Have you ever read someone’s mind? We sometimes think customer relationship management (CRM) companies like IXACT Contact must be able to. How else would they come up with a CRM plus website package that solves so many Realtor pain points at such a fair price?
Psychic or not, if you’re looking for a solid, affordable CRM plus website package, grab a cup of coffee and a comfy seat and let’s kick the tires to see if IXACT Contact lives up to the hype and can solve all of the problems you face as a real estate agent.
What Exactly Is IXACT Contact?
IXACT Contact is a real estate CRM system that offers lead organization, bulk emailing, marketing automation (digital and print), and a custom website at an affordable price. Founded in 2007, it’s a sister company of Morris Real Estate Marketing Group, which has been around since 1927.
IXACT Contact Pros
- Excellent customer support
- Competitive entry price
- E-newsletter with original content
- Keep in Touch Coach
IXACT Contact Cons
- Provides a relatively basic website
- Add-ons make it less affordable
What’s Missing
Overall, we’re impressed with IXACT Contact. It is exactly what it promises to be. That being said, there are a few drawbacks we want to mention.
In today’s market, there are plenty of products out there that specialize in IDX and have better IDX websites. Those providers tend to be more expensive, but if your website really matters to you, you might want to consider Propertybase.
While IXACT Contact has a competitive entry price point, if you include all the add-ons, it pushes the price into the higher-end CRM price range. We can see agents not wanting to pay what comes to almost $100 per month for necessities like social media marketing and IDX websites.
How Much Does IXACT Contact Cost?
IXACT Contact is one of the most affordable and comprehensive CRMs on the market. For a flat rate of $38 per month (billed annually), you get:
- A CRM
- Email marketing
- 2,500 emails (additional ones can be added for additional cost)
- Automated monthly e-newsletter (original content included)
- Responsive agent websites (can be upgraded to Internet Data Exchange (IDX) site at an additional cost)
- Mobile app and Google Sync
- Concierge setup service and unlimited phone support
- 100 text credits (more can be added at an additional cost)
There are a number of add-ons that can customize your CRM, including upgrading to an IDX website, a social media marketing tool called Social Stream, and additional emails.
IXACT Contact Pricing
| Basic Version | $38 per month (billed annually) |
| Teams Version | Team Leaders: $38 per month Team Members: $24.65 per month |
| Broker Program | Custom pricing |
| Website | Included (no IDX) |
| Website Domain Registration | $24 per year |
We also wanted to call out that any agent licensed for less than a year gets six months of IXACT Contact—for free.
The IXACT Contact CRM
The Dashboard
The CRM dashboard is where you’ll start each day. The layout, design, and general aesthetics are excellent. This dashboard is designed for functionality, but it’s clean, sleek, and organized.
If you happen to be one of those people who likes to cold call first thing in the morning, you can easily customize your dashboard to add that task. Likewise, you can add or subtract visuals, so, for example, if you’re running an email drip and you want to keep an eye on the data, that information can be pinned to the dashboard.
Contact Intelligence
The Contacts tab works exactly like you’d expect it to. You can add, sort, and prioritize contacts, and even create custom fields like their favorite baseball team.
The CRM’s clever profile enrichment system allows you to build dynamic profiles that go beyond just names and addresses. Their intelligent contact database includes input for photos, names of family members, birthdays, anniversaries, notes, referrals, previous communication, and even social media profiles. Did a hot lead just tweet about the Red Sox game? Now you have a talking point and a reason to reach out.
Keep in Touch Coach
It’s one thing to have all of this relevant contact information, but XACT Contact goes one step further to help you utilize it. The “Keep in Touch Coach” prompts you to reach out to contacts in the sales pipeline. The cadence of these prompts is determined by the lead’s status in the sales process and will increase or decrease in frequency as the lead moves through the pipeline. We found this tool to be intuitive and a solid productivity booster.
Business Pipeline & Personalized Roadmap
Every good CRM tracks your leads and sales, but IXACT Contact converts the pipeline data into easy-to-understand visuals and graphs. You can customize your graphics and include the ones that are most helpful on your dashboard.
One of our favorite features is the personalized roadmap. Start by setting your goal gross commission income (GCI) for the year. Then figure out how many listings, referrals, sales, calls, and meetings you’ll need to have to meet your goal. From there, tables, graphs, and charts monitor your progress and keep you on track.
Mobile App
Having access to a CRM on-the-go is essential to every real estate agent. IXACT Contact’s well-designed mobile app means users can access contact information, make notes, send emails and texts, and make appointments no matter where they are.
Agent Websites
IXACT Contact also offers a free website along with their already affordable CRM. The websites are fairly basic, but they are cleanly designed, load quickly, look good on mobile devices, and are fully integrated with social media.
These websites include a blog to help your site rank on Google, an “about us” page, and informational pages on buying and selling a home. They even throw in three free articles with original and engaging content to post to your blog every month.
The websites also capture leads, and that information automatically populates in your database. You’ll get an instant text or email when a hot lead comes in, which means you can take immediate action.
Upgrade to Internet Data Exchange (IDX) Websites
For an additional monthly cost, you can upgrade your website to either Basic or Professional IDX websites. If you’re not sure what this would look like, you can try IDX with dummy listings before you make the change. Trying to decide between the base website and two IDX options? You’ll find a helpful and very thorough comparison chart of the options here.
Basic IDX Websites
A basic IDX website with all the regular website features plus a property search widget, photo gallery, and IDX listings page is $19 per month, plus a one-time $65 setup fee. This is one the best deals for an IDX website/CRM in the industry today.
Professional IDX Websites
The professional IDX websites (for $39 per month plus a one-time $65 setup fee) include a map search, polygon search, communities pages, sold/pending listings, “schedule a showing,” email listing alerts, and more.
For both website tiers, IDX is provided by iHomefinder.
How to Build an IDX Real Estate Website in an Afternoon
Email Marketing
Like with most CRMs, you can send mass emails to contacts based on whatever criteria you choose. For example, you might want to send all buyers a hot new listing, or send out an invite for coffee to all of your sphere-of-influence contacts.
IXACT Contact also offers hundreds of effective prewritten mass emails, like how to perfect curb appeal or hire a great Realtor. You can (and should) customize them before sending or write your own.
For email drip campaigns, you can create your own content or use IXACT Contact’s prewritten templates. Here are just few of the prewritten campaigns you can choose from:
- 6-month After Purchase Nurturing Plan
- 6-month Expired Listing Prospecting Plan
- 5-year Sphere of Influence Nurturing Plan
IXACT Contact tracks the open rates and click-through rates of the emails so that you can monitor the success of your campaigns.
Take your outreach a step further and utilize one of the predesigned marketing plans, which add phone calls and even direct mail to your drip campaigns. Here are just a few of the prewritten marketing plans you can customize and send to your buyer leads, seller leads, or your sphere-of-influence.
- 3-month New Listing Plan
- Listing Closing Plan
- 6-month After Purchase Nurturing Plan—Email
Note that while 2,500 emails are included in the base price, you can purchase more. The price ranges from $100 for an additional 1,000 emails to $150 for an additional 50,000 emails. The same is true for text message credits; 100 are included in the base price, but you can add 500 credits for $15 up to 10,000 credits for $175.
The Complete Real Estate Email Marketing Guide for 2024
E-newsletter
Everyone wants to send out a monthly newsletter to keep contacts warm and engaged, but few agents have the time to actually write one. That’s why IXACT Contact’s e-newsletter is one of our favorite features. A mobile-friendly e-newsletter packed with original, high-interest content, it’s fully automated, customizable, and even branded with your personal email banner.
Direct Mail Marketing
Another favorite IXACT Contact feature (one that we wish more CRMs would offer) is the ability to create and send bulk mail. Direct mail like letters and flyers can be an ideal way to reach older homeowners and anyone else you might miss with email or social media ads.
IXACT Contact Social Stream
For an additional $20 per month, Social Stream allows you to post relevant articles from sites like Huffington Post, Martha Stewart, and Better Homes and Gardens automatically to your social media accounts. While this is a great feature on its own, we really appreciate that the articles are packaged with your personal branding, increasing the likelihood you’ll capture potential leads.
Concierge Support Services
Maybe you’re intrigued by IXACT Contact’s excellent price point and suite of features, but you’re wary of the time and energy it takes to start a new CRM. That’s where the Concierge Support comes in.
With their signature concierge services, you work with an actual person to upload your contact list, set up your website, create all of your automations for lead capture, marketing campaigns, and e-newsletters, and establish your “Keep in Touch” alert cadence.
The support team will also help you with any add-ons, like setting up your Social Stream and upgrading to IDX websites. And if you have any trouble after the initial setup, IXACT Contact offers unlimited phone, chat, and email support.
Final Verdict on IXACT Contact
We’ve done a lot of CRM reviews and for the price and the features, IXACT Contact is hard to beat. To have a fully integrated system that includes a CRM, email and direct mail marketing, and a website at $38 per month is an excellent deal.
You can find many of these features with other software companies, but we like that the pricing is a la carte so you pay for exactly what you want. We also appreciate the “Keep in Touch Coaching” and the personalized goal tracking. Finally, it’s the excellent concierge support that puts this one over the edge.
With generous trial periods (six months free for brand-new agents), it’s hard to not try IXACT Contact. Whether you’re a new agent or running a major brokerage, IXACT Contact has exceptional tools, affordable pricing, and the customer service to make it run seamlessly.
While IXACT Contact might not solve all of your problems, it will come pretty close.
Over to You
Do you already use the IXACT Contact CRM or IDX websites? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
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