Good afternoon, everybody.
My name is Josh Hernandez, and today we are going to do a quick coffee break style class on frequently asked questions for subscriptions. So we’ll cover some important workflows and common questions. Today’s topics will take a quick review of what a subscription is. I’ll show you where you can find a more detailed class on that as well.
And then I’m going to cover four common questions that we have with subscription It’s beginning with how do I know which contacts are receiving listing updates and also A few other questions ending with how can I see when a subscription email was sent and when it was opened by a contact and which listings were sent? So let’s go ahead and jump right in.
The very first thing we’ll cover is a quick three minute review of what is a subscription. And that’s just an automatic email notification for a contact for new listings. And the steps to create a subscription are to start on a search. Since you want to send updates, it needs to know what you’re doing, what you’re looking for. So we’ll start with a search.
We’ll save the search to a contact, and then we’ll use the option, save, and add subscription. That will allow us to turn the subscription on the actual email updates. We’ll set the recipients, the frequency, and the email message that goes out with every update. And just a note here because this will lead us into our first frequently asked question. Your contact must opt in to receive those updates.
So we’ll say we’ll see what that looks like. And one other quick note, those subscription updates those automatic listing updates are always sent via email. They’re not sent via text message always via email.
So I’m going to just exit this full screen and go into Flexmls and we’ll start by creating a quick subscription to review this process. So I am going to click here. Now this class already presumes you’re familiar with the basics of creating a subscription. So I’m going to cover this like I said in just a couple of minutes, we start with the search.
And so maybe I’m working with Jeff Frank, and I’m looking for listings according to what he’s looking for. So I’ll put in a price range. In this case, I’ll go up to six hundred thousand. We’ll put in a subtype. He’s looking for single family. And then, of course, location, bedrooms, bathrooms, whatever else may be important for that particular search.
So I’m going to go West Fargo and four bedrooms for this particular search that I’m creating for Jeff Frank. Now, of course, you can view the results, but what I’m really interested in doing today is turning on the subscription. So I’ll save this search, but this search is what will send new listings to Jeff Frank when something matches the search.
So I am going to start by going to save at the top of the screen, saving the search, And if this is a new search, it is, I’m just gonna keep that new. Give it a name.
And we’ll call this single family, Jeff Frank, and West Fargo. And then I do want to attach this to a contact.
So I’m just going to say here new contact. Jeff’s not in my contacts yet. If he was, I’d click existing, but I’ll just give him a name. You’ll need an email address because this will send him updates when we turn on the subscription.
And once I enter in that email address, I’m going to click at the bottom. We’ll save this search. We’ll see that on Jeff’s contact record, and then we go to the subscription page. And here, we can change the name of it if we want. I’m just gonna call this single family. West Fargo. And if I want a copy, I select that box.
We’re going to send it to Jeff. I just added Jeff as a contact, so he already here. And then I set my schedule. In this case, I’ll do it ASAP. So as soon as something comes on the market, If it matches the search, it goes to Jeff.
And then this is the email that goes out to Jeff every time there’s a new listing that matches his search criteria.
Some new listings, updated listings. I’ll remind you we’ll keep that short and sweet because this is going to contain just our email message, as well as a preview of the listings, so the new listings will be previewed here as a thumbnail, and my contact information.
Jeff can get that when a new listing comes on market, and then he’ll click to view the listing details and let me know if he wants to take any further action. Now once I’ve selected the recipient, the schedule, and set the email that goes out with every update, I click on save.
Now since Jeff is a a new contact, when I saved a sub subscription, the very first time, Jeff receives an email that says please confirm that it’s okay to receive updates. And then it would say updates from you. In this case, it would say from Josh Hernandez.
So he just has to confirm that he wants those automatic updates. That listing email to confirm and opt in to receiving updates went out automatically. So I’m going to go to contact management, and we’ll actually look where that is on Jeff’s record. So I’m just going to search for Jeff. Click on Jeff Frank, and I see his email address says pending.
That means there is a subscription that will send Jeff updates But it’s not firing off quite yet. He has to open that email that went out automatically and say, yes, please send me updates.
So when it does, that will change from status of pending to confirmed.
So I’m just going to take this time to go into our first frequently asked question. Which contacts have opted in to receiving listing updates subscriptions.
Now we’ve just seen, I can check an individual contact in contact management. This is what is showing on the other screen. I went to Jeff’s record. I see the status by the primary email address. Clicked on Jeff to see his contact details, there’s the status.
I’m going to close this, and if I go to somebody like Megan, for example, I’m going to see that her email address says confirm. So I know she’s receiving those updates.
However, rather than checking contacts one at a time, I’m going to show you the opt in status report. So we’ll go to our menu, and I’m just going to use that search bar underneath the menu.
And find that opt in status report. It’s under contacts. I’m going to put a star next to that. And that way I’ll just pin it on my favorites. That’s a good one to put up on your favorites. I always have a tough time remembering the name of that report. But now that it’s up in my favorites.
I see a summary, and I can see those contacts that I’ve created a subscription for but they haven’t opted in to get the updates.
So there’s Eddie, there’s Jeff Frank. Jeff just went here. Undeliverable, tells me, in this case, why it’s undeliverable. That’s not a valid email address. Confirmed tells me who’s getting the updates, How many days until the subscription is inactive? And remember, that subscription goes for thirteen months.
Every time they go in and click to view those updates, it extends another thirteen months, so it can go indefinitely if they keep checking the updates.
So this opt in status report is great to see who’s receiving their updates. You can see if somebody opts out when they get an email update. If they click the option to stop the subscription (by law, that has to be in those automatic emails). They’ll come here as having opted out. You could resend that request as well.
Inactive, these are people who never check their listing updates for thirteen months, that subscription just becomes inactive. So that’s the opt in status report. Now that is going to take us to our next frequently asked question.
How do I edit a contact search if it has an active subscription? So for example, I showed you that I have a contact Megan with an active subscription. And maybe she says, I want to change the location. I want to narrow down or change locations or change the price range for that search. How can we do that? And we’ll do it from contact management, go to the contacts record, and then we’ll go to the search and modify and resave the search. We don’t need to touch the subscription itself.
The subscription just queues off of the saved search. So we’ll edit the search. So let’s take a look at what that looks like. We’ll go into contact management. And I said we’ve got Megan right here.
And she wants to change her search criteria. She’s let me know that she’s narrowing down maybe the region that she’s looking in. So I’m going to go to searches and subscriptions. She’s got one search for land as a subscription.
And she has one search for residential. It has a subscription. And I see this search for residential is in the city of Fargo, Moorhead, and West Fargo. So maybe Megan tells me she doesn’t want to search in Moorhead because that’s across the river in a different state. She doesn’t want to leave North Dakota.
In order to change the search, I’m on searches and subscriptions; Click on the search you want to update, and we’ll click on edit. And then just click edit search.
This is her current search. If we needed to change the price, we do that. Here, I’m going to come in and just deselect Moorhead. So now it’s just looking in Fargo and West Fargo. She’s no longer looking across the river. I can, of course, review the results, make sure that I’m getting what I expect to see. And then finally, I’m just going to resave this search. So I’ll click on save.
This is an existing search. So existing is highlighted. We’re just updating the current search. There’s the name of the search already. It’s already on the contact. I don’t have to click save and add subscription because it already has a subscription. I’m just updating the search criteria itself, so I’ll click on. Save. So now that search has been saved.
If I were to go back into contact management, I can confirm I’ll just click this link, return to contact management in my upper left of the screen. It goes right back to Megan’s record.
And from right here, I’ll click on that search. I can see now it is just searching in the city of Fargo and West Fargo. Moorhead is no longer included. So I’ve updated that search. It already has the subscription. The subscription just says, how frequently does it send out? Who is it sending to? What’s the message? The subscription is just controlling the frequency of the emails, essentially.
So we just modified the search.
The subscription is still there. And now when the newly saved search criteria turns up a listing it will send a Megan.
Let’s move to our third frequently asked question dealing with subscriptions, and that is how do I turn off a subscription? Stop sending those listing updates.
So if we go back to Megan’s record, I see she actually has two searches that I’ve created for her, one for land, So it’s looking for vacant land and one for residential. And maybe Megan tells me, listen, I like to log in to my portal and I’ll look at the land listings there in that search you saved for me, but I don’t need email updates. It’s a lot of email that I get.
I just want the residential updates via email. I don’t need those land listings sent via email.
So in contact management, we will remove the subscription. It stops the listing updates from being sent. But if they are using the portal, the search is still accessible When they use the portal, it just doesn’t send updates. There’s no email updates for new listings. So what that looks like? We’ll click on land. And then here’s the subscription.
When it’s selected here on the left, the subscription for that is on the right. This is already sending updates, but I don’t want those land updates to go out. I click on the red x. It says, are you sure you want to turn off the subscription? I’ll click okay.
So now when I click on that land, there’s no subscription. That doesn’t send updates. When I click on residential, this one is still sending updates.
The nice thing is, is that if Megan is using her portal, She can still see both searches and create her own searches there, but now she doesn’t get the updates for this one. They don’t get emailed out, but she can still see it in her portal so she can check that search whenever she wants to on her own terms. Which brings up what is the difference between a subscription and a portal?
The subscription is just an email, notification, of new listings. They can click; they can view the listing. They can view the news feed with all the past listings there. And that’s it. They’ll respond via email if they want to find out more information for that listing. The portal is a website.
And subscriptions, if they turn on the portal and you invite them to the portal, they will go when they get the subscription, it opens up inside the portal. The portal looks the same as the interactive listing, but it gives a few more additional features since they log in to use the portal. That portal allows them to run their own searches.
They can also keep track of their favorite listings, email you directly from the portal, and then they can rank their favorite listings as well by putting multiple stars on them. So portal is a website works well in conjunction with the subscription, but they don’t need to use both. The subscription is just the email update. They don’t have to sign in to use it.
They would have to sign in to use that portal. And our last option or our last frequently asked question we’ll talk about today.
How can I see exactly what listing updates have been sent when they were sent and if they were opened? So we are going to go to my sent emails I’ll show you the default is manual emails, but we want subscription emails, those automatic emails, and then I’ll show you how to filter by contact. So let’s go to our menu.
I’m just going to type in the word email, and I’m going to see this section here my sent emails. I’m gonna put a star next to that as well. Just so I can help you remember what we’re looking at today. So I’ll click on my sent emails. The default is going to be emails that I’ve sent for listings to contacts that have been sent manually. I’m going to click this option for subscription emails.
And here, I can see all of the subscription emails that have been sent or in that top bar, type in the name of the contact I want to filter it down to. And now I see everything that’s been sent to Megan. So if Megan says, hey, you know that listing you sent me last week on the seventh? I can come down to the seventh, see there were actually three listings, that went to Megan.
I can see how many times she’s viewed them with the view count. If I want to review the listings that were sent, I just click right there. You can click to view the listing details as well. So again, I went to my sent emails, went and checked that subscription option. You have to make sure to click that.
And then I filtered by contact, and it will show me the past ninety days of subscription updates for that contact. With that, that does cover everything that I wanted to talk about today for the top Four most frequently asked questions for subscriptions.
Thank you for attending, and have a great rest of your day.
