In this complete Homebot review, we dive into the Homebot digests, break down pricing, and outline an entire Zapier-Homebot build-out.
If you work in the mortgage or real estate industry, chances are you are starting to hear the buzz around Homebot. Maybe you were asked to co-brand a subscription, or your market leader is sharing Homebot case studies on Linkedin. Either way, a lot of mortgage professionals are asking the same question: Is Homebot worth the time and money?
Homebot Explained
Homebot is a real estate and mortgage referral tool that sends homeowners engaging information on their home value, equity position, and net worth through engaging custom email reports. These custom reports help build a relationship with your clients, generate refinances, and create referral leads.
The company boasts open rates between 40-80% with their interactive and engaging reports. Personally, I have seen Homebot reports have an 80% open rate within the first few months of membership.
Additionally, the platform has the ability to co-brand home reports with both mortgage and real estate professionals. This is particularly advantageous to any long-term mortgage and real estate relationship.
While referral and refinance leads are the bread and butter of Homebot’s business, they offer real-time market reports for buyers that are looking to purchase a home as well. The market explorer allows people to track appreciating neighborhoods and monitor market value in their area.
This function allows users to look at their home more as an investment than just a large purchase. From here, there are custom funnels where prospects can get pre-qualified, look at average price points in markets, and reach out to the lender or realtor.
Additionally, Homebot has equity and home value funnels that can be shared on social media, sent as links, or even embedded into your website. While this functionality is used less by Homebot customers, the organization seems to invest more technology and manpower in growing their lead generation functionality to compete with lead generation tech like LeadPops, Zillow, etc.
Homebot Review of Pricing, Set Up, & Monthly Reports
Setting up Homebot is fairly simple: create an account, upload database, and monthly reports are auto-generated to all clients. Furthermore, there are two types of plans: Base & Pro. If you are a loan officer, I recommend using the Pro plan and co-sponsoring with an agent.
This will make the most fiscal sense, as well as give you access to all integration and power-ups. If you do not have your CRM integrated, you can simply download all past clients into an Excel sheet and send it over to the data integration team at Homebot. They will clean up your data and let you know if they need more or less information in your database.
The monthly reports will have your custom branding set and have a default message. You can leave the default message in place or go to your settings and customize your welcome email. I recommend adding yourself as a client to see what Homebot reports look like monthly.
The reports are very engaging and chances are you will get excited to see your equity position grow in your own home every month. As a loan officer, you are naturally a marketer and it is vital to see marketing efforts through the lens of the consumer. Below is a more comprehensive review of the Homebot digests.
Homebot Review of Monthly Digest
The Homebot digest is sent via email and then the borrower can open up the full report in a separate window. This report is broken up into 3 portions: home value, principal vs. interest, and rental value.
The home value portion shows the estimated sales price based on the information the lender has uploaded. The home value is dynamic, updating in real-time as the market appreciates.
Additionally, there is a line graph that shows the value over time. This information is essential for consistent engagement with your reports. This section also explains how properties in your zip code are performing compared to your home.
This comparative information allows them to see their home in relation to their neighbors’ properties. Lastly, this section shows your net worth and cash on hand if you sold the home today.
The interest vs. principal section is perfect for the homebuyer that is really focused on the interest rate and possibly paying down their home early. There is a pie graph that shows how much the borrow has repaid in equity and interest. Furthermore, the user can confirm the accuracy of their loan information. This will help keep the borrower and lender on the same page.
As you scroll down, there is an engaging refinance calculator and chart. This calculator allows you to adjust the years left in the home and instantly shows the interest saved. This dynamic tool will drive a lot of engagement and pull refinance leads directly out of the digest.
The last part of this section is a loan tip. Specifically, the system allows you to adjust your monthly payment and shows how much you can save over the course of your loan. These dynamic fields have high interaction and conversion rates for long-term Homebot users.
The last section shows your rental value. While this is not the most viewed portion of the digest, the homebuyers that utilize this tool absolutely love it. Essentially, the tool shows how much you could earn in revenue if you rent your home on Airbnb.
Furthermore, it breaks down monthly revenue, nightly rate, and the number of nights you plan on renting. The homeowner can also adjust their nightly rate and night per month. This instantly shows the cash in hand every month. An Airbnb calculator this extensive is hard to find and can be a real value for short-term landlords.
All in all, this digest is a huge value add for any homebuyer. With the diversity in content and engaging design, there is something for everyone to love.
Homebot Review of Integrations
It would be difficult to call this a complete Homebot review without talking about the growing list of integrations. Currently, Homebot has a handful of full integrations like BombBomb, Mortgage Coach, and Custom Listings. However, their Beta integration is what gives Homebot potential for mass scale.
More specifically, Homebot has a beta Zapier integration that gives the platform the ability to auto-import data from CRMs or vice versa. Our team has used the beta version of Zapier to cut out manually uploading data from our client database.
Once the zap was created, every time a client is closed, their info auto-populates into the system, and a report is generated monthly. According to Homebot, Zapier is planning to come out of beta access and into a full integration in 2021. With that said, we have created a full Hombot Zapier build-out below.
Homebot Zapier Integration Set-Up
Homebot and Zapier are teaming up to create automated solutions for data importing and exporting. Most loan officers have databases with hundred, or even thousands, of borrowers. Therefore, creating an automated solution for exporting clients into Homebot is essential for any workflow.
Additionally, if you are closing multiple borrowers a day, you do not want to manually update your home address, rate, term, etc. This manual process will lead to human error or just neglect down the line. This is not a way to effectively manage Homebot.
Thankfully, you can integrate Homebot, Zapier, and your CRM. Once you have created the automation, your Homebot system will be running digest, creating leads, and exporting your clients without any manual effort.
The first step to creating this automation integrating your CRM and Homebot. Zapier will act as a bridge between your CRM and Homebot. Because there are hundreds of mortgage CRMs, this example begins with a Google spreadsheet as the database.
The first step is to set your trigger. In this example, every time a new row is added, the trigger fires, and info is sent to Zapier. You can use this same functionality with your own customer relationship management system. Once your spreadsheet or CRM trigger is set up, you can pull all the client information into Zapier and send it to Homebot. This will include contact, home, and loan data.
The next step is to create your action that is triggered by a new spreadsheet row. To properly import data into Homebot, your first action needs to be set as, “Filter all clients by email.”
This allows Homebot to read the client email as the client id. This is very important because the system will be able to filter duplicates, update contact info, and create a new contact accordingly.
Once this is complete, you will create your logic path based on the client email. Essentially, when Homebot reads the email id, it will decide to either create a new client if the email is brand new or update a client if the email is found in the current Homebot database.
Under the create client action, you need to filter all leads by email.
From there you will build a new action based on the filter. This action will be, “create a client in Homebot.” In this action, you will program out the email, first name, and last name. The rest of the fields can stay empty.
The next action will be creating a home. In this section, you will add Homebot Client ID, Address, and Zip Code. Again, you only need to fill out the required information.
The last action in this sequence is creating a loan. From here, you will add in Homebot Home ID, amount, date, and company loan ID. You also have the option to add rate, PMI, and other detailed loan information.
From there, you can save the zap and build out the Update Client portion of the logic path. Similar to the other path, you want to filter by email. However, this time you need to mark that the email exists for the user to pass through.
From here, you will build out all the following actions: Filter All Clients By Email, Update Client, Create Home, and Create Loan.
You will set this up very similar to the previous actions. Input the contact data that the Homebot Zap requires. From here, you will have a fully functioning automation that creates, updates, and builds your Homebot database without any manual action.
Homebot Review Final Thoughts
Once a loan officer or realtor hits a certain level of success, the next phase of a sales funnel is to address loyalty and create referral business. After the end of a transaction, you can still nurture a relationship by adding value. Most fulfill this need by tossing their clients into a holiday and birthday drip campaign.
By doing this, you blend into the rest of the local service providers that are sending the same value. The companies that are really successful know how to extract referral business by becoming essential to their customers.
In this way, using Homebot can further instill that FACT that you are an expert in what you do. Not just a local that remembers your birthday. The bottom line, buying a home is a huge financial decision that people do not tread lightly.
Because of this fact, Homebot is a great fit for seasoned loan officers and realtors. With a large database, you can take advantage of the market reports and see returns almost instantly. Additionally, if you have consistent monthly closings and have a stable CRM solution, you can create a data pipeline quickly and import all future closing into Homebot.
On the other hand, if you are a new loan officer, Homebot is not for you. For the most part, new loan officers have to work harder and have fewer financial resources for marketing. Therefore, your priority is to focus on the beginning of the sales funnel – branding.
In the branding phase, you should spend time fine-tuning your target audience, messaging, and marketing strategy. For seasoned LO’s and Realtors, your brand is more or less developed and you spend most of your time on transaction and loyalty building.
All in all, in this Homebot review we discussed pricing, broke down the digests, and build out an entire Zapier integration. Our final findings are simple: Homebot is the best tool for mortgage professionals looking to develop their brand loyalty, stand out from other local service providers, and see tangible results quickly.
If you are interested in more marketing topics, dig into the following posts:
- Yext For Loan Officers
- LeadPops Review
- Homebot Review
- Mortgage Marketing Tips
- Mortgage Marketing Trends
- Ranking #1 For Mortgage Lenders
- Realtor Relationships
- Zillow Mortgage Leads Review
- Digital Marketing Plan for Mortgage Companies
- Loan Officer Website Templates
- Loan Officer Websites
- Mortgage PPC
- Mortgage Broker Marketing Plan
- Loan Officer Marketing Tips
- Go High-Level CRM
- Loan Officer Marketing Template
- Can Loan Officers Work From Home?
- Mortgage Automation: Zapier for Loan Officers
- Consumer Direct Mortgage Marketing
- How to Market to Realtors as Loan Officers
- Mortgage Public Relations
Henry has spent the bulk of his career working for mortgage companies and marketing agencies. He uses his experience in the martech industry to guide his strategies and insights in the mortgage and real estate world. He firmly believes that marketing success in every industry boils down to a technology-centered strategy.