Of those polled, 92% were Realtors with the remaining 8% were real estate professionals of another variety (administrative, marketing, etc.). With roughly 70% of all respondents having been in the industry for over five years, and nearly 40% over the age of 50, most would expect there to be more people who said they don’t use select tools, but at AG, we know that age and time on the job do not indicate a lack of adoption, rather the opposite. Realtors who have come to AG to learn the newest technologies are adaptive personalities regardless of age.
We asked what size respondents’ brokerages were and roughly half hail from brokerages of over 300 agents. This question was posed to gauge if readers were more likely to use tools provided by their broker or seek out their own technologies, and we discovered that most use a custom suite of tools rather than the provided tools.
Regarding email, we asked which platform readers use and Gmail was the clear winner at 49% with the second most common answer, Outlook trailing behind at 29%. We write a considerable amount about Gmail due to our own affinity with the service but found it surprising that the primary email used by so many business professionals is Gmail which reaffirms our assertion that times are changing. (Bonus: here is a parody illustration about your choice of email address.)
Next, we asked what email newsletter respondents use and although Mail Chimp was not one of the options provided, so many people noted it as their chosen platform that we had to give it it’s own category! What was disturbing was that the largest option chosen for email newsletter was “none,” but we do acknowledge that it leaves a lot of room for their competitors (like you, maybe?).
There is good news for customer relationship management (CRM) companies in that there is no clear leader (although Real Estate Success Tools is giving the mix of “Others” a run for its money). Surprisingly, 22% of respondents do not use a CRM, but again, that’s another form of good news for the CRM providers.
Regarding cameras, we are proud to say that most people a digital camera when they use a still cam, and only 13% use their Smartphone. The only catch, however, is that now days, a new smartphone (like the HTC Evo) has a higher resolution and higher quality than several digital cameras from three or more years ago. Cameras are a tricky technology now and while we feel strongly that MLS photos should be taken by a professional photographer, it is helpful for agents to have quality photography tools for other photographic moments.
Next, we asked what blog platform our readers use and while most have graduated from Blogger, there were a number of people who didn’t clearly understand what platform they use, and a small number who aren’t yet blogging. WordPress.org is what AG runs on and what the majority of self hosted blogs run on, and we anticipate this number to continue rising due to its flexibility and customization options, giving agents a low cost to competitively enter the blogging community.
Lastly, we asked which Twitter platform readers most commonly use and surprisingly, Twitter.com was the clear winner with TweetDeck trailing behind it. When we polled, it was an oversight to not offer “I do not use Twitter” as an option, so nearly 10% of respondents added this as their answer. It appears that the 90% of our readers who do use Twitter have an affinity for Twitter.com whose redesign has possibly swayed several people back to their site.
AG readers are a very savvy about business and technology as the AG Flash Poll results reveal. You’re ahead of the curve and you don’t just stick to the template the world gives you!
