Meet Your New Digital Assistant
4 Ways To Get Contacts Into KvCORE:
Import
Add Manually
Email Sync
3rd Party Sources
The Contact Record
You should definitely get to know one of the screens within kvCORE that you’ll be accessing most often, and that’s the contact record!
Profile Details
This tab is where the contact record’s pertinent information is stored. This includes their address, partner information, home preferences, and important dates like closing anniversary and birthday.
General Info
This is where you can quickly view phone, email, address, lead type, hashtags, star rating, source, and validation status.
Star Rating
A contact’s rating will be automatically set by KvCORE based on the contact’s information and activity. KvCORE will continue to update their rating over time unless you manually select a star rating. Once you’ve selected a rating KvCORE will n longer change it based on activity.
Hashtags
Hashtags are located in the General Info section on the left-hand side of the contact record. While KvCORE statuses and types are more high-level, hashtags are more granular.
Timeline
Every action and communication with a contact will be recorded in their timeline. This includes automated actions, changes you make, and any calls, texts, or emails to and from your contact.
Activities can be filtered on the timeline if desired.
Actions
All of the different forms of communication you can take advantage of are located in the Actions panel. Manual actions are included on the top, and the bottom contains automated options which you can enable.
Client Journey
This can be considered the most important aspect of the contact record because Contact Status controls some of KvCORE’s automation. Properly labeling your contacts ensures that they’re receiving the right messages and you know where they are in their buying or selling journey.
One of the behavioral automation settings will automatically change a Prospect or New Lead to Active Lead if they reply to an email or text. Anyone who is consistently talking to you or favoriting properties on your KvCORE website should be in this status. New and Active leads should receive most of your attention in KvCORE.
As you move each contact through the journey in your pipeline, KvCORE automation will complement their stage. As you change a contact’s status any associated smart campaign and behavioral automation will be updated.
For example, New Leads that KvCORE automatically changes to Active Lead will have the default New Lead Buyer/Seller smart campaign automatically replaced with a default Active Buer/Seller campaign.
Sphere
This status doesn’t apply any automation so this status is good for friends, family members, and those who need more personalized attention.
Prospects
KvCORE robustly nurtures these contacts so use this status for cold/dead leads or those that you’d like to separate from your general leads. These may take longer to convert or you’re actively trying to develop a relationship with.
New Leads
These are recently generated from any source, whether online or face-to-face. Automation is applied to New Leads!
Active Leads
As prospects and new leads begin interacting with your website, and communicating with you, they’ll be moved into Active leads status.
Spouses & Partners
While there are fields on the contact record (and import template spreadsheet) which allow you to add a spouse or partner’s information, it’s important to understand how the system functions in regards to what’s stored there. The applicable fields are: Spouse First Name, Spouse Last Name, Spouse Email, Spouse Phone, and Spouse Birthday.
While organizing your database, consider that the person in the Spouse field will not receive communications. If you’d like both partners to receive auto-communication add them as their own lead.
Want to learn more about the Contact Record? Check out this support article.
Your Contact List
Here’s a quick look at your Contact List within KvCORE.
And a preview of what contacts will look like, once some have been added.
Filtering Contacts
One of the features you’ll use most on this page is filtering. Filters will allow you to easily drill down to just the contacts you want to see, when you want to see them.
Save & Pin Your Filters To Save Time
You may find yourself looking for a similar group of people over and over again in KvCORE. When a search becomes common, you can save a filter and pin it to your contacts screen in order to easily access the same filter later, with just one click!
Checking For Unengaged Leads
One example of a fantastic pinned filter to create is one which will immediately show you unengaged leads, or those who are not currently set up on an automated nurturing or contact plan. Here’s how
- From your contacts list, click ‘Filter’ and then select the following:
- Contact Status = Prospect, New Lead, Active Lead
- No Alerts = ON
- Has No Market Reports = ON
- Does Not Have a Running Campain = ON
- Then click ‘Save Filters’ at the bottom, give it a name like “My Unengaged Leads”, and click ‘Save New Filter’.
- Next, click on the gear icon in the Filters panel and check the box to add a Quick Link on CRM screen and then ‘Save’.
- It’ll create a shortcut button on your contacts list so you can easily find them again in the future!
Want to learn more about filtering contacts in your Smart CRM? Check out this support article.
Staying Organized
A database isn’t useful if you can’t do anything with it. In order to be useful, you’ve got to know what you have and be able to easily act on that. KvCORE offers multiple ways for you to view and easily segment your database.
Lead Type
This refers to the type of contact that you are working with regardless of where they are in the buying/selling process, and can also be referred to as deal type. Because a seller lead can turn into a buyer after their sale closes and a fellow agent could need your help with a home purchase of their own, each contact in your Smart CRM can have more than one lead type as necessary.
There are five available lead types in kvCORE:
- Buyer
- Seller
- Renter
- Vendor
- Agent
Contact Status
This refers to where the contact is in your pipeline. They are great indicators of what stage a contact is in and what they need from you as a real estate agent. There can only be one contact status for a contact at a time.
Sphere
Contacts you know, who may or may not be searching for real estate.
New Lead
Contacts who have signed up on your website, either from an ad or some other lead source, such as an email import.
Prospect
Contacts you’ve met or have information for, who you want to convert into a real estate lead. They are not actively searching right now, and your efforts are directed towards getting them to do so.
Client
Contacts you are actually working with, and showing homes, etc.
Active Lead
Contacts who are actively returning to your website to view properties.
Leads who respond to communication who have not responded before will automatically default to active status when they respond the first time.
Contract
Contacts who are in the buying or selling transaction process.
If a contact matches Dotloop, their status will automatically update and indicate that they are tied to an existing transaction.
Closed
Contacts who have completed a transaction.
If a contact matches Dotloop, their status will automatically update and indicate that they are tied to an existing transaction.
Archive
Contacts you don’t intend to work or communicate with. Moving a contact to this status will unsubscribe them from any further automated communication.
Hashtags
Hashtags are an additional level of categorization. Think of KvCore statuses as more general buckets, and your hashtags as groups within those buckets.
Perhaps you have two buyers, but one is a first-time homebuyer and the other is looking for something in a 55+ community. Both would have a deal type of Buyer, and hashtags could be used to further describe them and group them with other similar contacts.
There is no limit on how many hashtags you are able to create within your KvCORE account or how many you apply to an individual contact. They can be manually added or applied as part of a Smart Campaign.
Hashtags can also be used to trigger Smart Campaigns which removes a manual step on your end and makes your business process even more efficient. This is great when working in niche markets because leads generated from niche sources will most likely need a specific Smart Campaign.
Company-Wide Hashtags
We’ve created some hashtags at the company level that are tied to a few Smart Campaigns. Adding one of these hashtags to a contact will trigger the Smart Campaign to run. A few of these campaigns will trigger communications to your contact, and others are tied to our prospecting systems – creating tasks for you to complete.
Hashtag Examples
What are some examples of hashtags you may wish to use?
It’s common for agents to use hashtags to label contacts with their search preferences, financial status, and “warmth level” (like #HotBuyer or #ColdLead) which can assist with future communication efforts.
You may also wish to use hashtags with property addresses to label any open house leads you generate, like #123MainStOH (OH stands for Open House).
Search preference hashtags can come in handy when you have a new listing! A alert for a new 2-bedroom pool home could be easily emailed to contacts who have a #Pool or #TwoBeds hashtag.
You could also send out a newsletter or other engagement-type communication to contacts with a #ColdLead or #Dead_Prospect label.
Hashtags can also be used to indicate where they are within a certain Status. For example, when a contact is moved to the Contract status you can use hashtags to label them as #In_Escrow, #Disclosures, #Still_Needs_To_Sign, or #Contingencies, among many others.
Need a few more examples? How about #firsttimehomebuyer #creditrepair #deepwateraccess #luxury #snowbird #investor or #onthesand
TIP: If you use the kvCORE Open House app all contacts will automatically have a property address hashtag applied when synced from the app to your kvCORE Smart CRM for easy filtering.
Hashtag Management
Hashtag management will give you the opportunity to view and edit all hashtags in use in your Smart CRM, allow you to merge hashtags and even mass delete hashtags that you no longer wish to use. Hashtag management makes it easier to mass email/text contacts assigned to a particular tag and provides the tools necessary to fully manage your hashtags.
To access hashtag management first navigate to the ‘Marketing’ tab from the main navigation. Then click ‘View Hashtags’ on the ‘Hashtag Management’ tile. From the main Hashtag Management screen, you can merge, mass delete, or edit individual hashtags.
Want to learn more about the Hashtags in KvCORE? Check out this support article.
Want to learn more about the Hashtag Management feature? Check out this support article.
Adding Searches & Property Alerts
A Search Alert is an automated email sent from kvCORE that contains properties of interest for a specific contact. Search Alerts will send via email all newly listed properties, and properties that have been reduced in price or gone off-market that match the search criteria set.
From a contact’s record, you can see at a glance if any alerts are configured on the right-hand side.
Expert level hack? You can also pre-configure searches to be automatically assigned to leads with specific hashtags. You can find more on that here.
Importing Contacts
While you can import contacts on your own, it’s complicated and errors can easily be made. Remember those default automations? It’s better to take advantage of the KvCORE team whose job it is to do it for you.
Hands down, that’s the solution we recommend. You can even schedule a call with them prior to completing your import so you can review your file and ask questions about what will happen upon import.
Either way, the first step is getting your list together. Next, review the information on your list carefully to make sure every contact has an email address, phone number, and physical address. At a minimum, every contact must have either an email address or phone number. If both are missing, the contact will not be imported.
Tip:
KvCORE has a Contact Import template file available that can help to guide you thorugh prepping contacts for import. If you’re going to be importing, even when you use KvCORE’s Import Team to complete the import, it’s best to start with this file.
Things To Know About Importing:
Names in KvCORE are stored in two fields – first name and last name. If your data is coming from a system that allows middle names or suffixes, they should be combined with the last name field or just dropped prior to import.
Only one value can be selected for Contact Status per contact.
Multiple deal types per contact are allowed however, they must be separated by a pipe symbol, “|”, which is typically located above the Enter or Return key on the right-hand side of your keyboard. Do not include any spaces.
Your options are: Buyer, Seller, Renter, Vendor, Agent
- Bad example: Buyer | Seller
- Good example: Buyer|Seller
The format for birthdays and property anniversaries on your contact import should be MONTH/DAY/YEAR with forward slashes, not hyphens. Ex – 6/6/23 or 06/06/2023
Multiple hashtags per contact are allowed however, they must be separated by a pipe symbol, “|”, which is typically located above the Enter or Return key on the right-hand side of your keyboard. Do not include any spaces or the hashtag symbol, “#”.
- Bad example: #Open House | Waterfront
- Good example: OpenHouse or Open_House or OpenHouse|Waterfront
There are a few fields available on the KvCORE import template which refer to a contact’s search preferences. These are not required but can be added if desired. Please be aware, however, that including area information AND price will result in a search alert upon import.
The options are: area, price, sq ft, year built, acreage, bed/bath, and listing type. If using property type, the values entered must match what’s available in the MLS.
The Notes column can be used to transfer miscellaneous information or an existing notes field.
The communication opt-in fields control whether or not a contact will receive communications, and via what method. A value of TRUE means the contact will be subscribed. A value of FALSE means they will be opted out.
- Email Opt-In – subscribes contacts to email communications
- Text On – subscribes contacts to text communications
- Phone On – subscribes contacts to phone calls
If you’re coming from a system that can provide this information about your contact’s current status, import that info where possible to ensure you don’t upset a contact who has already unsubscribed from marketing messages in the past.
Are you a Mac user? Keep in mind that you cannot use Numbers to edit your import files. You must use Excel or Google Sheets!
Before importing, your import file must be saved as Excel comma separated values file type (csv).
Want to learn more about importing contacts using KvCORE’s Lead Import Team? Check out this support article.
Deleting & Archiving Contacts
There may be contacts in your Smart CRM that are not useful anymore or possibly don’t have valid information. It is in your best interest to manage your contacts and to do this you may need to delete, or archive, them.
You have the ability to delete contacts so they’re removed from the system, or they can be archived which removes the lead but only from the main display in the Smart CRM, which means you can still filter to find them later.
It’s important to note that agents can only delete leads that they are the owner of. Only a company admin can delete a company-owned lead. Similarly, only a team admin can delete a team-owned lead.
Want to learn more about deleting or archiving contacts? Check out this support article.