a vendor, I’m using the means available to me to make an extra-special pain in the ass of myself to that vendor. In the process, I will help a lot of people I really like do better at their jobs, and I will give a small number of seething misanthropes something new to seethe about. I would rather the latter group lived the fully human life, but I am not going to waste my time trying to appease them. Let ’em drown in their own bile. They will, anyway, in due course, if they don’t change their ways.
This is my last word on this, Chris. My take is that Ben Smith should listen to me — and Ryan Hartman! — ahead of all other users. If I can amplify my voice through the affiliate program, it’s worth it to me. If people who rationalized taking $2,000 in vendorslut bribes despoil their characters even more in consequence, that’s their problem, not mine.
February 16, 2009 — 9:15 pm
Chris Johnson says:
It’s not them I’m concerned about Greg. Uphold the standards you advocate and set, and don’t rationalize ways out. That’s clintonesque behavior. Do something to be above reproach.
You know I’ve been trying to get you to engage Ben for a long time, and I couldn’t be happier that you are. I wanted you–in particular–on the case because of how tantalizingly close some parts of the heap system are…to right.
I believe your motivation is the truth. Yet…when you set a standard, you uphold it, or your actual (ilo perceived) integrity is dinged. A minor dent, but a dent. What’s wrong for Benn and Lani is wrong for you…I don’t think that their motivation was pure evil, either.
It’s just disappointing. Either the stand you took was bullshit, or this is a lapse in judgment.
February 16, 2009 — 9:28 pm
John Kalinowski says:
@Chris- I think you have this all wrong, and are wasting a lot of time and energy here. Greg is offering to put his brainpower to work to help improve a product so it will work better for us (at least for those who are truly interested in taking their business to the next level). All he’s asked is if we also choose to use Heap, that we do so through the affiliate link which will at best pay for his caffeine of choice as he works on this project. He’s not taking a payment to push a product. There’s a big difference.
I am very eager to try Heap and to use it to improve my business. I’ve lacked a CRM solution for many years, and I don’t have the software experience Greg has to fully tweak the software the way he can. The fact that he’s willing to offer this level of knowledge at no cost, when everyone else aims to empty your wallet, is truly amazing.
If I hadn’t stumbled onto this site, I probably still wouldn’t know what WordPress was all about. Because of Greg’s willingness to share, I used WP to build my entire website in a week, and to create individual pages for all my listings. The custom yard sign is brilliant, and I’ve built an entire new company around it, again, without Greg asking me for a penney.
So please, leave the high horse in the stable, and let the man work!
@Greg – remember, Armadillo
February 17, 2009 — 5:18 am
jay seville says:
Ryan, I love it! I use MarketLeader right now–$600/year for the drip campaigns and the highly specific narrowing or targeting of contacts into specific groups if I ever want to email them and the ability to add so many tags to different contacts. Also it lets me import painlessly large amounts of contacts in 24 hours usually with excel files to assign to drip campaigns.
But I can see HEAP will go farther for le$$. I need to see a chart of how HEAP compares to MarketLeader. I know there is a reason for all the fuss or Greg wouldn’t be focused on this….
If somebody can throw up a chart of checkmarks comparing features of HEAP to MarketLeader I’ll be grateful.
RealEstateWebmasters.com also has a lead management follow up platform now, but I have not explored its possibilities/potential as I’m busy. However they certainly have set the standard for RE websites in general. I wonder if they could team up with Greg/HEAP to assist in a RE HEAP platform for agents? Just a thought.
I registered my info as one of your contacts. Guinea pig me all you want in the process….
j
February 17, 2009 — 6:11 am
Erion Shehaj says:
Can someone address the reasons why Heap is superior to Oprius? It seems to me that most of the functionality that you need a programmer to achieve with Heap, it comes easy in Oprius? Am I wrong in thinking this?
February 17, 2009 — 12:04 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Can someone address the reasons why Heap is superior to Oprius?
I’m not prepared to say that it is.
I’ll give Oprius a look. I’m prepared to take a look at anything that offers a fairly reasonable price per chair. If I were willing to pay $780 per chair per year, I’d be talking about Salesforce.
February 17, 2009 — 12:57 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Can someone address the reasons why Heap is superior to Oprius?
Okay, here’s a very quick answer:
Templated emails in Heap are much richer in variable content: Vide. There’s more. The email mark-up language also permits a high degree of variability.
February 17, 2009 — 1:11 pm
Cathleen Collins says:
@ Chris, I believe that you are impugning Greg’s motives, based upon what you believe your own motives would be:
You’re simply incorrect in your read on this. Before I became a Realtor, I was the DBA for Raiser’s Edge, an exemplary — and very expensive — CRM for non-profit organizations. I worked for Catholic Heathcare West, with about 50 hospital foundation affiliates. The individual hospital foundations were each responsible for buying and maintaining their own licenses (about $4K a seat), but they did so as affiliates of the corporate license that I used. Why? Because it gave my voice much greater authority. When I told Blackbaud, the developer for Raiser’s Edge, that I wanted something, it would show up in their next version. Before we affiliated all the foundations’ licenses under mine, we didn’t have that kind of clout.
The affiliation was a brilliant business decision that I implemented when I first walked into that job, and it made me hugely successful as an employee there. Greg’s motivations, obviously, aren’t the same as mine were when I was with CHW, any more than they are the same as you believe yours might be. But they’re a lot closer to what mine were — to help a group of small businesses to have a bigger voice and try to get a superior product for their money. Like most Realtors and lenders who read BHB, the foundations didn’t have the technical background that I did, so didn’t know how to express what they really needed (I was a business analyst and program manager, too, which helped me better communicate their needs to the developer).
Greg won’t get a raise or a promotion, like I did, but hopefully we’ll get a CRM that will help us improve our business. And unlike AG — who you are comparing Greg’s decision to — Greg won’t review Heap favorably if it isn’t the product we need. In fact, we accepted an iPhone license from REST for me to BETA test. I didn’t pay for it. REST comes close to what we want, but the problems the BETA test identified in the way REST would deliver our data is the very reason we decided to seek further for a CRM that brings us closer to Raiser’s Edge or even Salesforce without the price-tag. Obviously, though I did accept a free iPhone client of REST, no one is accusing me of being a “vendorslut.” But if anyone wants to, I won’t be compromised.
February 17, 2009 — 8:35 pm
Greg Swann says:
I’m going to reverse myself on the affiliate fees. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the money — so far nothing — but this distraction is counter-productive. Cathleen, you can donate any money that comes in through the Heap affiliate program to any charity you choose. This will amount to $4.50 per paid sign-up, so don’t make any huge plans.
Meanwhile, there are two points in the neighborhood that I think are important:
First, I am not endorsing Heap. I am working very hard with Heap to see if I think it’s what we need — at our own brokerage. Because I share my work product at BloodhoundBlog, I am in a position to throw off benefits for any application I regularly use. If I end up committing our database marketing to Heap, I will be throwing off a lot of value over the coming months. If not, I’ll be doing the same sort of work, just with another CRM.
Second, over the past three years, I have on occasion spoken of REST, a CRM we own but have never successfully deployed. Late last year, I pulled the plug on our REST efforts because I saw the future of CRM as being cloud-based, SAAS and GoogleDocs-integrated. I am not making a recommendation for or against REST now, but I believe that my past remarks could have been interpreted as an endorsement of the product. This I deeply regret.
Heap wants to pay me money, in an automatic and impersonal way, but surely no one can suspect that Heap has bought my influence. REST paid me nothing, but I think my affection for REST CEO Matthew Hardy — an amazingly nice man — let me to present his product in a light more favorable than was justified by my own first-hand experience. That’s the issue for me. We don’t take money from vendors in exchange for endorsements, and while I think the money involved with Heap led to Herculean bouts of gnat-straining, I don’t want for there to be any doubts about the motivations behind whatever evaluation I make of Heap. But that’s what I want generally, the understanding that, if I say (or seem to say) that something is good, it’s because I use it in my own work in preference to any alternatives.
Now then: Can we get back to talking about Heap?
February 18, 2009 — 8:26 am
Michael Mullin says:
Greg, the crap you’ve taken from the malcontents on this topic should be ignored. Your original dislcosure made it clear your involvement with HEAP was significantly different than the normal “affiliate” arrangement.
Here’s what I heard you say – you are testing HEAP because it appears to be a valuable tool in our respective businesses. Like any tool, it could use some tweaking to make it better for our specific industry. The only way to get the HEAP developers to give preferential treatment to our requests is to have a bunch of us sign up via your affiliate link.
Anyone who has spent more than a couple of hours trying to make an off-the-shelf CRM work for them can appreciate the value of your offer. And that’s before your offer to provide us freeloaders all the goodies you are going to develope into the CRM.
You could have just told the whinners to shut up and go away but you took the high road. I must not have been reading your blog posts for long enough because I honestly thought you’d just tell them to go pound sand!
Looking forward to HEAP, REST, or whatever you decide on.
February 18, 2009 — 10:23 am
Greg Swann says:
> the crap you’ve taken from the malcontents on this topic should be ignored
Nobody’s a malcontent. We disagreed about the location of a line I myself had drawn. Over something of so little consequence, I’d rather switch than fight. There’s way too much I don’t know about living the CRM life, so I want as many people as possible to participate in our conjuring.
February 18, 2009 — 10:35 am
Erion Shehaj says:
> Now then: Can we get back to talking about Heap?
I have been using Heap now, ever since I first saw this post. One thing I noticed that it is missing is “task prioritization” – As far as I can tell, there is no way to alert you about higher importance taks, or as MREA calls them “dollar producing activities”. I think it would be nice if you can specify which tasks are of higher importance (or time sensitive) so they can be addressed first
February 18, 2009 — 4:41 pm
Ryan Hartman says:
Really been struggling with Heap, want to like it, but still stuck on Oprius. Here’s why.
* Let’s get the seemingly most important item out of the way. Oprius’s Affiliate program is way more generous than Heap’s. I mean, if I can get you all to use my affiliate link to Oprius, I could make some serious coin, something like $3/month, forever, for each sign up. And if you’re convinced a product can really help others, why not be allowed a little change for an honest effort to sell? Really, what’s all the fuss here?…we all sell…and we’re all probably smart enough to know when we’re being sold?…let’s get back to figuring out fun ways to waste our time hacking up CRM’s that’ll never truly do the hard work for us!
Some Reasons why Oprius Still Beats Heap (For Most of Us)
* Lead Capture like Greg envisions is already built-in and simple to implement. Plus creation of Lead Capture pages like http://wecansellyourproperty.com is really simple. Whenever a lead is generated by one of these site’s a custom campaign can be triggered complete with a Heap like mixture of emails, tasks, phone calls, and appts. Wow! If engenu’s got you confused and multi-pronged seo attack just isn’t worth your time, linking some pay-per-click or redirecting some craig’s list traffic to one of these sites could be the way to go…
* Oprius has a built in (imap-friendly) Email Client! Yep, truly the “holy grail” if you ask me. A web based CRM that allows you to convert senders of emails to contacts and assign them to follow up campaigns with a quick click! Again, wow! If anyone knows of any other affordable product that does this, please let me know.
* Oprius does do newsletters & drip email, and I’d argue that for the masses, Oprius’s WYSIWYG deal is easier to handle than HEAP’s system for customizing emails. The double opt-in is a pain in the butt, but hey, the Oprius subscriber system does keep everyone out of trouble.
* THE AUTO LINKING OF CONTACT GROUPS TO ACTION PLANS IS UNBELIEVABLE! As long as every contact is grouped, (and Oprius auto separates non grouped contacts,) very little can fall through the cracks.
* Oprius is prettier. For real…it just is.
You know what…Screw it!..I’ve got 2 young kiddies to send to real estate school and am not ashamed to get a little “vendorslutty” for a product I think is worth selling,
SO HERE’S MY DARN AFFILIATE LINK, BIG AND BOLD.
But to be fair, I’ll also mention,
WHAT’S NOT GOOD ABOUT OPRIUS (Just as big and bold):
* The tasks functionality could be improved…I agree with Erion that it’d be nice to separate the DIP’s from the NIP’s…(direct income producing…not income producing)
* For some reason, notification via email or text when new leads arrive isn’t set up yet, but I’m told this is coming soon.
* No Iphone version…yet…also coming soon. (I wouldn’t even consider talking about these guys if I wasn’t pretty sure they’d follow through on this item)
* No calendar/gcal integration…yet.
* It would be nice to integrate gmail’s smtp for sending instead of Oprius’s client the way HEAP does. Is a nice way to let us handle our own opt-in prerogatives.
* and one last thing I don’t like about Oprius. Greg’s not on board to lobby these guys for the few improvements that’ll make Oprius the super special ADOPTABLE product that it can be. I really do think this is a pretty noble cause that could help a lot of folks build and sustain better businesses…Whether or not a few people (or charities) profit from the effort here really doesn’t seem to matter, does it?
February 22, 2009 — 7:11 am
Matthew Hardy says:
Cathleen and Greg are just amazingly nice people (!) whose contribution to the real estate industry is unfathomable. I hope to continue to learn from them for many years to come… and to always know them as friends.
February 22, 2009 — 2:14 pm