Author: Jamie Saine

  • 6 Things to Avoid When Choosing a Real Estate Investing CRM

    6 Things to Avoid When Choosing a Real Estate Investing CRM

    If you’re a real estate investor, having a CRM designed for your needs is important. Generic CRMs don’t have the fields you need for details like property address, condition, asking pricing, etc., features like built-in maps and Zillow integrations, or follow-up tasks designed for real estate deal pipelines. 

    So if not all CRMs are a good fit for real estate lead management, what should you look for … and what should you avoid? This post goes over six key things to avoid when shopping for a real estate CRM.

    Key Takeaways

    • Real estate investors should choose a CRM designed for real estate. Generic CRMs don’t have the fields or features needed for real estate lead and pipeline management.
    • Choose a real estate CRM that has the features you need and will grow with your business, but don’t get distracted by too many unrelated features.
    • When choosing a real estate CRM, make a list of your desired features, ask for recommendations in a way that gives you usable insights, and get live demos from the CRM providers you’re considering.

    Table of Contents

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    What is a real estate CRM?

    CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and “a CRM” is software that helps you manage those relationships. CRMs provide a centralized place to store lead details, communication records, and activities, as well as set follow-up tasks and often include built-in options for communicating with leads via email, text message, or even calls. The goal is to help you actively keep track of leads and move them down the pipeline to a closed deal. Salesforce and HubSpot are some of the more well-known CRMs on the market, but they’re not designed for real estate professionals. 

    A real estate CRM is CRM software built specifically for real estate professionals, particularly investors, agents, and property managers. Popular real estate investing CRMs include CarrotCRM, InvestorFuse, Resimpli, and Left Main REI. These solutions offer information fields and features unique to real estate lead management, such as built-in property data, nearby real estate comps, and follow-up steps like “due diligence” that you won’t find in a generic CRM.

    When shopping for a CRM as a real estate investor, here are some key things to avoid to ensure you get a CRM that works well for your business.

    1. It’s not designed for real estate

    Handling a lead interested in selling their house to a wholesaler is very different than managing leads interested in buying enterprise software. Most CRMs have built-in fields for things like job title, company size, revenue, and buying roles — all fields that don’t make sense for real estate investors dealing with individuals.

    While you can customize most CRMs with custom fields, why spend the extra time trying to make something work when it’s not a good fit? Especially since there are CRMs designed out of the box for real estate investors.

    A real estate specific CRM has built-in data fields that make more sense for your use case. Fields like:

    • Property details
    • Estimated repairs needed
    • Outstanding mortgage information
    • Reason for selling
    • Time to sell
    • Occupancy details

    Think of all the information you (or your lead or acquisition managers) would gather when assessing an opportunity. That information needs a dedicated place to live. Choose a CRM that is already built for that information instead of spending time setting it up manually.

    CarrotCRM data fields

    Some real estate CRMs (like CarrotCRM) even pull much of this information into the opportunity for you via Zillow integrations and additional property data reports. This saves you time and gives you a better understanding of the property and potential deal value.

    2. It’s difficult to set up or use

    Speaking of not spending too much time setting up your CRM, that piece of advice also goes for dedicated real estate CRMs. Some are more complicated than others, and if it’s difficult to set up or use, you likely won’t end up using it.

    Choose a CRM that has onboarding assistance, and be mindful of the timeline for launch. Some highly customizable CRMs like Left Main REI and HighLevel require a large amount of expertise and time to implement (which also drives up the price).

    Don’t forget to look beyond implementation and consider what the day-to-day usage looks like. For instance, if the CRM relies on complicated workflows for lead nurturing, it could be overwhelming to set-up, use, and get value out of. Trust me, as a professional marketer for more than 15 years, I’ve spent plenty of time setting up automated workflows. It’s not a simple task, and it’s distributingly easy to mess up … meaning the workflow isn’t doing what you think it’s doing. Understanding automation can be full time job. Since marketing isn’t your full time job, look for a CRM with easy-to-use automations.

    Consider choosing an action-based CRM that drives activities to make sure deals keep moving. If your CRM is little more than an online to-do list, it’s not any more effective than keeping track of your leads and tasks manually. An action-based CRM helps you set the right follow-up tasks and makes sure you know what to do next, keeping you on track.

    CarrotCRM Follow Up Tasks

    For example, CarrotCRM’s action-based system does not allow you to complete an existing task without setting up the next follow-up step. This ensures you never forget what needs to be done or when the deadline is. Every CRM says it helps “keep leads from slipping through the cracks,” but if you forget to set the next follow-up step (or think you’ll do it later), that’s exactly what happens. CarrotCRM prevents that by making sure every lead always has a next step, owner, and due date. Then, these tasks get pulled into your My Dashboard view, ensuring nothing is forgotten

    3. It doesn’t have AI features

    Smart real estate investors use new AI tools to do more work in less time. Those who aren’t will to be increasingly left behind. With that in mind, don’t invest in a CRM that doesn’t have built-in AI.

    Kyler Peters

    Depending on your need and the CRM, AI can do everything from having information gathering conversations with leads, to making sure you’re aware if circumstances change and a lead becomes more or less likely to close, to nurturing cold leads. These tools save investors countless hours and help them focus their time and efforts on the most promising leads. Investors who continue to do everything manually will see themselves closing fewer deals in the months and years to come.

    CarrotCRM AI - Must-have features for a real estate CRM & lead follow-up

    Many CRMs are adding new AI features fairly often, so ask about features on the company’s roadmap when evaluating your options. If they’re not adding AI features at all, they’re likely to become outdated in the near future. (Be sure you understand the pricing model for any AI features. Some may be included in the base price, but many CRMs treat AI as an add-on with its own price.)

    If the CRM doesn’t have a specific AI capability you’re interested in, make sure it supports integrations that allow you to add that feature. Which brings us to our next thing to avoid …

    4. It doesn’t support integrations

    CRMs can be very feature-rich (sometimes too feature-rich, but more on that in a second), but if it’s a completely closed system that doesn’t allow integrations, you’ll find yourself trapped. Whether you’re integrating a lead source or connecting another tool, your CRM needs to be the hub for your lead management. It can’t be a hub if you can’t connect the data and tools that you need and use.

    Allowing integrations lets you use best-in-class solutions that fit your specific needs and preferences. You may want to integrate a tool that the CRM doesn’t have built in or use an alternative that you like better than the included capability. Using your preferred phone system is a great example. You should be allowed to use the tools and software you want, not what the CRM dictates.

    This is particularly helpful with AI tools. There’s not a single real estate CRM that offers every common AI capability. AI is too new, and companies are still building out their AI feature suites,  focusing first on the capabilities they think are most valuable to their users. Even as CRMs add new AI features, there are some AI tools that dedicated companies will likely be better at. AI voice solutions are the perfect example. It takes a lot to make an artificial voice agent sound real and engaging. Companies that focus only on AI voice are likely to perfect it before a CRM company creating its own in-house version.

    That’s another thing to avoid — CRMs that do too much.

    5. It has TOO many features

    This may sound silly, but hear me out — more features are not always better. All-in-one CRMs promise to let you handle marketing, lead generation, lead follow-up, and deal management all in one platform. That sounds enticing until you start looking more closely.

    All-in-one solutions have many potential pitfalls, but the main things to ask yourself are:

    • Am I paying for features I don’t want or use?
    • It does a lot of things, but does it do them all well?

    Best-in-Class versus All-in-Ones

    All in Ones vs Best in Class Real Estate Software

    Define what you want to accomplish with a CRM and your overall goals, then look into the features that will help you get there. If your goal is to close more deals, do you really need more leads (i.e. outbound marketing tools) or do you need to better handle the leads you have (i.e. a CRM that hyper focuses on working your lead database)? All the bells and whistles are attractive, but they can also distract you from the main task at hand or leave you with substandard features because a company is stretched too thin.

    6. It can’t grow with you

    While you don’t want a CRM that’s so feature-rich that it’s distracting, you do want to choose a CRM that has the right features to scale with your business. 

    Focus on lead management related features like campaign tracking, employee dashboards, and round robin lead distribution. These are in line with the main purpose of a CRM and help you effectively assign, track, and manage leads as your lead sources (marketing campaigns) and acquisition management team grow.

    Don’t forget to look at the CRM’s pricing model. While it may be affordable now, it might not always be that way. Does it grow in a sensible way, or does the price make crazy jumps if you need to add more users, contact records, or AI usage? Or worse, is the pricing behind a “Contact Sales” gate, meaning you have no idea what will happen to the cost as you grow?

    One of the worst things is having to switch your CRM. Moving to a new system takes a lot of time, effort, and learning, interrupting more important work. It’s better to find a CRM that is affordable and meets your needs when you’re just starting out, but that can grow with you as your business scales.

    How to find the right real estate CRM

    We’ve talked a lot about what to avoid when choosing a real estate investing CRM, but I don’t want this post to be disheartening! There are amazing CRMs for real estate investors available. Here are some tips on how to find the best one for you.

    Make a list of the features you need and rank each one by importance

    Just like with any important purchase, make a list of your must-have and nice-to-have features, then rank those in order of importance. Define your goals and work backwards to ensure you’re not distracted.

    This gives you a rubric to evaluate potential CRM providers. There may not be a perfect fit, but focusing on your must-have list will ensure your new CRM meets your main requirements.

    Download our Software Evaluation Matrix

    Be smart about how you ask for recommendations

    It’s natural to ask for recommendations from people you trust, especially with so many coaches in the real estate investing industry. Everyone has an opinion. The trick is to understand what you’re looking for and how well their recommendation aligns with your needs.

    When asking about real estate CRMs, here are a few key questions to get a real understanding of its fit and functionality:

    • What were you looking for in a CRM? (Make sure it aligns with what you want to accomplish. It may be a great CRM from the person you’re talking to, but not the right fit for you.)
    • What features do you use all the time? What are your favorites?
    • Is there something you thought you’d like, but actually never use?
    • What don’t you like about it?
    • Is there anything you feel it’s missing?
    • What made you choose this CRM? Did you consider any others?

    Pro tip: Avoid yes or no questions. These don’t give you the level of insight you need to make your own decision. 

    Get a live demo

    Even the most user-friendly CRMs can seem overwhelming at the start. Before committing, book a live demo to see it in action and ask questions. 

    Watching video reviews is a good start, but they aren’t interactive. Speaking to a professional who knows the software gives you a better understanding of how you’ll use it and the chance to ask clarifying questions or get a deeper demonstration of certain features.

    Armed with this list of things to avoid and a few steps to finding the right solution for you, you’ll have the perfect real estate CRM in no time!

  • What’s New at Carrot? Q3 2025 Updates

    What’s New at Carrot? Q3 2025 Updates

    We’re officially in the last quarter of 2025 (how did that happen?). And while Q3 included a good chunk of the summer, we didn’t spend the whole time on vacation! Instead, we were busy releasing new features and improving existing ones. Here’s a recap of some of the highlights from Q3 2025.

    Key Takeaways

    • New Carrot website subscriptions now include a mix of website, SEO, and content tools, plus integrations, with every price point.
    • Carrot offers CarrotCRM AI features and built-in Call Tracking.
    • Several small features and improvements were released to improve page load speed and overall performance for all Carrot websites.

    Table of Contents

    1. New Subscriptions
    2. New Features
    3. Performance Improvements
    4. What’s Coming from Carrot in Q4 2025?
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    New Subscriptions

    If you’ve looked at the Carrot pricing page lately, you might have noticed some changes. We’ve simplified our subscriptions so you get more baked-in features with fewer add-ons. 

    (If you’re a current Carrot member, don’t worry, your subscription is staying exactly the same. But if you want to change to one of the new plans, connect with our Support team using the live chat.)

    Our new subscription model follows a traditional “good, better, best” approach, giving you more features as you move up. But we made some critical changes to ensure that you’re successful no matter which Carrot subscription you choose!

    A few notable changes include:

    • Every Carrot subscription now comes with a mix of website, SEO, and content tools — no add-ons required. Key features like on-page SEO recommendations and the unique content scoring tool are included with the Starter subscription, ensuring you’re set up for SEO success from day one.
    • Integrations are now included! This change was the direct result of feedback from existing members. Carrot isn’t an all-in-one solution and we pride ourselves on letting you integrate your favorite tools. So we’re living by our ethos and including integrations with your subscriptions so you can build your ideal online lead generation hub.
    • Every Carrot subscription comes with Call Tracking!

    New Features

    We’re always looking for ways to improve Carrot, and last quarter saw a couple of very exciting feature releases!

    CarrotCRM AI

    The first set of CarrotCRM AI features technically came out in late June. But in case you missed the announcement in the haze of summer, it’s worth repeating here.

    CarrotCRM — a best-in-class CRM for real estate investors, formerly known as InvestorFuse 3.0 — offers a range of AI tools that highlight the most motivated leads, instantly surface critical information, and save investors hours of manual work.

    Want to see for yourself? All CarrotCRM users can try AI Lead Scoring and AI Summaries for free on five opportunities!

    Call Tracking 

    Understanding where your leads come from and which source generates the most deals is critical to smart marketing and budgeting. Why spend a lot of money and time on a lead source that never converts?

    Dedicated landing pages and forms are good for tracking online leads, but what if a lead calls you, either because they got your phone number from a piece of offline marketing (like direct mail) or because they found your phone number on your website but simply prefer to call than fill out a form? You can ask where they heard about you, but that information isn’t always reliable. 

    With call tracking, you know without a doubt what piece of marketing drove that call. And now, Carrot members can access call tracking right within their website platform! With just a few clicks, you can get dedicated phone numbers for each of your marketing campaigns, and an insightful dashboard to pinpoint which campaigns are most successful.

    Performance Improvements

    Carrot’s top priority is making sure you have the best performance possible. But what exactly does performance mean? It means that Carrot websites are intentionally designed to load fast, be secure, show up when and where people are searching, and convert website visitors into leads. Here are some recent updates that ensure top-notch website performance.

    LLMs.txt for AI Discoverability

    We all know that AI search tools are becoming more popular. And built-in AI search results in Google are impacting the SEO landscape. To help Carrot members adjust to these shifts, we’ve now implemented LLMs.txt files on all Carrot websites.

    These files follow best practices for LLMs (large language models, the power behind AI tools) and include information such as site info, pages, and posts in a format that is easy for AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini (Google’s AI search feature) to understand. The goal is to give the content on your website a better chance of showing up in AI answers when someone asks a related question.

    While the professional jury is still on on whether LLMs.txt files directly impact AI results, the way language models ingest information is changing everyday. Having an LLMs.txt file in place on your website ensures it’s formatted in a way that’s easily readable for AI.

    LLMS.txt Options for Your Carrot Website (for AI Discoverability!)

    Google Maps Load Time

    Embedding a Google map is a popular feature on real estate websites, but it can slow down your site load speed… which is bad for conversions. If your page takes too long to load, visitors are likely to hit the back button and look at a different site. The more visitors who bounce from your site, the more Google thinks there’s an issue, meaning you’ll start dropping in search result rankings. Overall, slow page speed is bad for business. We implemented a change in September to address this issue.

    We built a new drag-and-drop website element that replaces embedded Google Maps with a look alike option that doesn’t slow down page load speeds. In the past, when you embedded a Google map onto a webpage, it was live and interactive right away. This requires javascript to load with the page, slowing down overall page speed. The new Google Maps block pattern shows a preview of the map using your specific address. The map looks the same to a visitor, but doesn’t become interactive until the visitor engages with it.

    This one change improved site speed from 72 (a yellow warning score) to 90 (green)!

    Improving Site Speed with Carrot's Improved Google Map Feature

    Hide or Show Website Elements Based on Screen Size

    According to our data, 50% of visitors come to Carrot sites from desktops and 50% use mobile devices. That means your site needs to look good and perform well on all types of screen sizes. But you’re not a web designer, so how do you make sure that happens? Stop stressing over your design and let our built-in features handle it for you.

    One of our Q3 updates is the ability to show or hide certain parts of your website based on the user’s screensize. For instance, you can have an eye-catching arrow pointing to a form on the desktop view, but hide that element on mobile to make sure the form isn’t pushed too far down the page. This feature makes it fast and easy to ensure your site looks great and performs well on both desktop and mobile! 

    Responsive Block Visibility Feature for Carrot Websites

    Speed Improvement for Google Analytics Users

    Carrot websites have a certain amount of metrics built in, but the power of data and insights really shines when you have Google Analytics (GA) connected to your site. This allows us to pull even more data into your in-Carrot reporting dashboards. (Trust me, as a professional marketer, you 100% should have Google Analytics connected to your site!)

    But, just like embedding Google Maps, connecting GA is notorious for potentially slowing down your page load speed. To address this and improve your page speed, we now delay Google Analytics script loading by two seconds. This gives your pages a head start before analytics loads, allowing visitors to see critical information quickly. 

    On average, sites see a 5–10 point improvement on PageSpeed Insights scores from this optimization. This means stronger Core Web Vitals and better signals to Google — all of which helps your SEO and general visitor experience.

    Want Even More Performance Improvements?

    Want to dive even deeper into improving your website’s performance? Join Carrot’s Official Facebook Community – Evergreen Marketing for Real Estate, where we share results from Carrot Labs, our pet project where we continuously test new ways to improve performance. 

    What’s Coming from Carrot in Q4 2025?

    We have even more great updates coming in the next few weeks and months!

    More Design Customization

    Carrot website templates are designed very specifically for optimal lead conversion. We’ve literally spent years testing into our templates (there’s a reason we recommend the pages we do and have the navigation in a certain order … it’s because it improves conversion!).

    But you’ve been asking for ways to make your site look more unique and stand out from other Carrot-hosted sites. And we heard you.

    In May, we released new drag and drop block patterns — pre-built sections that you can use to add content, images, FAQs, testimonials, and more to your site in just seconds. Pick your favorites, put them wherever you want on the page, set your custom colors, and choose from hundreds of pre-loaded icons. Using these block patterns is a great way to customize the look of your site while maintaining its performance and hitting all your credibility factors.

    In Q4, we’re giving you even more template options, design elements, and customization options to make your site really stand out while maintaining its performance. Stay tuned, I expect the new templates to be released in early Q4! 

    Property Analysis & Offer Recommendation AI

    We aren’t done with CarrotCRM AI features! The next iteration will take Carrot’s Market Scout, property reports, and AI Summaries to the next level with an AI feature that analyzes an opportunity and suggests a good offer price based on your business parameters.

    Build What Matters: Create a Crystal-Clear Vision and Unlock New Tools to Close More Deals

    Make sure you start the video at 54:30!

    See you in Q4!

    That’s just a little preview of what we’re working on to close out the year. If you want to stay in the know and get some additional resources (like AI prompts to accelerate your business), make sure you’re part of Carrot’s Evergreen Marketing for Real Estate Facebook Group!

  • The Hidden Problems with All-in-One Software

    The Hidden Problems with All-in-One Software

    All-in-one software solutions have a lot of benefits. They give you access to multiple tools for a single price, they keep your data or assets centralized, and they cut down on daily “switching cost” — time wasted moving between apps. For some people, they’re a great option. But like most things, they’re not perfect and they’re not for everyone. It’s important to understand the downsides of all-in-one applications before making an expensive purchasing decision.

    Key Takeaways

    • All-in-one software has downsides that many people don’t consider, including paying for features you’re not using, wasting time on an overcomplicated system, becoming stuck in a single system, and settling for features that aren’t “best in class.”
    • All-in-one applications are good for some businesses, but businesses concerned with efficiency and growth should choose “best in class” solutions that meet their needs, help them grow, and are constantly improving.
    • In a survey conducted by Carrot, 60.4% of real estate investors said they’re willing to pay for the most effective tools, even if it’s different products versus an all-in-one marketing solution. When it comes to driving business, power and efficacy are more important than a wide selection of features.
    • You can audit how much you’re using your existing all-in-one software and how effective the features are with this free Software Usage Assessment Worksheet 

    Table of Contents

    1. Master of None
    2. All-in-Ones Offer Features in Place of Power
    3. Paying for Features You Don’t Need or Use
    4. Is Your All-in-One Actually Slowing You Down?
    5. Who are All-in-One Solutions Good For?
    6. Wait, doesn’t Carrot offer more than one solution?
    7. Understand the Benefits and Limitations
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    Everyone talks about the benefits of all-in-one apps. Now, let’s take a critical look at some of the downsides.

    All-in-One Software vs. Best-in-Class: What do you really need for your real estate CRM?

    Masters of None

    One of the first questions to ask yourself when considering an all-in-one is, “How good are the individual features?” While an all-in-one app may technically offer a feature, does that feature meet your needs and work well? If you were looking at just this feature, how does it compare to alternative solutions? Oftentimes, all-in-one solutions add features to make their product look more appealing and meet user wants, but it may be treated as just checking a box. A feature that doesn’t function well or live up to industry standards doesn’t really solve your need. If you’re relying on subpar features, your competition using best-in-class solutions will absolutely overtake you.

    Also ask yourself, “How often is each feature updated?” All-in-one providers often stretch themselves thin with complex feature suites, meaning many features are launched when they’re “good enough” and never updated or innovated. Large companies with hundreds of employees may be able to pull it off, but smaller companies don’t have the manpower to adequately maintain and support a large number of features — especially if you expect them to keep innovating to keep up with the market.

    Dedicated software providers aren’t stretched as thin, allowing them to put their full time, attention, and resources into maintaining, improving, and innovating a focused set of solutions.

    All-in-Ones Offer Features in Place of Power

    Do you want power and functionality, or do you want a lot of options that only work so-so? For companies that want to grow and succeed, the answer is clear — you want the tools that actually work.

    In a survey conducted by Carrot, 60.4% of real estate investors said they’re willing to pay for the most effective tools, even if it’s different products (versus an all-in-one marketing solution). When it comes to driving business, power is more important than a wide selection of all-in-one features.

    Companies that offer specialized software can build more features within that software. That one solution is their entire world, so they focus wholeheartedly on its effectiveness and depth. 

    Vetting and selecting different software may seem daunting, but if it helps you close more deals, it’s worth the effort. The key to building your own custom software suite is finding solutions that integrate well together. This lets you choose whatever solution works best for your needs, instead of simply taking the features and capabilities an all-in-one thinks you need.

    Pro Tip: If you do choose an all-in-one solution, make sure it allows outside integrations. Otherwise, you are fully locked into their features. If they change a feature, remove a functionality, or simply never improve their existing features, you’re stuck with what they offer. This also means you can’t use best-in-class tools that may offer a better experience or more functionality.

    Paying for Features You Don’t Need or Use

    Feature-rich all-in-one solutions often mean a lot of features that you’re paying for but not actually using. It may not sound like a big deal, but you could be wasting money on a subpar product.

    Here’s a quick way to assess an all-in-one’s fit if you already have one or if you’re considering one.

    Evaluating Your Existing All-in-One

    If you currently have an all-in-one solution, document how many of the features you’re actively using, then divide your total cost by that number to get a rough idea of how much you’re paying per feature (don’t forget to account for add-ons or usage-based pricing). If you want to take it a step further, give each feature you use a grade based on how effective it is and how much it meets your needs. If a feature has a low score, spend some time looking at single solution alternatives to see if switching would be better. While the standalone software might seem more expensive, consider how it will improve your efficiency, insights, lead generation, or overall revenue. If it will improve your business outcomes, it’s likely worth the price.

    Download our Software Usage Assessment Worksheet

    Assessing a Potential All-in-One

    If you’re considering an all-in-one, write down the problems you’re trying to solve, then evaluate its features. This way, you won’t be blinded by all the bells and whistles that you don’t actually need. Especially if you’re a newer investor, don’t overly plan for what you want to do; focus on what you need to do right now. If you’re not ready to spend the money on direct mail, you don’t need software that offers a direct mail option right now. Focus on one channel first, then, when you’re ready to expand, look for the right solution at the time.

    Alex Pardo - REI Marketing Advice

    For more beginner tips, download “5 Priceless Lessons from Million Dollar Real Estate Investors”

    Building your software suite as you go based on need ensures you always have the right-fit solutions in place rather than relying simply on what’s offered.

    Is Your All-in-One Actually Slowing You Down?

    It’s a common belief that all-in-ones cut down on switching costs — and that’s true. But they can also cause unnecessary distractions.

    When you’re in a single-purpose software, you’re doing one thing — editing your website, creating a marketing asset, following up with leads, whatever that software does. But if you’re in an all-in-one that does everything, it’s easy to get distracted by all the things you could be doing. You may go into the software to follow up with leads but find yourself building a new direct mail campaign. Before you know it, that lead follow up you were supposed to be doing is at best delayed, at worst completely forgotten.

    This is particularly true for teams. You may have good self discipline and focus, but can you say the same for everyone on your team. While teams may save time not switching between apps, they can also lose a lot of productivity to distraction or completing tasks that are more appealing but less profitable.

    Who are All-in-One Solutions Good For?

    All-in-one solutions clearly have their place (otherwise they wouldn’t be so prevalent). The key is understanding when an all-in-one is a good fit and when it might actually hurt your business.

    Who All-In-Ones are Good ForWho All-In-Ones Aren’t a Good Fit For
    One-person teams who want to move quickly and don’t have to worry about how a team works with the app.People managing teams who need to make sure the app is easy for everyone to use and keeps their team focused on the task at hand.
    Businesses that are comfortable with their current state and don’t want to scale.Companies that want applications that actively help them grow.
    People who are happy using the features offered and don’t want to look for better solutions or different feature sets.Teams that want the best-in-class tools with deep functionality to ensure maximum impact and efficiency.

    Wait, doesn’t Carrot offer more than one solution?

    It’s true, we do. We have Carrot Web and CarrotCRM. The difference is, it’s not a closed ecosystem. While the two softwares fully integrate and work wonderfully together, you can connect a different CRM to your Carrot website or use CarrotCRM with any other website or simply upload your offline leads. You don’t have to use them together and we treat them as two separate solutions.

    They also have different engineering teams who remain dedicated to maintaining and improving the individual products. CarrotCRM was originally InvestorFuse, and their entire engineering team joined Carrot when we acquired that company in XXXX.

    Because they’re treated separately, you see things like continuous solution improvements and new features being added to web and CarrotCRM designed to improve each solution experience.

    Here’s a quick recap of some of the most recent improvements and feature releases …

    Carrot WebCarrotCRM
    Call Tracking (but you can still integrate an outside solution if you prefer!)New AI features
    Site speed improvementsConstantly improving dashboards
    LLMs.txt file auto-generation to help with AI search visibilityKPI TV dashboard

    Understand the Benefits and Limitations

    At the end of the day, whether you choose an all-in-one or bespoke software comes down to your specific needs and values. But understanding the drawbacks as well as the benefits is an important part of the process.

    Take time to document what you’re trying to achieve, what’s most important, and what functionality you actually want out of software, then find the best solution. And remember, just because you’ve implemented one solution doesn’t mean you can’t switch. If it’s not working for you or your team, find something that does. Wasting time trying to make a poor fit work ultimately wastes money.

  • Why Call Tracking is the Most Profitable Real Estate Tool You’re Not Using

    Why Call Tracking is the Most Profitable Real Estate Tool You’re Not Using

    Whether you’re just starting out as a real estate investor or you run a multimillion dollar investment company, everyone wants to make sure the money they spend on lead generation actually lands deals. 

    The best way to do that is with campaign tracking (tying specific leads to their source, like Facebook, a direct mailer, or even a billboard or radio ad). That’s easy with specific landing pages and forms. But what if a lead calls you? Even if you ask where they heard about you, they may not remember or provide specifics. 

    Enter call tracking. Call tracking lets you put a unique phone number on all of your lead generation channels and campaigns so you know exactly where a lead came from. 

    And now, call tracking is built directly into your Carrot website and included in your subscription!

    Key Takeaways

    • Call tracking lets you identify which lead sources drive the most leads and deals, based on real data, not guesswork and gut feelings.
    • If you don’t have call tracking enabled on our website, you don’t know how many leads your site actually generates. Form submissions is an incomplete picture of a real estate website’s lead generation power (especially since 50.78% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, according to proprietary Carrot data).
    • Carrot AI Call Insights provides automatic call transcripts, summaries, a call rating, and actionable next steps so you know exactly what was discussed and which leads to work first based on their motivation and fit.

    Setting up call tracking gives you peace of mind that your marketing efforts work and allows you to focus on the areas that drive the best results.

    Table of Contents

    1. What are the benefits of call tracking for real estate investors?
    2. Who uses call tracking?
    3. How does Carrot Call Tracking work?
    4. How much does Carrot Call Tracking Cost?
    5. How does Carrot’s Call Tracking compare to other call tracking services? 
    6. Take your business to the next level with call tracking
    Carrot icon
    Lead generation, at its best
    Attract, convert & close more motivated leads
    Try Carrot Today

    What are the benefits of call tracking for real estate investors?

    Call tracking gives you a clear, accurate understanding of where each phone lead came from. Did they visit your website then call you? Did they see something on social media or get a specific direct mailer? Knowing where each lead came from lets you know what’s working.

    Say you’re trying out two different direct mail pieces. A lead calls and says they got your postcard. But you don’t know which one it is. You can ask them to describe it, but is that really how you want to spend your time on the phone with a new motivated lead? No! With call tracking, you can skip the entire “how did you hear about us” conversation because you already know based on the number they called. Over time, you’ll know which campaigns are the most effective based on real data tied to each unique number. 

    Call tracking is particularly important for understanding your website’s effectiveness. In 2024, 50.78% of traffic to Carrot-hosted websites came from mobile devices. And when people are searching on a mobile device, it’s easier to click on the phone number and make a call than it is to fill out a form. If you’re not attributing these calls to your website, you won’t have a complete picture of its effectiveness. You may even think your website isn’t generating leads when in reality it could be your biggest driver of calls.

    “The funny thing is, most of my leads are coming from people who find the site but choose to call instead of filling out the form. I’ve started asking everyone how they found me and what made them reach out, and more and more people are skipping the form entirely and just dialing the number. … It’s happening so often that I wonder if it’s part of a bigger shift in consumer behavior.“
    — Jeff Tucker, Jeff Buys Houses Cash

    In addition to knowing which sources generate the most leads, pay attention to which sources generate the best leads — the ones that turn into deals more often or have the largest value. You might get 100 calls from direct mail pieces, but if none of them turn into a deal, then it’s not really a good lead source. Meanwhile, you might only get a few calls a month from your website, but if most of them turn into deals, that’s a great source! With the average real estate investor spending $1,000 a month on advertising, making sure every dollar works is critical. You need a way to track actual success when deciding where to spend your money and determining campaign ROI.

    Identifying your real lead and deal sources lets you turn off marketing methods that aren’t producing deals and focus your time, energy, and budget on the channels that actually generate revenue. If you’re a high lead volume business, knowing which channels convert to deals more often also allows you to prioritize new leads, focusing on the best lead sources first. 

    You may have a general idea of where your best leads come from, but not knowing for sure means you could be wasting money or time. Call tracking makes it crystal clear, no guesswork involved.

    Who uses call tracking?

    The beauty of Carrot’s built-in call tracking is that it makes this great feature accessible to any investor, without having to purchase a separate service. 

    Solo & Newer Investors

    When you’re a one-person team, your time matters even more. And if you’re newer to real estate investing, you might be particularly sensitive about your budget and profit margins. Built-in call tracking included with your website gives you an accurate understanding of lead generation effectiveness without shopping around for another tool or learning and integrating another system.

    It’s an easy, hassle-free way to understand how much revenue each advertising dollar generates so you can focus your time and money where it will have the greatest impact and accelerate your business.

    Team Managers

    Whether you manage a large team or work with a VA or two, visibility is key to ensuring your team (and business) is successful. Call tracking helps with this in two ways:

    1. It makes sure any marketing plans someone else puts in place are working (and not just wasting your money). If you don’t see any calls coming in from a specific campaign, that’s a sign you need to ask some critical questions about it.
    2. It provides insights into your VA’s or lead manager’s availability, responsiveness, and capacity. You can easily see the total number of calls, how many were answered, and how many were missed.

    At the end of the day, call tracking helps give you full visibility into what’s driving results, no matter who’s handling your marketing or fielding calls.

    How does Carrot Call Tracking work?

    Carrot’s built-in call tracking puts a unique, local phone number (different than your personal or business number) on your website. This tells you exactly how many phone call come from people visiting your website. Call tracking combined with the lead generation forms on your site give you a complete understanding of how many leads your site generates. 

    When you’re ready to turn Carrot Call Tracking on, simply:

    1. Select a number local to your area (this is important as it let’s leads know you’re a real, local person, not some nameless, faceless mega company).
    2. Connect your new number to a receiving line where you want calls forwarded.
    3. Connect your new number to the campaign you want to track
      • If you want to use the number to track phone leads from your website, Carrot will automatically replace the phone number currently on your site with the new tracking number! (If you have landing pages that already have unique numbers, we won’t change those).

    The whole process takes less than five minutes!

    If you want to add unique numbers to additional marketing campaigns or landing pages, simply add numbers to your account, assign them to a tracking campaign, and add them to your marketing. (Remember, for call tracking to work effectively, don’t use the same number across multiple campaigns or marketing channels!) 

    When a call comes in, it rings through to your receiving line. If you’re unavailable, the caller can leave a voicemail like normal and that message is tracked to the appropriate campaign in your call tracking dashboard. All calls are recorded so you can revisit them or use the AI Call Insights feature for additional insights. Whether you pick up or the lead leaves a message, a two-party consent message plays automatically before recording starts, satisfying the strictest state requirements. Recordings are stored for 30 days (60 if you have the AI Call Insights add-on). If you want to keep them longer, you can download recordings before they expire. 

    All inbound calls are automatically logged in CarrotCRM. If a matching opportunity exists, the call is attached. If there isn’t an existing opportunity for this lead, the system automatically creates one tagged with the campaign. If you use a different CRM, we’re working on a Zapier integration to push call details, recording URLs, and transcripts (when available) from your free CarrotCRM instance to your CRM of choice. Stay tuned for that update (or talk to one of our experts about switching to CarrotCRM!)

    If you miss a call or receive a text message to the tracking number, you’ll get an email with the caller’s number and a link to the recording (if they left a voicemail) or a copy of the text message they sent. These email notifications are great for on-the-go investors, letting you catch up on incoming calls or keep up with VA activity no matter where you are. Have some down time between meetings? Get everything you need to know about your latest lead and follow up now instead of waiting until you’re back in the office.

    Analytics & AI Call Insights

    The call tracking dashboard gives you a quick view into how many calls you’ve received and how many were answered, missed, and left messages. Each call log shows you the time, date, contact details, duration of the call, and provides a link to the transcript if you have AI Call Insights enabled. You can view all calls, or drill down into specific campaigns.

    AI Call Insights gives you even more useful information by providing:

    • Automatic Transcripts: Recorded calls are transcribed within ~2 minutes post-call. Transcripts feature speaker labels and remove the “um’s,” “so’s,” and pauses, giving you a clean view of who said what.
    • Call Summaries: Each call is distilled into a clear 2-4 sentence summary that captures the tone, urgency, and what was discussed.
    • Call Rating: AI analyzes the call based on critical factors like pricing alignment, urgency, and engagement then gives the call a 0-100 rating, allowing you to identify and prioritize the most promising calls first instead of wasting time on callers who aren’t serious yet.
    • AI Action Items: AI analyzes the call and pulls out bulleted action items so you know exactly what to do next.

    Transcripts and summaries automatically sync to the matching CRM opportunity so when you’re working a lead you always have the latest information. 

    AI Call Insights let’s you move faster and more intentionally. Instead of listening to a missed call  or relistening to a call when you’re ready to reach out again, you can save time by getting a quick recap instead. Not sure which lead to follow up with first? The Call Rating assesses a lead’s readiness and motivation and gives you a rating summary so you know what’s behind that assessment. These ratings help you prioritize the leads that are most likely to turn into deals. It’s similar to AI Lead Scoring, but specific to this call or text message and helps you move quickly with leads who are ready to sell before they move on to someone else.

    With the built-in AI features, you no longer have to upload a call recording into an external transcription service or load a transcription into ChatGPT to find the key points. You can also stop relying on virtual assistants to listen to all the calls and provide written recaps. It’s all down for you in a matter of minutes.

    How much does Carrot Call Tracking Cost?

    Carrot call tracking gives you one local number to use on your Carrot website, plus 100 recording minutes and 25 inbound SMS messages per month as part of your Carrot subscription. 

    If you reach 80% of your recording minutes or SMS limit, you’ll get an email alert letting you know you’re nearing capacity. If you go over the threshold, it’s $0.05 per minute and $0.03 per additional inbound SMS message. Keep track of your costs on the Usage and Costs page, which displays your real-time consumption, projected overages, and invoice history for full transparency.

    Need additional numbers for different marketing campaigns? No problem! You can add as many local numbers as you’d like for $3/month each. 

    AI Call Insights can be added to your subscription for $39 per month. (AI Call Insights is not part of the CarrotCRM AI feature suite. Turing on CarrotCRM AI features does not enable AI Call Insights.)

    How does Carrot’s Call Tracking compare to other call tracking services? 

    We believe that call tracking is a critical component of measuring your success and managing your budget and focus, so we worked hard to make it as affordable as possible. Because it’s fully integrated into our real estate website platform, we were able to make it part of the subscription and only charge for additional usage. Most other call tracking solutions (like CallRail) are standalone services that need to be connected to an external website.

    CallRail starts monthly subscriptions at $50/mo (plus the cost of your website as CallRail doesn’t offer this service). 

    Carrot Call Tracking vs. CallRail

    CallRailCarrot Call Tracking
    5 numbers5 numbers (1 included, plus 4 add-ons)
    250 minutes250 minutes (100 included, plus 150 overage minutes)
    $50/mo$19.50/mo

    Carrot Call Tracking vs. CallRail with AI Insights

    CallRailCarrot Call Tracking
    5 numbers5 numbers (1 included, plus 4 add-ons)
    250 minutes250 minutes (100 included, plus 150 overage minutes)
    AI insights & call transcriptionsAI insights & call transcriptions
    $100/mo$58.50/mo

    Take your business to the next level with call tracking

    Managing time, budget, and understanding your return on investment is critical for any business at any stage. Call tracking is another tool that gives you deeper understanding of what’s working and where to focus your efforts. For many real estate investors, it’s the missing piece to their reporting. You know how many leads you generate, how many turn into deals, how many form fills you get. Now it’s time to know exactly how many calls and text messages you get from leads, and exactly where they came from. Stop driving blind and start making smarter decisions based on real call tracking data to take your business to the next level.

  • Claim Hours Back Weekly & Close More Deals with CarrotCRM’s New AI Tools

    Claim Hours Back Weekly & Close More Deals with CarrotCRM’s New AI Tools

    Ai-Driven Acquisitions: The CRM Revolution That’s Changing Acquisitions Forever
    Schedule Your 1:1 CRM Demo

    or see pricing here

    What would you do if you could claim back hours each week? Spend it with family? Dive back into the hobby that you’ve been neglecting? Double your annual revenue by closing more deals?

    For many people, the purpose of real estate investing is to buy back your time, freedom, and control of your life to do the things you love.

    But if you’re spending all your time generating leads and working deals, it can turn into a grind that doesn’t feel very fulfilling. 

    Carrot websites have long helped investors generate motivated seller leads. Then Carrot’s action-based CRM (built on InvestorFuse 3.0 technology) launched in 2024, helping investors hyper-focus on moving deals through the pipeline quickly. Now, we’re taking it a step further, giving you the ability to move faster, focus where it matters, and close more deals with even less manual effort.

    Meet CarrotCRM AI and InvestorFuse 3.0 AI.

    It’s the feature set that made Kyler Peters (of Nick Perry’s Want to Sell Now team — one of the highest volume teams in the country) say this:

    CarrotCRM AI’s first tools (available now with all paid plans) include:

    • AI Lead Scoring: Stop wasting time chasing the wrong leads. Focus on the highest quality leads based on the criteria that matter most to your business.
    • Autonomous Lead Manager: Have more conversations and gather important, qualifying information in the background while you focus on more important tasks.
    • AI Opportunity Summaries: Get caught up on every opportunity detail in just 30 seconds. Never miss important info and stop wasting time as you move between opportunities.

    Key Takeaways

    • CarrotCRM AI tools speed up a real estate investor’s ability to focus on the right opportunities and enable them to touch more opportunities in one day with less manual effort.
    • Using CarrotCRM AI saves hours weekly, allowing investors to message more leads and move between opportunities in just 30 seconds.
    • If you’re not leveraging AI in your acquisition engine as a core part of every step in the lead flow, you will be playing catch-up within the next 12 months.

    These game-changing AI features are available with both CarrotCRM and InvestorFuse 3.0. Keep reading to learn how they work, how they help, and how they’ll accelerate your investment business for a fraction of the time and money.

    Table of Contents

    1. How AI changes the game for real estate investors
    2. AI Lead Scoring: Give the right attention to the right leads
    3. Autonomous Lead Manager: Your built-in virtual assistant
    4. AI Opportunity Summaries: Remember every important detail in just 30 seconds
    5. What can you expect from CarrotCRM AI
    6. How do I get CarrotCRM AI?

    How AI changes the game for real estate investors

    AI is about acceleration and time savings. It’s about enabling the human to focus on the parts of processing a lead that they do best while AI handles the heavy lifting on repetitive tasks. Done right, it allows a solo wholesaler or flipper to punch way above their weight class and get more done with far fewer resources. For a big Investor, it saves dozens of hours per week and tens of thousands of dollars in labor cost, while allowing each lead manager the ability to handle up to 75% more leads each day. 

    We didn’t just make this up. We worked with high-volume investors like Nick Perry to develop and refine the AI tools now available in CarrotCRM and InvestorFuse 3.0 (they’re the same software, just under different brand names). Here’s what they have to say about these new features and the impact they’ve had on the team …

    AI has had such a huge impact on just about every facet of life lately. It’s time investors harness that power to streamline their work and make smarter decisions that lead to more deals and higher revenue.

    “At the end of the day, if you’re not leveraging AI in your acquisition engine as a core part of every step in the lead flow, you will be playing catch up within the next 12 months.” — Trevor Mauch, Carrot CEO

    AI Lead Scoring: Give the right attention to the right leads

    Let’s be honest, not all leads are created equal. Someone might just be exploring options, while another lead could have a lot of motivation to move quickly. Some properties could require so much work that it diminishes your profit margin, while others might just need cosmetic updates. The truth is, a lot of factors impact lead quality, and trying to sort it all out manually means you:

    1. Need to keep track of quickly changing information
    2. Make judgment calls on how certain factors impact a lead’s quality and upside potential
    3. Spend the same amount of time trying to qualify every lead

    Doing this on the fly leaves you open to mistakes, missed opportunities, and inconsistent decisions. 

    But you know what AI is GREAT at? Analyzing data and assigning leads a score. 

    That’s exactly what the AI Lead Score does. Start with our pre-built scoring scripts or create something completely unique to you, including different lead factors and deciding how much weight each one deserves. If your business focus changes or you find your best deals all have commonalities, simply update your lead scoring matrix and all your leads will be rescored, making sure the most promising opportunities always float to the top. 

    Because the system is AI-based, the scores aren’t static. As you work a deal and gather more information, the lead score updates. What once looked like a promising lead might cool down or turn out not to be a good fit. How long does it take you to recognize that change and move on right now? Often, the answer is “far too long,” and you end up wasting time on a deal that’s never going to close when you could be working other leads instead. AI Lead Scores recalculate every time new information is added to an opportunity or a new conversation takes place, letting you know if the lead is still hot or if it’s cooling down before you dedicate more time to it.

    Wondering what leads to work on today? Simply open your CRM and look for the highest-scored leads. Those are the closest to a deal and need your attention the most.

    No more arbitrary judgment, guesswork, or treating all leads the same. Now you KNOW which deserve your focus.

    Autonomous Lead Manager: Your built-in virtual assistant

    Remember those scenarios we outlined above about seller motivation and property condition? Knowing that info is critical to scoring a lead, but how long does it take you to gather that intel? How many phone calls, text messages, and emails do you send out each day just trying to gather the details you need to accurately assess an opportunity? How long does it take to onboard a new acquisitions manager or virtual assistant so that you’re not the one doing the ground work? 

    Now, it only takes 10 minutes.

    After a quick, easy setup, the new Autonomous Lead Manager (ALM) does the qualifying and outreach communication for you so you can focus on other (more important and lucrative) things. It’s not a static, pre-built drip campaign. It’s a smart, interactive bot that speaks like you and reacts appropriately to what the other person says. When it completes its goal or recognizes that it’s time for you to jump back in, it sets a task for you to follow up.

    Carrot CRM AI features - Autonomous Lead Manager

    Not only do ALMs handle the heavy lifting, it also means you can hold more conversations at once, increasing your active lead pipeline. If you’re manually texting someone, there’s a limit on how many active conversations you can have at one time (without eventually mixing up the details or missing a message). The ALM handles as many conversations as you need without getting tripped up. It’s like having unlimited VAs or acquisition managers for less than a penny per interaction. (Plus, you get unlimited ALMs with any paid CRM plan, putting your cost as low as $69/month plus small usage fees … that’s a lot of value for less than a fancy dinner.)

    Even better, Autonomous Lead Managers can be used for just about any goal-based communications, meaning you can automate almost all of your important but tedious outreach. Here are a few other examples of how CarrotCRM members use the ALMs.

    • Gathering customer quotes or reviews
    • Asking for property photos
    • Setting appointments
    • Following up with leads who have ghosted you
    • Working out deal details if someone is balking

    ALMs open up your capacity for communication, without stressing your bandwidth.

    AI Opportunity Summaries: Remember every important detail in just 30 seconds

    When it’s time to reach out yourself, knowing the opportunity’s details is critical (otherwise, you might waste time reasking the same qualification questions or risk sounding insensitive to the seller’s motivation). At best, it likely takes you at least five minutes to refresh yourself on an opportunity — longer if there have been a lot of interactions, it’s been a while since you looked at this lead, or someone else did the initial qualification.  

    If you’re working five leads per day, that’s 25 minutes or more you lose remembering details before you can even pick up the phone or craft a message. If you’re a high-volume team working 20-30 leads per day, that’s well over 1-2 hours of lost time! Now, what if getting a detailed summary of the opportunity only took 30 seconds (like it does with the new AI Opportunity Summaries)? You’d get back 90% of your lost time!

    CarrotCRM’s opportunity summaries let you dive into four key areas:

    • Overall Opportunity Summary: A recap of all the critical info you need
    • Property Details: A breakdown of all known property details
    • Seller Intent: Catching you up on the seller’s motivation and timeline
    • Communication Summary: So you know where the last communications left off and communication preferences

    The summaries are especially helpful if you’re working with different acquisition teams or virtual assistants, meaning data might not always be entered into the right field. Jumbled data means you could miss key information, even if you are looking deeply …or you have to spend even longer finding it. The AI summaries pull data in from everywhere, making sure it gets seen … even if it is in the wrong spot or buried in a weeks-old note.

    It’s time to harness the information you already have so you can actually use it (and get your time back!).

    What can you expect from CarrotCRM AI

    Above all, CarrotCRM AI features are built to work for you. That means they’re customizable to your needs. 

    You have full control over your AI Lead Scoring: the criteria it scores, how those criteria are scored, and the weight each one has. Having control over your own scoring criteria allows you to make adjustments whenever you need to. If you change your strategy or decide to focus on different qualification criteria, you can update scoring instantly … without having to wait for the machine learning to readjust. Other AI scoring solutions lock you into what they think is best or score based on previous deals. Meaning if you change direction, you’re at the mercy of their locked-in algorithm and will have to deal with incorrect lead scores until the AI catches up. How many missed deals could that be?

    You also have control over the Autonomous Lead Manager, from what its goals are to the language it uses and when it sends messages. It doesn’t take an engineering PhD to program either. Simply write in plain language (like “Ask why the lead is selling and their timeline to sell” or “Don’t send any messages after 9pm”) and the AI will understand. While ALM is still in beta testing, it will show you a preview of every message before sending, so you’re always confident in the message and language. Once you’re happy with your autonomous lead manager, you can turn the preview feature off and let it work quietly and efficiently in the background.

    How much does CarrotCRM cost?

    AI features are included with all paid CarrotCRM or InvestorFuse accounts at no additional monthly fee. During their beta period, the AI features charge on a per-usage basis, with most interactions costing a fraction of a cent. The exact cost of each usage varies depending on the amount of communication and analysis of each opportunity. For example, a new opportunity might cost around $0.02 to analyze, while an opportunity that’s been active for several months could average around $0.05. This approach ensures that you only pay for the resources you use. Curious about your exact costs? There’s a clear breakdown of your AI activities and their costs easily available in your CRM, so you can keep track of everything.

    Here’s an estimated average AI usage cost for each CarrotCRM plan (higher-tier plans typically handle more lead volume, meaning they’re likely using more AI features as well):

    • Essential: $2/month
    • CarrotCRM Scale (InvestorFuse Pro): $30/month
    • CarrotCRM Team (InvestorFuse Premium): $115/month

    Another way CarrotCRM is customizable and lets you control costs is your ability to select which AI features you want to turn on and which individual opportunities they’ll work on. For instance, if you have an opportunity that’s been in your pipeline for a while, you can turn off the AI Summaries and Autonomous Lead Manager but leave Lead Scoring on in case new data makes the opportunity hot again.

    How do I get CarrotCRM AI?

    CRM AI features are available with all paid CarrotCRM (or InvestorFuse 3.0) plans at no additional monthly fee — just pay for your exact AI usage. The features are simple to turn on and you can get started with AI in just seconds!

    If you’re already a paid CarrotCRM or InvestorFuse 3.0 user, you can turn on the AI features today in under “Team Settings” on the left-hand side of your CRM. Simply choose the “AI” setting at the bottom of the list. This view lets you turn on all of the AI features to select which ones you’d like to activate.

    To make it even simpler, you can click here to get directly to the AI settings in your account!

    If you’re a CarrotCRM free user … (upgrade in 3 clicks!)

    To access the new AI features, you need to upgrade to a paid CarrotCRM account. Plans start at just $69/month and come with additional features, like more property reports, additional templated outreach sequences, electronic contract signatures, and support!

    To upgrade your CRM, go to your Carrot account billing section by clicking on your user icon and selecting “Billing,” then click “Manage Membership” (or just use this link). Scroll down to the “CarrotCRM” section, and select your plan. Your CRM payments will match your Carrot payment type (either annual or monthly). Once you’ve selected your plan, scroll back up and click the “Review Changes” button on the right, then select “Pay Now” to finalize the changes. If you have any issues or questions, hop in the chat on that same page and shoot us a message.

    If you don’t have CarrotCRM yet …

    Signing up is easy, just choose the paid CarrotCRM plan that’s right for you. All the paid plans come with onboarding and support, so setting up your CRM or migrating from an existing CRM is simple. You can get up and running today!

    Here’s a peek at what you can expect from CarrotCRM:

    Want personal CarrotCRM demo? No problem!

    Schedule Your 1:1 Demo

    Once you have a paid CRM account, just follow the steps above to activate the AI features.

    These are just the first set of Carrot AI features being released. Stay tuned for more AI CM and website features later this year! In the meantime, go start your AI journey and let us know what you do with all your extra time.

  • Top 5 Ways to Find Off-Market Properties (That Other Investors Miss)

    Top 5 Ways to Find Off-Market Properties (That Other Investors Miss)

    You don’t have to be lucky to get off-market properties as a real estate investor. You just need to know how to find them and how to get them to you before they go on auction sites, Zillow, or to a competitor. 

    These five proven methods show you exactly how to build that pipeline ethically, legally, and in a way that’s scalable. 

    KEY TAKEAWAYS

    • There are a variety of ways to attract off-market properties, and strategies that will fit any real estate investor’s budget. Some are more manual, some produce quick results, and some set you up for long-term success.
    • Real estate investors benefit from using multiple methods of attracting off-market properties to balance quick lead generation with long-term lead flow.
    • You can attract off-market properties with both online and offline methods.

    Attracting off-market investment properties is a good option for both new and seasoned real estate investors as there are multiple strategies and some budget-friendly options. Keep reading to see the top five ways to attract off-market properties, the pros and cons, and how to set up each one.

    Table of Contents

    1. SEO (The Best Way to Find Motivated Sellers)
    2. Driving for Dollars (Most Budget-Friendly)
    3. PPC Ads (Fastest) 
    4. Networking
    5. Radio Ads
    6. What’s next?
    Carrot icon
    Lead generation, at its best
    Attract, convert & close more motivated leads
    Try Carrot Today

    1. SEO (The Best Way to Find Motivated Sellers)

    When someone types “sell my house fast” into Google, you know they aren’t casual sellers — they need to sell now and are willing to accept a lower price for speed and convenience. That’s exactly who you want to attract.

    How do you make sure they come to your website? 

    It happens through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — the process of getting your website to show up in top search results when sellers type phrases like “sell my house fast” or “cash offer for home” into Google.

    To tell Google what phrase you want a specific page to rank for, put the phrase or some variation of it in:

    • Your page title (what shows in the browser tab)
    • Your website address (the page URL) 
    • The page’s meta description (the short description that appears under your link in search results)

    For example, if you search for ‘sell my house for cash in Texas,’ the top-ranking websites have exactly what I described: 

    If you look at “Jamie Buys Houses” in the screenshot above, it includes “We Buy Houses In Texas” in their title, “Texas” in their URL, and “sell your house fast without paying commissions” in their description.

    It’s also good to include the phrase you’re targeting at least a couple of times in the content of your page as well. 

    Look at Four19 Properties’ page for the keyword “sell my house for cash in Dallas.” They’ve included phrases like “sell house fast in Dallas” and “cash offer” on their page. 

    Four19 Properties - Sell Your House in Dallas

    To find the right phrases to include on your page, you need to do keyword research. It is simply figuring out what words people actually type into Google when they’re looking to sell their house fast.

    Instead of guessing which search terms to target, keyword research shows you exactly what motivated sellers are searching for (the keyword) and how many people search for those terms each month (search volume).

    For example, you might discover that 720 people search for “sell my house fast Dallas” every month, but only 50 search for “Dallas home buyers.” 

    This tells you which phrase to focus on for better results.

    You can do basic keyword research using free tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest. Just type in phrases you think sellers might use, and these tools will show you search volume data and suggest related terms you might not have considered. If you’re a Carrot member, Carrot also has a built in Keyword Explorer tool so you can easily find and implement the best keywords for your site.

    For a deep dive into real estate SEO best practices, check out the free guide Real Estate SEO: Top Strategies, Tips & Examples. It covers everything from keyword research to website optimization. 

    Pros of SEO for real estate investors: 

    • SEO leads convert at much higher rates because they found you, not the other way around. According to Carrot’s data, SEO leads generate approximately 2.5 times higher profit compared to leads from other sources. 
    • Unlike paid ads that stop working the moment you stop paying, SEO continues working for you 24/7 once you’re ranking well. You won’t have to spend time chasing leads. 

    Cons of SEO for real estate investors: 

    • SEO typically takes 3-6 months before you start seeing motivated sellers coming in. You need patience and can’t rely on it for quick deals when you’re just starting out.
    • Because it’s so effective, SEO is competitive. So it can be hard to rank for the high-intent keywords like ‘sell house in {city}, ‘sell fast for cash,’ etc. (To see how competitive top keywords are in your market, search your city with Market Scout.)
    • Getting your website to rank isn’t rocket science, but you’ll need to spend time learning the basics of keyword research, backlinks, etc. 

    If you don’t want to learn SEO yourself, there are real estate SEO experts you can work with.

    2. Driving for Dollars (Most Budget-Friendly)

    Driving for dollars is when you actively search neighborhoods for distressed properties that aren’t listed for sale. Though the name suggests driving, you can also walk, bike, or jog through neighborhoods — driving just covers more ground faster.

    Let’s look at five steps to make driving for dollars a success. 

    Step 1: Pick your target neighborhoods

    Start with areas you already know or where you’ve done deals before. Check your county records for zip codes with higher foreclosure rates or tax delinquencies — these often have more motivated sellers.

    It helps to schedule regular 30-minute driving sessions each week rather than trying to do it randomly. 

    Step 2: Look for signs of distress

    Look for homes with:

    • Overgrown yards
    • Peeling paint
    • Broken windows
    • Piled-up mail 
    • Or posted notices

    Record the address and move on. Being too obvious — like taking photos or lingering — can make neighbors uncomfortable. You can do more research later on. 

    Step 3: Leave a note (Optional)

    Leave a simple handwritten style note on the door letting the owner know you’re interested in buying. 

    You can write — “I noticed your house while driving by and wondered if you’d consider selling? Call me at [number].” 

    Or you can use pre-printed door hangers that look like they’re handwritten, like these from Ballpoint Marketing.

    Just respect “No Soliciting” signs and be considerate.

    Step 4: Research the property

    Before adding to your marketing list, quickly check if the property is already listed for sale (check Zillow or the MLS if you have access) to avoid wasting time on properties already on the market.

    Then, look up the property on your county assessor’s website (just google “[your county] property records” or “[your county] assessor”). This gives you the legal owner and usually their mailing address, which often isn’t the property address itself.

    If you can’t find the owner’s current contact information, use a skip tracing service like TLO, Batch Skip Tracing, or PropStream (costs typically range from $0.25-$1 per lookup). This will get you phone numbers or the email address of the owner. 

    Step 5: Reach out to owners

    Add these properties to your regular follow-up system. 

    For the highest response rates, use multiple contact methods — send a yellow letter or postcard first, then follow up with a phone call 3-5 days later. 

    Tracking which properties respond helps refine your targeting for future driving sessions.

    Pros of Driving for Dollars for real estate investors: 

    • Extremely low startup cost (just gas money to get started)
    • Lets you personally evaluate neighborhoods and property conditions
    • Can be done part-time during evenings or weekends

    Cons of Driving for Dollars for real estate investors: 

    • Time-intensive process requiring personal effort
    • Limited by how much ground you can physically cover
    • Not scalable without additional help or technology

    Can you do this virtually? 

    DealMachine is an app that lets you browse neighborhoods through Google Street View, without actually driving there. You can identify potentially distressed properties and mark them just like you would if you were driving. It’s great if you’re short on time or want to scout neighborhoods that are far from where you live. 

    To improve response rates, add a QR code pointing to your website to your postcards. When sellers scan the QR code, they’ll land directly on your site, where they can learn more about your services and see that you’re a legitamate business. 

    3. PPC Ads (Fastest) 

    If you have some marketing budget, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads and pay-per-lead services are the fastest way to generate deals.

    You set up your Google Ads account, create campaigns targeting keywords like “sell my house fast [your city],” and within hours people will be clicking and filling out forms.

    But competition is fierce, and hence expensive. 

    For example, when I searched for “sell my house for cash in Chicago” I saw 4-5 different ads. Meaning everyone is bidding on the same keyword.

    When you have this many competitors, the cost per click skyrockets. 

    You might pay $15 – $50 just for someone to click your ad. If only one out of 20 people who click actually fill out your form, you’re looking at $300 – $1,000 per lead before you even talk to them.

    Here are three tips to make sure you’re not burning money on ads:

    1. Track every single keyword and ad. 

    Set up conversion tracking to see which exact keywords brought you actual seller calls. If you’re spending $500 on the keyword “sell house fast” but getting zero calls, turn that keyword off. 

    If “we buy ugly houses” is bringing quality leads for $50 per lead, increase the budget for that keyword. The goal is to not spend on keywords that won’t bring you quality leads. 

    2. Set up instant callback systems. 

    When someone submits your form, the system should immediately call both you and the seller, then connect you both on the same call within 30 seconds.

    Most investors wait 10-20 minutes to call leads back. By then, the seller has moved on or filled out three other investor forms.

    3. Your ad better stand out.

    In the example above, notice how each competitor tries to differentiate themselves:

    • “Cash Offer in 24 Hours”
    • “We Buy Any Condition”
    • “No Agent Commissions”
    • “Offer in 30 Minutes”

    You can’t just say “we buy houses.” You need a specific hook that makes people choose your ad over the others. 

    Facebook ads work completely differently than Google ads. 

    With Google, people are actively searching for you. With Facebook, you’re interrupting their scroll through family photos and memes.

    This means your creative needs to grab attention in under two seconds, and every single element of your ad needs to work together perfectly.

    Here’s how to structure a Facebook ad that actually converts:

    1. A compelling description that builds credibility and captures attention
    2. A clean, engaging video (or image) related to houses
    3. A clear value proposition
    4. A direct, specific call-to-action button

    Pros of PPC for real estate investors: 

    • Generates leads immediately after campaign launch
    • Highly targeted based on specific keywords and search intent
    • Scalable by increasing budget as needed
    • Provides measurable ROI and performance data

    Cons of PPC for real estate investors: 

    • Requires upfront budget 
    • Google Ads has a learning curve
    • Lead costs vary widely depending on market competition (see the average cost-per-click for popular keywords with Market Scout)
    • Success depends on quick follow-up and conversion systems

    4. Networking

    You can’t buy houses from people who don’t know you buy houses. So you need to get the word out about what you do.  

    But that doesn’t mean you waste time at generic business events making small talk. You need to connect with people who either have deals or know people with deals.

    Here are some ideas: 

    Build professional networks. 

    Connect with estate sale companies, bankruptcy attorneys, and eviction lawyers. These people deal with motivated sellers every day.

    Insurance adjusters deal with the “3 Ds” — Death, Divorce, and Disaster. These are exactly the situations that create motivated sellers. Make connections with them. 

    Go to garage sales. 

    What do people do before they sell their house? They get rid of junk first. Walk up to someone running a garage sale and say “Hey, I’m not here to buy anything, but are you open to selling the house too?”

    Talk to everyone. 

    Tell every single person you meet that you buy houses. Your barber, server, Uber driver. Everyone either has a property problem or knows someone who does.

    Here’s proof this works:

    Post on Facebook: “I need to buy a house this month. If you bring me a deal that closes, I’ll pay you $500-$1000.” Your network might connect you with someone. 

    Get to know a few real estate agents.

    Most agents can’t handle problem properties. Tell them: “If you get a hoarder house, something boarded up, or a place needing serious repairs, send it my way. You still get your commission.”

    Now when that agent gets a problem property listing, instead of dreading it, they immediately think of you. You become their go-to solution for deals that don’t work in the regular market.

    Pros of networking for real estate investors:

    • Gives you access to deals that never hit the market or listing sites
    • Professionals like agents and attorneys can pre-screen deals based on your criteria
    • Relationships tend to strengthen and improve over time

    Cons of networking for real estate investors:

    • Requires consistent follow-up to stay top-of-mind
    • Results often come in unpredictable waves rather than a steady flow
    • Hard to scale beyond your personal capacity to maintain relationships

    5. Radio Ads

    Radio can be an underrated way to generate motivated leads. There’s a misconception that they don’t work. But that’s because most investors pay way too much. 

    Check out this interview with Chris Arnold to learn more about how he relied on radio advertising to build and grow multiple companies.

    All Radio. All Virtual. How I Used Radio Ads to Build My Business and Lifestyle w/ Chris Arnold

    Here are the steps you can follow to get started with radio advertising:

    Step 1: Choose the right stations

    There are three main radio genres to target:

    • Urban stations – for deals in cities with younger demographics
    • Rural stations – for small town and countryside properties
    • Over 50 stations – for older homeowners who are more likely to sell

    Ask stations for their demographic breakdowns — listener data showing age, income, and location of their audience — and advertise on stations that match your seller persona. 

    Step 2: Negotiate pricing and secure good time slots

    Start with relationship building: Find a media buyer who already has relationships with radio stations. Solo investors rarely get the pricing they need to make radio profitable.

    Negotiate hard: Posted rates are just starting points. Most stations have flexible pricing, especially for longer-term commitments.

    Target prime listening times: Book morning and evening rush hours when people are actually in their cars listening.

    Write your own ads (avoid the station’s help)

    Radio stations will offer to help write your ad. Avoid them completely. They don’t understand how to position you to motivated sellers.

    This framework works great: 

    • Call out the problem your listener has
    • Present your solution
    • State who you are clearly
    • Give a clear call to action

    Keep it empathetic, not aggressive. 

    People are nervous and possibly heartbroken during the selling process. Don’t use harsh language like “We’ll stop your foreclosure now!” or “Get quick cash and leave your home!”

    Step 3: Set up your phone system before you launch

    Use easily memorable phone numbers for radio. Something with repeating numbers or similar sounds works best. People hear your ad while driving and need to remember your number instantly.

    You can also set up unique phone numbers for each station so you can track which ones generate the most calls.

    Pros of radio ads for real estate investors: 

    • Radio makes you sound like the established expert in your market compared to other investors
    • Most investors don’t use radio, so you’re not fighting five other “we buy houses” ads

    Cons of radio ads for real estate investors:

    • Without good negotiation skills or connections, you might pay $280 for what others get for $20
    • You need to answer live calls throughout the day, not just when your ad plays

    What’s next?

    Most investors spend all their time and money trying to get leads. They send out mailers, put up bandit signs, and make cold calls. But then what happens when someone actually calls?

    They write the person’s info on a sticky note, and forget to call them back for three days. 

    Getting leads is only half the battle. The real money comes from actually turning those leads into closed deals.

    That’s where Carrot comes in.

    It’s not just a website builder. It’s a complete system with CRM and digital marketing tools designed specifically for real estate investors to capture leads and turn them into deals.

    The data proves it works: Carrot leads convert 7 times better and are 2.5 times more profitable than non-Carrot leads. The average Carrot lead is worth nearly $1,900 compared to just $102 for non-Carrot leads. 

    Even in competitive markets, investors with a Carrot website hold 45% of top search positions in most U.S. metros. With over 1 million motivated seller leads generated, the platform works whether you’re tech-savvy or not.

    Check out Carrot today and see why thousands of investors trust their websites, lead capture, and follow-up systems to this powerful platform.

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  • 5 Ways to Attract Leads in a Competitive Real Estate Market by Standing Out Online

    5 Ways to Attract Leads in a Competitive Real Estate Market by Standing Out Online

    No matter what type of real estate investing you specialize in, finding the right deals makes or breaks the bottom line. And if you don’t want to spend all day, every day hustling and cold calling, having motivated leads come to you online is a great way to keep your pipeline filled.

    But how do you stand out in a crowded market and make sure leads find YOU first? Here are some actionable takeaways you can use to make yourself the most successful investor in your area.

    KEY TAKEAWAYS

    • Putting unique content on your website is key to ranking well in search engines and building trust with potential leads. If you use pre-written blog templates or an AI writing tool, take the time to add your own personality and insights before publishing.
    • Getting hyperlocal is a great way to stand out. People prefer working with someone they can trust, and they’re more likely to trust someone from their community versus a nameless, faceless investor.
    • Look at your competitors’ websites or top-ranking sites in other areas to figure out what you absolutely must have on your site and get inspiration for how to attract leads.

    In a competitive real estate market, you have to find ways to stand out. By doing your research, providing high-quality information on your website, and building trust by being hyper-local, you can stand out from the competition, attract leads, and fill your deals pipeline.

    Table of Contents

    1. Understand What You’re Up Against … and How to Stand Out
    2. Share Unique, High-Value Content
    3. Localize Down to the Neighborhood
    4. Showcase Your Local Knowledge
    5. Build a (Recognizable) Brand
    6. Be Yourself, Just Online
    Carrot icon
    Lead generation, at its best
    Attract, convert & close more motivated leads
    Try Carrot Today

    1. Understand What You’re Up Against … and How to Stand Out

    The first step of standing out is knowing your competition. Start by using Market Scout to see how difficult your investment market is, get marketing strategy recommendations, and see marketing insights like average website domain authority in your area, keyword difficulty, and how much paid ads cost.

    Glossary:

    • What is website domain authority? Domain authority is a score that measures your website’s quality and reputation based on key metrics like organic traffic, authenticity, and quality backlinks. While domain authority doesn’t directly contribute to search rankings, it is a good indicator of how search engines view your site. A higher domain authority score is better.
    • What is keyword difficulty? Keyword difficulty is a metric used to understand how many sites are targeting a specific keyword and, in return, how difficult it is to rank for that keyword. The higher the score, the more competition there is for that keyword.

    Now that you have a general understanding of the market and know what type of marketing strategies you should double down on (like SEO, content creation, or video), it’s time to dig deeper. Google keywords you want to rank for to see what information and linked websites come back in Google’s AI Overview and which webpages rank at the top of the search results. Take a look at these pages to see what they’re doing — what pages do they have, what kind of information do they share, what keywords are they obviously targeting? Use this as inspiration for what to include on your own website, then do it better!

    (Note: Don’t ever copy someone’s website, copy, blogs, or videos exactly. Use theirs for inspiration, but create your own content with your own spin and personality.)

    Do you find yourself saying, “But what about this?” when reading a competitor’s website? That’s a great signal that you should fill that gap!

    2. Share Unique, High-Value Content

    SEO trends are changing, but one thing remains the same: Search engines love unique content that is insightful, helpful, and answers common questions using the same language a searcher would use.

    In today’s online world, you can’t simply set up a website with basic pages and expect to rank or generate leads. You have to add additional topical pages, blogs, and FAQs to share your knowledge and gain a competitive edge.

    What questions have your clients asked in the past? What concepts do you find yourself explaining over and over? Are there any unique regulations or laws in your area that impact clients? These are all great topics for creating unique content on your site. 

    You can also use Google’s autofill feature (start typing a search term and look at the phrases Google suggests) and the “People Also Ask” section of the search results to get ideas. These are based on real things people are searching for, so providing that information can help you attract leads.  

    Looking for unique topics to cover doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explain important terms or concepts your leads need to know just because everyone else does. Just focus on explaining it like you would in person, especially if your area has a specific dialect or uses certain terms. If you can, add details and data specific to your region (this is exactly the type of unique, high-value content search engines love).

    3. Localize Down to the Neighborhood

    Online search is becoming more and more localized. Even if someone doesn’t specifically search for something near them, search engines often serve up local results anyway. (Do a random Google search and scroll to the bottom of the first page. You might see a shockingly accurate location tag. My location changes when I’m five minutes away from my house because I’m in a different neighborhood within my city!)

    To make sure you come out on top either way, launch localized webpages targeting specific cities, towns, and even neighborhoods.

    What is a localized webpage?

    A localized webpage is a page on your website that uses a specific location as a target keyword. For example, if you’re a wholesaler in Colorado, you might have a webpage targeting Denver. The URL could be something like www.yourcompany.com/sell-house-fast-denver and the text at the top of the page (the H1) would say “Sell Your House Fast in Denver, Colorado.” This gives you a better chance of showing up in search results when someone specifically searches Denver or is in the Denver area.

    Set up webpages for more than one location

    But if you’re a real estate wholesaler in Colorado, you likely don’t only do deals in Denver. So you’ll want a localized page for every area you want to attract leads in — Lakewood, Westminster, Aurora, Arvada, etc. And remember how Google gets hyper-specific with your location? If you’re in an area with commonly used neighborhood names, set up localized pages for those as well. To keep with our Denver example, you might set up pages for West Highlands, East Colfax, or RiNo. This gives you a better chance of attracting attention from potential leads when they see that you really understand where they are.

    4. Showcase Your Local Knowledge

    Speaking of connecting with leads on a local level …

    Despite living in an always connected, global world, many people still like working with someone local. Think about the last time you needed a home contractor or mechanic. You might have Googled it, but you’re equally likely to have asked your friends, family, and trusted local network for a recommendation. People want to work with someone they can trust, and being local goes a long way in building rapport.

    Having a webpage targeting a specific town or neighborhood grabs attention, but what really builds trust is showing how much you know and understand the area. A few blocks can make a dramatic difference in many cities, and towns only a few miles apart might be night and day different when it comes to real estate. A big, national company won’t understand that.

    Look at each of those localized webpages you created and figure out what information you can add to highlight your knowledge of the area and give leads useful insights. A few examples include:

    • Highlighting deals you’ve done in the area
    • Sharing reviews or testimonials from past clients in that area
    • Explaining local regulations that may impact your leads
    • Calling out trends or local news that might be impacting the market in that area

    You can even stand in front of a recognizable neighborhood landmark and film a short video introducing yourself and your services using the specific area name.

    5. Build a (Recognizable) Brand

    Things like local videos published online help build your brand, which can go a long way in attracting leads and having leads choose you — especially in a crowded market.

    One of the five lessons shared in 5 Priceless Lessons from Million Dollar Investors is about getting personal and building a brand. It’s partially about putting people at ease as they decide who to work with, and partially about making sure you’re the one they think about right away when the time comes.

    “I want to make sure I have the brand so that if someone is thinking about selling their house in my market, they’re thinking about my company.” — Jeremy Resmer

    Traditional tactics like direct mail and bandit signs might help with this, but so do things like posting videos online or sponsoring a local little league team. Bigger ticket items like local TV or radio ads help with brand building, but if you’re creative and keep it local, you can find good opportunities to get your name, face, and logo out there.

    “Hey! I know you!” Real-Life Brand Building

    Justin Turner owns Turner Home Team in eastern North Carolina. Looking for a way to stand out and generate leads, he turned to a somewhat old-school method of advertising — billboards.

    “I’ve had so many people tell me they’ve seen my billboard. It leaves a lasting impression and brings more awareness than other campaigns,” Justin explained. “It makes me visible in my community in a way online ads can’t, helping me build real, local brand recognition that creates a stronger sense of trust.”

    It wouldn’t work without his website though. He warns this method (and any other offline outreach, like direct mail) relies on having a professional online presence.

    “[You have to have] a website people can research you on — they’re not going to do deals with some sketchy person just because of a billboard.”

    Since investing in billboards, Justin’s monthly organic brand searches on Google have more than doubled. After drawing in interested leads with the billboard, he uses his website to build trust and gain confidence by showcasing his experience, professionalism, honesty, and — most importantly — his team.

    “People trust those who they can relate to and understand.”

    Be Yourself, Just Online

    If there’s a theme to all of this advice, it’s to be authentic and helpful. Attracting leads is the name of the game, but the best way to do that is by remembering that leads are people.

    “This is a people business and real estate is a byproduct of what we do.”
    — Beau Hollis, 5 Priceless Lessons from Million Dollar Investors

    Do you find it easier to generate business face-to-face or by building in-person relationships? Bring that spirit and energy to your website. Using a few technical details shared in this post (like launching hyperlocal webpages) can get you in front of new eyes, but it’s up to the rest of your website content to sell your story. Be unique, be helpful, be approachable … be yourself.

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  • 10+ Email Marketing Tips to Warm Up Cold Leads with Jay Schwedelsen

    10+ Email Marketing Tips to Warm Up Cold Leads with Jay Schwedelsen

    10+ Email Marketing Tips to Warm Up Cold Leads w/ Jay Schwedelsen

    You’ve probably heard the email advice: “Don’t use the word ‘free.’” “Keep your emails short or risk going to spam.” “Don’t use emojis in subject lines.” Turns out, a lot of that advice is outdated — and in some cases, flat-out wrong.

    Jay Schwedelsen, host of the popular marketing podcast Do This, NOT That, recently joined us on Carrot’s Evergreen Marketing podcast to share updated tips for successful email lead nurturing. Jay is undisputedly one of the top experts in the field and he shared 10+ tips and dispelled some popular myths around email. 

    If you’ve left email behind in your lead follow-up, it’s time to dust off your list. 

    “Your email list is probably the most important asset you have. Your email database is your owned asset. It is the only marketing channel for basically no money that you can communicate whatever it is you want to communicate at any given moment. There’s nothing else like that.” — Jay Schwedelsen

    Even if you are actively sending emails, you might be unknowingly making some mistakes that are hurting your engagement rate.

    Whether you’re an investor following up with cold leads, an agent sending out market updates, or just trying to figure out how to get more replies, there’s something in the episode for you. Here’s a sneak peek at three tips Jay discusses.

    Tip #1: Your emails don’t matter if they aren’t opened

    “A lot of times when we’re sending out an email, we’re worried about ‘oh what are we writing in the email?’ or ‘oh, what’s the offer?’ and that’s backward,” Jay explained. “If you don’t get the email opened, who actually cares what’s inside the email? So we have to get that email opened and the number one thing that’s going to get that email opened is the subject line.”

    When people look at their email inboxes, they scroll through quickly and decide what gets their attention. Jay contends that most people don’t read the entire subject line, instead focusing on the first few words.

    With that in mind, front-load your subject lines. Jay recommends starting a subject line with all caps or keeping it super short to make it stand out. Better yet, start your subject line with a number.

    “If you start your subject line with a number, your open rate will rise about 20%.”

    And forget about avoiding certain “spam trigger” words. It’s true that words like “free” or even dollar signs used to send your emails straight to the junk folder, but that’s not the case anymore. Feel free to write the most compelling subject line possible without avoiding important words!

    Need help with your subject lines? Check our Jay’s free subject line grader.

    Tip #2: Send more emails (yes, you read that right!)

    “You’re probably not sending out enough email. In the real estate market I see this a lot. People will get focused on their email sending for a month or two, and then they move onto something else, and they won’t send again for another 2-3 weeks or a month. The most important thing you can do to make sure you’re getting that business is to be sending enough. You need to be at least sending email weekly — at least!”

    Why? Because sending email frequently and consistently actually helps keep you out of the junk folder. It all comes down to email engagement, Jay explains.

    “If you don’t send enough email — and we see it in all the data — if you don’t send at least a weekly email to your database, you actually cannot generate enough opens and clicks to stay in that person’s inbox. It needs to be relevant stuff, it can’t be garbage. But sending out more email is step number one.”

    Since email engagement is actually what matters, Jay has a few tips to make sure people actually read and interact with your email.

    • Paragraphs should never be more than four lines.
    • Start your email with something super attention-grabbing. Don’t save the “hook” for the end … some readers won’t get there.
    • Restate the main point, offer, or action you want readers to take in a PS at the end of the email (to grab the attention of people who just skim).

    “When you have a PS with a call to action, a link in the PS, your click-through rates go up on average by about 15%.”

    Tip #3: Make your emails valuable

    “Don’t push offers until you’ve established the fact that you’re not annoying.”

    Let’s be honest, no one likes being sold to. But as real estate professionals and marketers, it’s our natural default to send offers and promotions. If you’re working on a cold list — or a new one — focus your first few emails on offering value to your leads.

    “For the first 4-5 sends, don’t promote anything. Nothing you send out should be a benefit to you the sender, it should only be a benefit to the individual you’re sending to. It’s hard to do because our nature is “sell, sell, sell” but you need to show the people in that database that you’re going to give them value.”

    Jay shares some ideas of valuable information to send your leads (you’ll have to listen to get his tips), but whatever you send can’t have a form in front of it. Offering value before asking for something builds trust and gets leads used to opening your emails. When you do send something promotional, they’re more likely to pay attention because of the relationship you’ve built.

    “It’s like dating. You can’t be just like ‘Hi, nice to meet you. Do you want to get married?’ It doesn’t work, it’s weird.”

    Tips #4-10: More gems from Jay

    In less than 40 minutes, Jay shares insights on not only how to successfully use email nurturing, but creative ways to grab attention and make your emails better every time. More tips covered in the podcast include:

    • Why the inbox promotions section isn’t as bad as you think
    • The best way to benchmark your email marketing success
    • How to get people to respond to your emails
    • Going beyond basic AI to really make your emails better (including using AI to analyze your competitors’ emails for new ideas)
    • Should you use emojis and memes in your emails?

    Stop Overthinking, Start Sending

    At Carrot, we talk a lot about building a business of freedom and impact. And email — done right — is one of the most powerful, low-cost tools you have to create conversations that lead to deals.

    So whether you’re following up with motivated sellers, re-engaging old leads, or just trying to stay visible, start putting these tips into practice. Then hit send. Test. Iterate. Improve.

    And remember: It’s not about perfection. It’s about progress.

    Listen to the full 10+ Email Marketing Tips to Warm Up Cold Leads w/ Jay Schwedelsen episode to unpack what’s actually working right now in email marketing. 

    PS – You can use these tactics in your automated outreach sequences in Carrot CRM!

  • Videos Increase Website Conversion Rates Up to 56% — Here’s How to Get Started

    Videos Increase Website Conversion Rates Up to 56% — Here’s How to Get Started

    Video content is the best way to boost motivated leads without requiring any extra website traffic. This article explains why video is a game-changer for website conversion, and shares practical tips to get the right video content on your website!

    Key Takeaways

    • Website visitors who start watching a video are 24% more likely to convert to a lead and visitors who watch an entire video are 56% more likely to convert!
    • You should have five types of videos on your website to share key information that visitors are looking for.
    • You can quickly and easily create videos with free tools like VN and Canva.

    If you want to increase your website conversion rate and number of motivated leads, read on to discover how to quickly add videos to your site.

    Table of Contents

    1. The Data Behind Why Video Matters
    2. The 5 Types of Videos Your Website Needs
    3. How to Produce Videos, Easily
    4. Where to Put Videos on Your Website
    5. Conclusion: Make 2025 the Year of Video
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    The Data Behind Why Video Matters

    Online video consumption is estimated to hit four hours per day in 2025, according to Oberlo. When sellers do their research on who to work with, they don’t just like to gather information via video, they expect it! That’s why it only makes sense that your website should include videos.

    It’s not just a matter of giving web visitors information in a format they prefer. Having videos on your website can dramatically improve your lead conversation rate (how many website visitors turn into leads). Based on recent data analyzed by Carrot, when a web visitor starts watching a video, their chances of converting to a lead increase 24% (over visitors who don’t watch videos). Visitors who watch an entire video have a 56% better chance of converting!

    Adding videos to your website also helps with SEO. Google places a lot of weight on “high quality” content that it believes will help users answer their questions and find valuable information. Since today’s users like to watch videos, Google likes when videos are available to answer their search queries. Answering common questions or covering popular topics lets you capture that search traffic more easily.

    As people watch videos on your site, they’re also inherently spending more time on the page. Google also views this as a positive indicator that your content (and by extension, your website as a whole) is valuable, which can positively impact your domain authority and search rankings.

    The 5 types of videos your website needs

    Videos are a great way to answer common questions, highlight your experience, and put visitors at ease about working with you. Think of video as your chance to be “face to face” before you ever meet a lead. You likely get some of your best deals by networking, so bring that same personality and energy online with video! Here are the most important videos to make for your website.

    Note: If you’re new to video, get our free Video Marketing Playbook for R.E. Investors for ideas, scripts, and easy steps to recording!

    1. “About ” Video

    Who are you? What’s your experience? Why should people work with you? Make a short video introducing yourself and let people get to know you so they feel comfortable reaching out. 

    Here’s a video that walks you through creating an “About us” video as a real estate investor or agent:

    How to Create an “About Us” Video for Real Estate

    2. Working with [Your Company Name] Video

    A “How it Works” video can put potential leads at ease by detailing what it’s like working with you. How does the process work? What steps can they expect? What objections might they have?

    3. Customer Testimonials

    Video testimonials from happy clients talking about what it’s like working with you and how pleased they are with the results are great on websites. Website visitors may be skeptical of a written quote, but watching people talk about their experience generates a lot of trust. 

    Here’s an in-depth video on exactly what to say to get perfect testimonials every time you close a deal.

    4. FAQ Videos: Explain Complex Topics

    Odds are your leads aren’t real estate professionals. They may even be dealing with a new-to-them situation, like selling an inherited home, renting-to-own, or selling a house fast for cash. Put them at ease by answering questions they’re likely to have. Leads want to work with an expert, so show off your knowledge!

    Investor Brad Woodall is a prime example of someone who went all-in on creating videos that answer prospects questions. He doubled down on probate-related video content which he posts on YouTube and an entire video library on his Carrot website & now consistently generates high-quality probate leads because of it!

    FAQ Videos Example from Investor Brad Woodall

    5. Share Local Trends

    Talking about local trends are great videos to publish on social media channels, and they can add an engaging element to blog posts covering the same topic. If you’re discussing a particularly important trend that leads should know about, you can even add this type of video to your homepage while it’s a hot topic.

    Overall, videos build your credibility and put leads at ease, making them pre-disposed to want to work with you! 

    How to produce videos, easily

    Videos don’t have to be complicated or daunting, and you don’t need to start a YouTube channel or become a TikTok star (though you certainly can if you like making videos!). Today’s consumers are used to seeing natural, self-shot videos, so simple videos recorded on your phone or computer work just fine. There are even services that make it easy to produce animated videos if you’re uncomfortable being on camera (though showing your face will build stronger trust with potential clients).

    Don’t worry too much about the length of the video, both long and short videos have their place. Let the topic dictate the length of the video. And while you don’t have to worry about Hollywood standards, your videos should look nice and reflect your brand. Make sure the lighting is good and you have a non-distracting background. If you have shirts with your logo, consider wearing it in the video to reinforce brand recognition.

    Videos don’t need to be overly produced, but if you want to do a little editing or add your logo or contact information, we recommend finding a video editor on a website like Fiverr.com. If you’re more DIY, VN is a simple (free!) video editing software available for both Mac and PC. If you want to add music to your video, make sure you get royalty-free audio clips. You’ll also want an eye-catching “video thumbnail” (the image people see before clicking on the video). These are easy to create for free with tools like Canva, which has thousands of pre-built templates to match any style. If you’re creating several videos, choose one thumbnail style or one style per video type. This keeps your brand look consistent and professional.

    Where to put videos on your website

    You don’t want to cram all your videos onto one page, that would be overwhelming. Instead, think about where each type of vidoe makes most sense. If you were visiting a website, what type of information would you expect to encounter on each page? With that in mind, you want to make sure key videos are posted to your most high traffic pages — the home page, about us, and contact us pages for most real estate investor websites.

    Introduction videos and video testimonials in particular should be published on your homepage, about us page, and contact us pages — preferably toward the top of the page. In addition to generating the most traffic, these are also the highest converting pages, so putting videos here gets them in front of visitors at critical points in their journey. It also makes it easy for them to contact you immediately after watching the video — remember, visitors are significantly more likely to convert to a lead after watching a video!

    If you’re answering common questions, breaking down a topic, or discussing a local trend, add these videos to topical landing pages, blog posts, or niche credibility pages targeting the same topic and keywords. Publishing topical content on your website (especially around commonly searched questions or terms) will help you rank better in search results. The more valuable content you add to these pages — both written and video — the better chance they have of ranking.

    Carrot has a video post feature that makes adding this new content to your website even easier. Designed to help you get more leverage from videos explaining topics, trends, or answering questions, the VideoPost feature automatically transcribes your original videos into an SEO-optimized blog post. This is a great way to publish videos quickly.

    Here’s how easy it is to put video content on your website. This example ranked #1 for the keyword we were aiming for!

    Create Real Estate Video Content in Under 10 Minutes with Carrot's VideoPost

    Bonus video publishing tip: Post the same videos on YouTube. It’s easy to create a YouTube channel for your company on posting video to this popular platform give them an even better chance of showing up in search results. Make sure the video has a clear, accurate title with your target keywords and a good description with a link to your website. As a bonus, publishing videos on YouTube make them even easier to embed into your webpages, simply choose the Youtube block when editing the page and drop in the video URL.

    Conclusion: Make 2025 the year of video

    Video has been a popular way for Americans to consume information for years, and it’s only getting more popular. At the same time, competition in the real estate investing industry is getting stiffer, so any little tactic to give you an edge is a welcome advantage. Video could be the ticket to making you stand out, attract leads, and close more deals in 2025.

    In short, businesses that adopt video win far more often than those that don’t.

    Don’t overthink it and don’t be nervous about getting started, it’s not as hard as you think! For more on how to get started with video, check out Video Marketing for Real Estate: A Step-by-Step Guide.

    Happy filming—You’ve got this!