Inbound Lead API Launched!

Client Listing on Boston.com

Boston Logic is proud to announce the launch of ourlong-anticipated Inbound Lead API for the Sequoia platform! This tool allows outside lead sources such as Boston.com to directly funnel leads into your Sequoia custom real estate website, increasing your lead volume and maximizing the value of your other online marketing efforts. We’ve already begun working with Boston.com to connect our clients’ websites with theirs – Jack Conway and the Warren Residential Group were among the first to take advantage of this powerful new lead generation vehicle.

Lead Tracked on Sequoia Back End

How Does It Work?
Websites like Boston.com which feature potential lead generation tools - like the ability to contact agents via email - inherently have the ability to create leads in your Sequoia CRM system. Here’s how. When a potential lead looks at one of your listings on a website like Boston.com, they typically have the ability to contact your agents through some type of simple form. These forms by themselves usually just send an email to your company’s general email address, but when integrated with the Sequoia Inbound Lead API, they take on a whole new life as portals to your lead management accounts. Leads that submit inquiries on outside sites integrated with the API get automatically created in your Sequoia site, complete with contact information, tracking information that shows what property the lead is interested in as well as which website created the lead via API, and more. By monitoring leads created through the API, you can precisely track the effectiveness of your other online marketing efforts. This can help you hone your campaigns while delivering more and more leads directly into your Sequoia CRM system where they belong!

The days of hand-entering leads from myriad web sources can be over as soon as your other web marketing providers link up with the Sequoia Inbound Lead API. We’re happy to work with any vendor you market your listings through, and can provide any technical support they need to get your Sequoia site connected with theirs. We can’t stress enough the value this tool can provide to your agents and your office staff. If you want to find out more about how our new Inbound Lead API can put more leads in your pipeline – automatically! – please contact us today.

New Sequoia Platform User Guide! 5/11/2011

As part of the unlimited support and training we provide to all Sequoia platform clients, we’ve recently launched a new online User Guide. This easy-to-read “instruction manual” gives you simple, step-by-step directions on how to use virtually all of the tools and features Sequoia offers.

When you are logged into your Sequoia real estate website, simply navigate to the Admin section (back end) and you will see a User Guide link at the far right of the admin panel navigation menu as before. This now takes you to the updated, expanded Sequoia User Guide.

With concise directions and sharp, full-size visual aids, the new User Guide is designed to help you learn not only how to use all of the great Sequoia real estate features, but to really make the most of them. Sequoia is designed to not only make your job and your life easier, but to help your site achieve higher organic search engine results right out of the gate. The more you know about how the Sequoia suite of tools can empower you, the greater your potential for success.

In the coming weeks, we’re also adding video guides to all of the topics covered in the User Guide. Along with the visual aids already in place to augment the written instructions, we’ll walk you through the process with recorded screencasts of the real estate Sequoia platform in action. Each section will feature a short video of exactly the process described, walking you through the written instructions in real time.

Of course, if you feel like anything is missing, we’d love to hear from you so we can improve the guide. If there is anything you’d like to ask a question about or need more detail to fully understand, please don’t hesitate to call or email us!

New Sequoia Feature Launches: 4/21/2011

Boston Logic has recently unleashed a slew of amazing new features (as we always do!) designed to make your online presence ever stronger, and the process of turning leads into deals easier and faster than ever before. Here are just a few of the choicest highlights:

Mapped Search

If your search parameters for a new home can’t be defined by conventional constraints like towns, neighborhoods, ZIP codes, and the like, we now offer you the opportunity to “think outside the box” and literally define your own custom location. Using our new Mapped Search Tool, you can draw a shape – any shape, with unlimited sides and angles – on an interactive Google map. Want to live within a certain stretch of your favorite scenic drive in the country? Draw a boundary around it and click Search to see only listings right where you want to be. Longing for a view of the waterfront, but maybe not if that waterfront happens to include a freight terminal? No problem – draw a boundary around your favorite beach or lake.

The power is literally in your hands to define exactly where you want to find your dream home. No limits, no boundaries – except those you draw yourself. Not to mention, the tool itself is a pretty mean piece of eye candy! It’s also available for setting up Town Pages as well, so if you want to create just such a custom search for your clients to be able to access with one click, the sky’s the limit. We’re sure you’ll want to learn more about this great new tool – you can always feel free to contact us for more info, or for a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to using this and all of the other features of the Sequoia platform, be sure to visit our new User Guide.

Custom Lead Capture Timing

Using our Modal Lead Capture tool is perhaps the single most effective way to turn visitors to your website into viable leads. And that is a very modest use of the word “perhaps”. That said, it has often come up in conversation with our clients that it is often advantageous to offer a few property views before your users are prompted to register.

To that end, we’ve now added the ability for you to control how many listings a visitor can view before being required to register. As always, you can turn the feature on or off for sales, rentals, or for Developments if you have this component installed. Now, you can also set the number of property views a visitor is allowed before being prompted to register – the number is up to you.

You can even allow different numbers of views for sales, rentals, and Developments individually. This is great if you want to offer a “teaser” of a few listing views to get your visitors engaged further in the use of your site, which can increase the likelihood that they will be inclined to register and become a viable lead in your sales pipeline.

Those of you who are active with social media (good for you!) know that Facebook has dropped their FBML program, which allowed for custom development of integrated tools like property searches for your company’s Facebook page. Instead, they now support using iFramed tools instead, a radical departure from their previous strategy.

iFrames are like the web's version of Russian Nesting Dolls.

For those of you who don’t know the term, an iFrame is a portion of a website designed to be inserted within another web page such that it appears to be a part of the original page the visitor is viewing. It’s basically the Web’s version of those classic Russian nesting dolls – the ones you open up only to find a smaller but otherwise similar version nestled inside.

As soon as we got wind of this, we immediately developed a tool for the Sequoia platform which installs an iFramed Facebook Search Tool, themed to match your Sequoia real estate website, onto your Facebook page. This tool was tested and ready to use months in advance of Facebook’s plan to phase out FBML. Take that, Zuckerberg!

When your Facebook page visitors perform a search using this tool, they are taken to your website, captured as a lead, and tracked as having come from your Facebook iFrame to help you measure the success of your social media campaign. We can install this tool as part of our immensely popular Social Media Accelerator program for real estate agents and brokers looking to empower their business strategy with the potent fuel of social media.

Contact the Boston Logic sales team today to learn more!

Find Your Hottest Leads FAST with LogicScore

ANNOUNCING a NEW SEQUOIA FEATURE: LogicScore!

We've recently launched a great new feature for the Sequoia platform – LogicScore.

Easily Find Your Hottest Leads with LogicScore

If you, like most Sequoia clients, get a large number of leads from your website, one of the biggest challenges you have at the beginning of the day is figuring out who your hottest leads are – who to contact first!

To help you make that process as easy as possible, we’ve created an algorithm to quantify each lead’s likelihood of becoming a customer and closing a deal.

We measure the quality of each activity the lead performs on your website, with actions such as property searches bearing a comparatively low value, but actions like reaching out to you by way of a contact form or a request for a property showing having a higher value. We then tabulate these results and further add to them the factor of their recent activity. A lead who performs a lot of actions on your site is clearly worth contacting, and the ones who have done so more recently are even more likely to become a satisfied customer.

Our algorithm calculates all of this information and produces a LogicScore based on the likelihood that this lead is going to be a good prospect for you to start working with ASAP. You’ll now notice on each table of leads that there is a new LogicScore column, sorted by default in descending order.

the New LogicScore Component

You can also use our Advanced Lead Search tool to find leads with high scores, so you’ll always be able to reach out to your best prospects first. With the Advanced Lead Search, you can also sort your leads based on a variety of criteria, including; the lead type, their current living arrangements, their desired move date, the assigned agent, the creation date, the date of their last activity, and much more!

Use the Advanced Lead Search for More Search Options

We hope this new tool helps to make the process of converting leads into deals even easier than before, and provides even more insight into how your new leads become your best clients thanks to your Sequoia website!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us to learn more.

New Sequoia Features: 4/15/2011

1) Property Details Pages Redesign. We’ve completely redesigned our property details pages – the new look is thoroughly modern and sophisticated, and shows off all of the great new tools available to users of the Sequoia system. Among the many upgrades, any attributes for a listing which are left blank in the MLS description are now hidden, so users only see actual, useful information. We’re now using a unified map tool to display not only search results and property details, but also useful data from our Yelp, Education.com, and Walkscore tools as well.

We’ve also added tools to every listing detail that let you share it on either Facebook or Twitter, and we’ve hidden the Schedule a Showing tool for properties with inactive statuses. In addition, property addresses on listing details now include the unit number by default (if the listing is one) to boost the page’s real estate SEO potential!

2) Type-Ahead Search Technology in Sequoia Back-End. On the back end of your Sequoia site, you now have access to the same type-ahead search technology we recently introduced for locations – only now we’ve added this for lead names as well! Rather than scroll through your long list of leads, you can now select leads for actions like messages, tasks, and events by simply starting to type their name and selecting it from the list of suggestions. This not only makes your life easier, but also makes any pages that used to have these drop-down lists on them load much faster.

Also, our tracking of lead’s Last Active dates now rely on a much broader set of criteria in order to give you as much intelligence as possible on your users. Now this date is updated whenever a lead performs almost any action, regardless of whether they are working with sales or rentals listings. This date also now only tracks activity initiated by leads themselves – agents updating lead info no longer gets tracked for these stats.

Get access to these features and more when you sign up for a real estate website from Sequoia: you will also receive automatic site upgrades and additional features whenever we roll them out.

Contact Boston Logic today to get started!

New Site Launch: Cabot & Company

Cabot & Company has been a Boston Logic client for several years. In search of more quality leads and better lead management and CRM tools, Cabot & Company upgraded to the Sequoia platform. Cabot chose to keep their existing design theme, but take the power of their web presence to the next level!

Cabot & Company wanted to give their agents the best tools in the business, as well as maximize their search engine ranking potential. With an existing design theme by Boston Logic, Cabot & Company chose a Mimic Theme for the Sequoia platform - letting them keep their unique look and feel while upgrading all of the functionality "under the hood" of their website.

Cabot and Company New Site Launch!

Choosing a mimic theme allows you to keep your existing design while upgrading the functional aspects of your website, as well as the potential for higher search engine rankings. This is a great option for anyone who wants to preserve their look and feel, while generating more leads on the web and working with the best tools in the industry!

Moving to Sequoia gives Cabot access to vastly more powerful tools, such as our recently launched CRM functionality, Sequoia's new lead management system, our easy-to-use LogicCMS, our proprietary content management system, which now features sidebar menus and HTML widgets, and of course the huge Search Engine Optimization potential built into every feature of the platform. Our sites are designed not just to help you manage your leads and workflow, but to get you more leads in the first place!

Contact the Boston Logic sales team today at 617-266-9166 to learn more about the Sequoia platform and our various design options.

Cabot & Company represents residential buyers and renters in Boston's premiere Back Bay and Beacon Hill neighborhoods and beyond.

How Do We Decide Which New Features to Add to the Sequoia System?

The other day, the owner of 2 real estate offices which use the Sequoia platform asked me if he could send me a list of ideas that he's compiled from his agents. These are features and ideas they have for the sequoia platform. Here was my response:

We want all of your suggestions. Here's how the Sequoia New Feature Selection Process works:

1) As feature requests come in, we put them into a Feature Request Log. We probably get about 2 per day, on average. Often, they come in 10 at a time, as I'm sure you're about to send me.

Sequoia New Feature Building Process

2) Once per quarter, we sit down and look at the Feature Request Log and see how many times each feature has been requested. We also consider whether or not a feature actually adds value or is just some wacky request from a nut who's paying us (we have more than a handful of those).

3) We also consider whether or not the feature fits into the mission and direction of the product. For example, if someone wanted us to make an automatic newspaper ad generator, it would be unlikely that we'd build it. We don't believe that making it easier to waste money is going to help any of our real estate clients.

4) Lastly, we consider how much work it will take for a feature to be implemented. Small features, even if they'll add limited value, might get done just because they're low-hanging fruit while features that require 150 hours of our time might need to be scheduled further into the future.

5) Then, we order feature requests based on all this evidence and go to work. Depending on how busy we are and which features we choose to take on, we might get to a feature during that quarter or we might not. Then, 90 days or so later, we look at the list again, add any new requests and go through the process again.

It's through this process that our system evolves, largely informed by client input.

It's important to note that when more clients request a new Sequoia real estate website feature, we're more likely to implement that feature. Some ideas are good, but require a lot of work and maybe only 1 client has ever made that request. So, they wind up at the bottom of the list every time we review it. After more then 6 or 12 months and no more requests, we simply remove a feature from the road map.

New Sequoia Feature Launches: 3/7/2011

While the Sequoia real estate website platform already has the best real estate website features available, read up on the latest in Sequoia feature upgrades for your real estate website!

1) MLS rental listings now show in rentals searches. Our RentJuice clients can now show off rental listings from their MLS in rentals searches! Thanks to recent upgrades to the RentJuice API, Sequoia sites with this component enabled will now show users any MLS rentals that match their search criteria in rentals searches. This can be turned on or off at your discretion in your Settings section.

3) Featured Properties Page Company Listings. You can now choose whether your company’s listings automatically show on your Featured Properties page. Controllable in the Settings section of your Sequoia realtor web design, you can now opt to have all of your listings automatically show up here when listed, or not – for those of you who wish to hand-pick only the best listings to feature!

4) XpressDocs Single-Token Login Tool Integration. For those of you who use XpressDocs for your print advertising needs, we’ve integrated their single-token login tool to the back end of your Sequoia realty web design. Simply enter your XpressDocs account info into your Settings section and your brokers and agents will have access to an XpressDocs login button on their Dashboards, allowing them to access this web-based tool without needing to log in twice!

Not a Sequoia client yet, but like what you see? Contact us to get started on your own real estate website design today, and to have access to all the features above and much more!

New Sequoia Site Features: 2/28/2011

1) Rentals Search Code Generator Tool. Based on the success of our sales search code generator tool, we’ve built a companion piece for rentals searches. Any broker or agent can now generate a search form code from their My Profile page on the back end of their Sequoia site. Pasting these codes onto an outside site creates a search form, for either sales or rentals, which returns users to their Sequoia site to see the results of their search. Best of all, those leads get captured and assigned directly to the agent that generated the code!

2) Waterfront or Beachfront Town Pages. Real Estate Town pages can now feature Waterfront or Beachfront listings only thanks to checkboxes we’ve incorporated into the setup forms for these pages. Want to show off only your high-end properties right on the beach? Now your users can see these with one click once you’ve set up a corresponding Town Page!

3) Searching and Viewing Search Results Features. We’ve added a number of helpful features for searching and viewing search results. Companies can now choose whether their listings are sorted by price in either ascending or descending order – and this applies to search results, Town Pages, AND real estate Developments property profiles lists! Also, we’ve added a Bank Owned Only option to all advanced search forms – if you’re looking for a great deal, this can be a perfect way to start your search!

4) Email Updates. Daily Email Updates now feature up to fifty relevant listings in order to show your clients as many possible new homes as possible. In addition, both you and your leads can now view the results of these searches at any time right on your Sequoia site! Brokers and agents can see these searches on leads’ profiles on the back end of their Sequoia sites, and leads can visit their My Account pages to do the same. Viewing these searches shows all properties that meet the set criteria at the time the search is performed.

Keep checking back for more features for your Sequoia real estate website platform!

Not up to the latest real estate web design and real estate online marketing technology? Contact Boston Logic today to get started on your new real estate website design!

New Sequoia Site Feature Launches: 2/21/2011

1) Added MailChimp Account Service. We’ve added settings to pass your leads into another useful email marketing service – MailChimp. Just like the settings for iContact and Constant Contact, all you need to do is enter your account settings in order to start getting new leads in your MailChimp lists anytime they sign up for emails from your company on your Sequoia site. Please contact us for details on how to set this great new feature up!

2) CMS Format / Character Validation. CMS pages have been the beneficiary great new upgrade aimed at improving both the ease of creating pages and the SEO potential of the page itself. We’ve now instituted proper format and character validation for URL paths – only valid paths beginning with a ‘/’ and containing proper characters are allowed. This helps to make creating new pages easier, and also boosts SEO by disallowing characters that can hinder your rankings.

3) Display your Logo in your real estate website's footer. We’ve added a new option for showing a footer logo – if you want to display the logo you show in your header at the bottom of every page, or want to show a different logo (great for agent sites that need to display their brokerage’s logo but want to personalize their site further) you can now do so with ease. Just upload the logo to your Sequoia site’s Settings section and the logo will appear in the footer of every page of your realtor web design site!

4) New MLS Integration: MREIS and MRIS. We’ve recently integrated two new MLS services with the Sequoia platform! We’re now serving all of Maine with the integration of MREIS, and thanks to integrating MRIS, one of the nation’s largest MLS service providers, we are now also covering Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. in our property web design services! We’re excited to welcome new clients in these areas and look forward to continued growth into new markets!

Inbound Lead API Launched!

Related Links:

New Sequoia Platform User Guide! 5/11/2011

Related Links:

New Sequoia Feature Launches: 4/21/2011

Related Links:

Find Your Hottest Leads FAST with LogicScore

ANNOUNCING a NEW SEQUOIA FEATURE: LogicScore!

Related Links:

New Sequoia Features: 4/15/2011

Related Links:

New Site Launch: Cabot & Company

Related Links:

How Do We Decide Which New Features to Add to the Sequoia System?

Related Links:

New Sequoia Feature Launches: 3/7/2011

Related Links:

New Sequoia Site Features: 2/28/2011

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New Sequoia Site Feature Launches: 2/21/2011

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