Jeff Walker, Vice President of Product at CINC, recently conducted a webinar to cover the latest on CINC Artificial Intelligence. Jeff has over 20 years of experience creating and innovating technology. He’s excited about the unique real estate lead conversion opportunities CINC AI brings to affiliated agents through its trailblazing features and has the data to prove it. Whether you are new to CINC, or you’re an existing user interested in adding CINC AI’s Alex to your team, read on to learn about your future assistant.
You can watch the full webinar recording on "How CINC AI Improves Scalable Lead Follow Up for Realtors" here.
CINC Artificial Intelligence is a technology that's built in partnership with Structurely, a leader in the real estate AI space. Its goal is to convert leads through text messages. There are three components to this:
CINC AI is known as “Alex,” the name we use to initiate engagement. When a new user registers on your website, the AI automatically texts that user, introduces themselves as Alex from your website, and then begins that conversation. Alex is available 24/7 and responds to leads as they come in. CINC AI is unique in that it works to create a personal connection with each lead. It builds on information CINC already has and remembers it. Alex identifies themself as an assistant to your brokerage, working for the assigned agent. The scripts build rapport by finding out the lead's timeframe, their search criteria and preferences, their price range, their situation and desires, and most importantly, their motivation or their “Why.” After it gathers this information, it will continue to engage with that lead until they are ready to make an appointment with the agent.
First and foremost, Alex targets new leads; any user registering on your website will be messaged by Alex. Alex also messages imported leads that come from CRM Connect, Zapier Integrations, or direct integrations from Zillow or Realtor.com. If you have other leads that you've imported, past leads, or sphere of influence leads on your website, and they are triggering behavioral messages, Alex will pick up those conversations as well. Alex does not message any manually added leads, or any mass-uploaded leads unless they are engaging in your website and triggering behavioral messages. Inside the lead details, you can see all the conversations that are happening in the Conversations tab.
In short, because it works. Alex is going to increase your lead engagement and your conversion opportunities. AI works when you or your agents are busy with other tasks. It ensures that leads are not missed and that they are communicated with right away. Alex is very persistent. The AI doesn't have feelings and isn't afraid of rejection. If it gets a few no’s in a row, it won't give up. Alex will persist with new leads as they come in and persevere past those initial “just browsing” objections that are so common. Alex will engage with all your new leads and your overall database as well when they're engaging on your website. It gets you in front of your leads, never misses a text, and converses with them as you would based on the best practices that we teach for engagement.
With the low cost of CINC leads, your ad spend budget stretches further, and you can generate more leads. CINC AI helps guarantee that none of them slip through the cracks. Twenty-Two percent of leads engage with CINC AI. The majority (82%) of these engagements are positive. The leads happily chat with Alex and begin sharing information. Even when a lead doesn’t respond as positively, Alex is still initiating the conversation and setting agents up for a higher chance of conversion.
When a conversation is initiated, you’ll be notified via app, email, and text. If a lead prefers to browse favorited properties on your site at 11 pm, Alex will respond and interact with them at that time. Late-night leads are often surprised that somebody is texting them back, but the results are fantastic to see; many successful conversions happen in these late hours. Whether it's off hours or you're busy with another client, you can rest confidently knowing that new leads are not falling through the cracks. Alex is going to engage with each lead even when you’re unable to so that when you start business the next day, you might see an appointment that's already set.
In your agent settings, there are two different AI settings. One is the new AI conversation alert, and the other is the AI disposition conversation alert. You can set those notifications to reach you by text, email, or the CINC agent app. While we believe it's important to have both of these activated, the new AI conversation alert lets you know when that lead is first speaking back to Alex. If that lead initially rejects Alex, it will not alert you about that one right away, but with any sign of interest, it will notify you to check in on that conversation. The disposition conversation alert is going to tell you when it's getting to the conclusion of a conversation with a lead and indicates if they’re agent-ready, meaning that they're ready to make an appointment or talk or if it's concluding without interest. Both of those results are key for you to know and follow up with.
If you miss any of these notifications, they're also all recorded inside the communications section of your website. There you'll see the AI disposition conversation alerts, and you can filter. You’ll also see when the alerts occur in the system. Pro tip: never ignore the “not interested” disposition. If you get a message that there's been a new AI disposition, and Alex has updated the status with “not interested,” it is still worthwhile to look. Oftentimes, there’s an opportunity there for you to build some rapport. Even uninterested people have been engaged enough to text you to share information about themselves. If a lead is ready to set an appointment, you will be reminded if that lead is not handled within an hour.
The scripts are proven. We're AB testing them and updating them as we are always learning more. They work well even with various methods of lead routing, whether that be the pond, single agent, or round robin.
Alex also speaks Spanish and adjusts based on the conversation that's happening. If Alex sends the first text in English and the lead replies in Spanish, Alex will proceed to have the rest of the conversation in Spanish.
The first metric we measure is engagement. We compared leads that were contacted with CINC AI to leads that were texted through other methods. When leads are engaged with CINC AI, they are 1.5x times more likely to respond to texts. The conversations are richer and longer. We found that the leads that are being managed through AI have 3.7 times the number of replies. We see more replies and deeper conversations when AI is engaged versus when AI is not engaged. The data reflects more drive, more activity, and more conversations.
Regarding appointment conversion, a couple of things can happen. Number one, CINC AI can generate that agent-ready lead all by itself. Right now, after a few messages back and forth, the person is ready to speak with an agent every 1 in 11 leads. This is a great conversion rate; almost 9% of leads are handled by AI without any agent involvement. We call this an agent-ready to lead. Additionally, 27% of conversations result in an agent handoff. These conversations involve agents picking leads up and converting them to agent-ready as well. AI generates more quality conversations and more leads that progress in the pipeline.
We conducted a before-and-after analysis of CINC AI clients and found that there was a 17% lift in leads that went from new to contact. We consistently see more engagement, more quality conversations, and further progression through the pipeline when Alex is involved.
We rolled out several new features in 2022. We released Long-Term AI Drips and Re-Drips to initiate ongoing communication between your website and leads that register but are either unresponsive or stop replying. Long-term drips are intended for no-response leads in a series of drips that will extend to a series of text messages that will continue for a full year. At the beginning of a lead interaction, drips will be more frequent. In the first month, nine drips will be sent to completely unresponsive leads, and then it will continue in decreasing intervals to continue to engage without pestering for that first year. These are completely designed for the leads that have not engaged at all; they haven't said anything. The goal is to see if we can catch them at the right moment with the right message to get them engaged.
Re-drips, on the other hand, are meant to resurrect conversations that were started, but the lead stopped conversing. This happens a lot; people get busy, they answer the first couple of texts, and then all of the sudden, they go dark. Re-drips help to keep those conversations active. They activate within a day or two after a lead stops replying and will focus on the point that it dropped off on. If it was trying to find out more about the buyer's motivation, it will ask that question in a few different ways to try to keep engaging that person. It pursues motivation, the location they're interested in, the number of beds, their property preferences, and their call availability and time. Whatever it is looking to find about the lead, it will zero in on and ideally navigate its way to agent readiness. Long-term drips and re-drips can work together, with long-term drips reaching out until that lead engages and re-drips following up with leads that have dropped out of the conversation.
It's been over two years since we launched CINC AI. It has a presence on over 1500 CINC platforms. Alex has processed and engaged with over 2.8 million leads and is sending out about 87,000 text messages per month. Alex is never staying the same. We are learning, and Alex is learning from what works and what doesn't. We have ongoing script reviews and AB testing to optimize the experience for higher conversion constantly.
You can watch the full webinar recording on "How CINC AI Improves Scalable Lead Follow Up for Realtors" here.
If you are interested in purchasing CINC AI for your website or have any questions, please contact your account manager or our sales team at sales@cincpro.com. We would love to share more information. You can also watch the full webinar here.