Zurple Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives
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To succeed in real estate, it’s essential to have affordable, efficient tools for generating, nurturing, and converting leads into clients. In this review, we’ll look at Zurple, a lead generation platform that uses pay-per-click (PPC) ads to drive leads to a done-for-you IDX website, then nurtures those leads through automated text messages and emails. Many agents swear by it, but is it right for your business? To help you decide, we put Zurple through its paces, evaluating just how well it works to generate and nurture leads compared to more affordable rivals.
Summary
Zurple’s key specs for 2024
- Pricing: Starts at $309 per user, per month
- IDX lead generation website: Buyer and seller leads are generated on your personally branded IDX website through done-for-you PPC advertising.
- Automated lead engagement and nurturing tools: Leads are engaged and nurtured with automated, behavior-based text messages and emails
- Automated pipeline management CRM: Automatically identifies hot leads ready to transact so you can take over.
- Exclusive leads: Yes
- Trial: Free trial available
- Contract requirements: 6-month contract required
Zurple’s pros & cons
- Generates exclusive buyer leads, seller leads, and top-of-funnel social media leads
- Automatically engages and nurtures leads with behavior-driven text and email messages
- Can upload leads from other sources to nurture in Zurple for an additional $150 per month
- Custom lead routing options for teams
- Minimal customization options in CRM
- Not as affordable as competitors like Real Geeks
- IDX websites are designed for lead generation, so customization options are limited
Who is Zurple best for?
Zurple is ideal for solo agents and teams who want an automated, all-in-one lead generation and nurturing platform. It’s also perfect for agents with a large database of cold leads who lack the time or resources to text and email them with consistency. Teams that work in multiple farm areas or those who want to expand to new areas will also appreciate having a branded, lead-capturing website for each area they serve.
Zurple’s pricing: Is it worth it?
For all plans, Zurple charges a one-time setup fee of $799. After that, the base package price of $309 per month for a single user gets you the CRM and IDX website and automated email, SMS, and social media lead nurturing tools. The drawback of this plan is that it does not include any leads. You’ll have to generate them on your own.
If you’re good at PPC ads, this might be a decent option for you. However, if you want to use Zurple to nurture leads already in your database, you’ll have to pay an additional $150 monthly for the privilege.
Like any lead generation platform, buying leads from Zurple can get expensive if you’re in a high-cost-of-living area. That said, we think the automated nurturing tools that come with Zurple and its ability to identify hot leads make Zurple a compelling lead-generation platform for agents.
How Zurple generates and automatically nurtures leads
Here’s the four-step process Zurple uses to generate and nurture leads:
1. Leads are generated and captured on an IDX home search website
First, Zurple creates a custom-branded IDX home search website for you. When a potential buyer or seller lead searches for homes or a home valuation on Google, they are driven to your site by ads created and managed by Zurple’s advertising experts. Once that person creates an account on your site to view homes or find out how much their home is worth, their contact information is collected by Zurple, and they become a lead.
2. Leads are automatically engaged and nurtured by Zurple based on their behavior
Zurple tracks every new lead the system generates and automatically sends personalized text and email messages based on their website search behavior.
3. Leads are retargeted and nurturing messages are refined
When your new lead comes back to your website to look for more homes, Zurple tracks their behavior — giving you insights into their preferred listings, price range, geographic location, and more. Zurple then tailors the text and email messages they send based on that behavior.
4. Hot leads leads are automatically identified for you in the CRM
Once a lead starts exhibiting behavior that indicates they are close to a transaction, Zurple flags them and sends them to your CRM so you can take over and convert them into a client.
Zurple alternatives (compared)
Zurple Alternatives: At-a-glance | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Exclusive leads: | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
Starting price: | $309 per month | ~$1000 per month | $139 per month + the cost of leads | |||
Contract requirements: | Six months | One-year | Six months | |||
IDX website | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
Automated lead nurturing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Zurple’s features: at-a-glance
Lead-capturing IDX website
- MLS listings search
- Customizable design
- Buyer and seller lead capture tools
- Tracks lead behavior
- Responsive design for mobile devices
Automated lead engagement and nurturing tools
- Behavior-based, automated and personalized email and text lead nurturing
- Use templates or create your own campaigns
- Detects lead’s interests in certain types of properties and automatically engages leads based on behavior
- Conversational, non-robotic lead nurture
- Works with all your lead sources for an additional $150 per month
The Zurple CRM
- Transaction-ready prospects are identified based on their online behaviors
- Lead tagging and grouping
- Team lead routing
- Lead source tracking
- Bulk lead uploads
- Import leads from third parties for an additional $150 per month
- Performance analytics
- View lead behaviors and interests
A closer look at Zurple’s features
IDX lead generation websites
Zurple’s all-in-one system is designed to automate real estate lead nurturing with timely, personalized communication with your leads. It starts with your done-for-you, custom-branded, IDX-enabled website that features listings from your MLS feed. Should you opt to pay extra for their Auto Leads package, Zurple will send traffic to your IDX website, which includes a property search tool and a home valuation landing page where sellers can find out how much their current property is worth:
Keep in mind that your Zurple page is not technically a website but more like a landing page for a community you serve, so you’ll definitely need to have an official agent website in addition to your Zurple site. To target different cities or neighborhoods in your MLS, you’ll want to add additional Zurple websites. This can get expensive quickly, so it’s best to try one site before committing to multiple areas.
Automated Lead Nurturing
With Intelligent Lead Nurture, new leads who provide an email address and phone number will receive a series of personalized email and text messages. Message content is tailored to each individual lead based on their behavior on your website. In addition to using pre-built campaign templates, you can send a lead a customized one-off text message or email.
You can create custom lead routing rules and group leads from your CRM dashboard. You can also check on how many prospects you have at each stage of the lead-to-client funnel and see each lead’s traditional information, as well as their preferred properties, price range, geographic location, and score.
Buyer and seller leads
Zurple’s Real Leads product can be an affordable way to receive a steady stream of exclusive, potential buyers and sellers in your target markets and grow your database. If you’re not already paying for an ad product, Zurple’s experts can create, manage, and optimize Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns featuring you or your office’s listings.
Zurple’s CRM
All the information gathered from the lead’s activity on your Zurple site gets transferred into the CRM with Smart Pipeline Management, which acts as your back office.
When you log into your Zurple’s dashboard, you’ll see that an algorithm categorizes your leads based on behaviors. You’ll get alerts about the hottest leads that include personalized talking points, properties of interest, and housing market data to reference. The Zurple system automatically engages all your other Zurple leads, plus leads from listing portals and other sources. Once a lead is ready to become a buyer or seller, you step in as the point of contact, taking over for the automated voice with timely conversation, in-person meetings or phone calls.
Analytics
We found it helpful that the CRM’s Campaign Manager lets you view the different campaigns that Zurple auto conversations use to engage your leads. The CRM displays the referral email drip campaign and how often emails are sent. We also appreciate that the CRM’s Statistics section has metrics to measure performance, including leads, site visits, email sends and opens, Zurple paid marketing leads, and external marketing (after you link it with platforms like Zillow and Trulia through Zapier).
Training resources & marketing tools
Zurple also offers users downloadable training resources and marketing tools. While we found the training materials to be a little basic, they might be useful for new agents or agents who are new to online marketing. The marketing tools were a little better, but won’t win any design awards. If you don’t already have a source for marketing materials like buyer checklists, guides, and flyers, this can be a useful resource, but hardly worth signing up for.
Frequently asked questions:
Does Zurple work for all my leads or just leads generated by Zurple?
Yes, the Zurple system can help you engage and convert all of your leads for an additional $150 per month. With Zapier, you can import leads from most sources of real estate leads, including those from listing sources like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com.
Can I use Zurple’s system if I don’t want leads or they aren’t available in my area?
Yes. You aren’t required to purchase leads from Zurple in order to use its system. It’s effective at engaging and converting leads from other sources, such as listing portals like Zillow, Trulia, and other real estate lead providers who generate leads on behalf of agents.