Smarter Agent Insights of ERA IBC, New Orleans: ERA Mobile
Today was another great day at ERA IBC. The day started out with a general session where Anne Blumenstein talked about mobile and told everyone that they need to be using the ERA mobile app. Soon afterwards, our booth was crowded with people looking for more information; thank you Anne for the great plug.
The day continued with the Taste of New Orleans ERA Marketplace Social in the main marketplace area. The event featured lots of great food and brought many fresh new 
faces to the marketplace area. It was great to continue meeting lots of ERA agents and brokers and it was even better to hear about how they have been using the ERA app to improve the way they do business.
We also had two very amusing experiences today at the booth. When creating the presentation for our booth screen, I needed to get a photo of an agent that would work in my presentation. I did a quick Google search for the term “ERA real estate agent” and picked the first photo that I thought would work and put it in my slides. At the time, I wasn’t even sure who the photo was of. About halfway through our day today, an agent walked up and introduced herself as Kristie Smith….or as she would soon become known to us, the women whose photo I had used in our presentation! Kristie was a great person to meet and had a great sense of humor about it….even though she made it clear that we oversized the photo and made her look “grainy”. Sorry Kristie.
As if that wasn’t enough craziness for one day, there was more to come. When making the slides, I also needed to show an example of what an agent branded app looked like. I randomly picked one of our clients, Tracy Tidwell, and took some nice screenshots of her app and included them in the presentation. Towards the end of the day, a woman walked up to the booth and I asked her my usual intro question “are you using the ERA Real Estate mobile app in your business”. She responded “yes”. I then followed up with my usual second question “do you know that you can get a branded version of the ERA app that always brands to you and sends all calls and email to you on all listings”. She responded “I sure hope so; that’s my app” pointing to our screen. It was the one and only, Tracy Tidwell! She also was a great agent to meet. We spent some time talking about how she was marketing her app and I gave her some great tips on how to market her app even more (we at Smarter Agent aren’t just about giving you an app, we also help you market it!)
One feature in the app the Tracy didn’t know about was the Send This App feature. This is one of my favorite features in the ERA Real Estate app. Basically, you can insert someone’s cell number and send them a text with a link to download the app instantly. It’s quick and simple and a great tool to use when you meet a new potential client. Let’s say you’re at an open house and meet someone who is just coming through and moving on to the next open house. You can easily share this great tool with them and even though you only met them for a few minutes, your “digital business card” is on their phone in their pocket.
We are very much looking forward to day 3 of the conference and the chance to meet more people and share the good news about mobile!
~ Phil Tomasello, Partner Relations