1,691 CRM updates keeping 100k agents ahead of the game: 2023 recap & 2024 preview

As we say goodbye to 2023, anyone in the real estate industry could be forgiven for thinking, “more like good riddance.” 

With higher interest rates creating affordability issues for buyers, and potential sellers jealously guarding their sub-3% mortgages, transactions were hard to come by. 

But market conditions aren’t within our control–we can only control how we respond to them. So, we hope all of you in the Follow Up Boss community were able to make the most of every opportunity that did come your way, or maybe even create a few from your database. 

And we hope you were able to use the slowdown to invest in your skills and systems so you’re well-positioned when the market improves. With interest rates expected to start falling next year, it could be sooner than you think.

At  FUB, it doesn’t matter whether the market is up, down or sideways. We’re always all about helping you make the most of every opportunity, find the gold in your database, and build systems that allow your real estate business to scale, and we kept at it all year long.

Here’s a recap of some of the most important changes to FUB in 2023, and a preview of what’s coming in 2024. 

🏆 2023 scorecard

From the day FUB was launched, we've been dedicated to continuous improvement and innovation. Here’s how we did that over the last year:

• Over 100,000 real estate agents now use FUB 
• 1,691 software updates were made to FUB. That’s everything from major features to invisible things that make the system faster and more stable.
• You added 87,216,632 leads to Follow Up Boss
• The support team solved 195,249 customer issues (and of 82% those were solved on the spot)
• We answered 95,907 phone calls from you 🤝
• The FUB Success Community on Facebook reached 18,000 members
• We unveiled 1 huge brand refresh

💪 4 things FUB helped you do better this year

Build stronger bonds with your clients & increase conversions

Call Trust

Every day, consumers are bombarded with robocalls, telemarketing and other phone spam. How do you make sure your calls get through? With Call Trust. 

Follow Up Boss partnered with the major phone carriers to provide our customers with branded outbound caller ID. Call Trust lets you personalize and brand your outgoing caller ID, ensuring that when you reach out to a lead, your business's name is prominently displayed. And coming soon, we’ll be adding the ability to display your business’s logo as well.

Call Trust will help your team increase their conversation rates and help them build stronger relationships with their leads and clients.

Tons of texting improvements

Text messaging has become one of the most important tools for communicating with clients, and absolutely essential for getting deals to the closing table. That’s why texting is built right into FUB, and why we’re constantly working to make it better.

This year we made it easy to schedule texts:

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We also improved group texting so that you can send multiple attachments to a group–perfect for listing photos.

And to help you optimize your texting, there’s a new texting report that shows key texting stats like volume, deliverability, opt outs and more. Agents can see their own performance, and team leads can see how every number in their account is doing.

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A lot of the improvements we made to texting aren’t about flash; they’re about ensuring that your texting just works, consistently and compliantly. Behind the scenes, we doubled down on reliability, so your conversations keep flowing smoothly without interruption. With FUB, you get unmatched texting deliverability that sets you apart – a unique advantage that competing CRMs can’t match.

HTML emails

By popular demand, you can now add HTML to your email templates. This gives you more control over your email’s design and opens up a world of creative possibilities to express your brand’s identity and engage your readers. 

Send vCards

With our new vCard sharing feature, you can effortlessly share vCards for yourself or anyone on your team. 

Send your new leads your own vCard to make it easier for them to save your contact info in their phone, and to make sure your calls and texts don’t get mislabeled as spam or “unknown caller.” Or, share your team’s info with leads and clients, so they can contact your assistant, TC or lender. 

Stay organized & work smarter

Redesigned calendar

The all-new FUB calendar introduced tons of improvements to make managing your schedule a breeze.

It’s easier to see what’s on your plate with new day and week views, along with better filtering for appointment types:

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Plus, we redesigned the appointment scheduling window with a cleaner layout that makes it faster and more intuitive to create and edit appointments. 

Better workflow

We made a bunch of changes to improve how your daily work gets done in FUB. Task lists now display in the order they were created rather than alphabetically. Keyboard shortcuts let you move around FUB faster. And big updates to the tags screen help you keep your contacts organized.

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Lots of mobile productivity features

FUB keeps getting better and better on both iOS and Android. We redesigned the Quick Action menu to put it closer to your fingers so you can save the stretching for the gym. We brought the desktop app’s popular landline and bad number detection to the iOS app. And last but not least, we made it easier to manage conversations across all your inboxes on Android. 

Keep your team running smoothly

Agent goals report

The new agent goals report lets every agent track their work and personal goals throughout the year. If you track deals in FUB, sales volume and commissions are tracked automatically for you. 

Note reactions

Team members can now react to notes on a contact with emojis. This small change produces big results. You can communicate quickly, conveying as much with a single emoji as several sentences. And emojis encourage people to express their personalities, which humanizes your team’s interactions and brings everyone closer together. 

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Easier contact importing and new user onboarding

Whether you’re adding new agents to your team or just getting started yourself, getting on board with FUB got a whole lot smoother. Our import tool can now automatically recognize exports from most other CRMs, so you can migrate your data over without a hitch. You can also now import team members to FUB when your business grows. No more wasting time inviting them one by one.

Connect with the tech your business needs

When you use Follow Up Boss, you get access to over 250 integrations, so you can use the lead source and software that work best for your business, and easily try new ones whenever you want. No other real estate CRM lets you do that, and it’s one of the things that makes FUB the operating system for real estate teams.

Integrations continued to get better in 2023. These are just some of the new and improved integrations launched this year:

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🏘️ FUB community: still unstoppable

It goes without saying at this point, but we’ll say it anyway since it feels so good: The Follow Up Boss user community is truly special, and something you’d be hard-pressed to find with any other software product. 

It’s part of our mission to create spaces for everyone who uses FUB to learn from one another, so we can all create a rising tide that lifts everyone up. When you’re part of FUB, you get to connect with other top performers in new and exciting ways every day.

Here are some of our community highlights from 2023. 

New podcast: Real Estate Team OS

With 31 of the top 50 teams in the US (plus some of the largest in Canada) using FUB, we’re connected to some of the absolute best in the business. And by now, you know that FUB will stop at nothing to figure out what makes high performing teams tick, and then share it with our community. 

So it’s kind of surprising that it took us this long to start a podcast, but we finally did. Check out RealEstateTeamOS.com for in-depth interviews where team leaders share the secrets of their success. 

Success Community hits 18,000 members

The FUB Success Community on Facebook just keeps growing, and if you’re not already a member, you should be. It’s your go-to spot to get Follow Up Boss tips from other real estate professionals and the FUB team. 

Here's a peek inside the action from the last year:

Talking shop, letting loose

We were thrilled to meet even more of you at our live events this year. Our third Level Up Mastermind event, this time in Scottsdale, brought together an intimate group of top performers to swap tips and improve their business systems (FUB and otherwise) in real time.

As promised, FUBCON returned in 2023. This time, we took over the JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles and hosted returning favorites like Tom Ferry plus new keynote speakers like Tim Grover (trainer to Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and others).

By popular request, we also expanded the menu of tactical sessions to help everyone get their FUB systems dialed in. And of course, we wrapped it up with an epic party. 

Needless to say, it was an absolute blast:

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Thanks to all of you who attended FUB events and contributed your time and expertise to the FUB community this year. Together, we’re elevating the entire real estate industry and we’re truly grateful to be on this journey with you. 

🤫 2024 sneak preview

Follow Up Boss has always been committed to constant innovation. We believe that software should get better all the time, and that’s especially important in real estate, where the technology landscape changes constantly. 

With our recent acquisition by Zillow Group, we’ll have more resources to deliver on that commitment. We’re more excited than ever at what we’ll be able to deliver for you in the coming year. Here’s just a taste of what’s on the near-term roadmap.

Even better Call Trust (logo, reason for calling)

Call Trust will soon give you even more branding opportunities. You’ll be able to add your company’s logo and list a reason for your call, so you can have more valuable conversations and reduce unproductive calls. 

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A more unified inbox

Gear up for a supercharged unified inbox, which lets you connect your favorite messaging apps inside FUB. No more juggling multiple apps to stay on top of your conversations – everything’s in one central place.

More powerful Automations

We’re revamping Automations to bring you more flexibility and smarter triggers that help your team be more efficient, discover more opportunities and set more appointments.

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AI call summaries

Always stay in the know and never miss a beat with FUB AI-powered call summaries, which capture the essence of every phone call right inside your CRM.

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Stronger integrations overall

We’re continuing to up our integration game, making FUB your ultimate command center – the one place where all your tools connect seamlessly. This means a more organized business that you can manage from a single, familiar hub, leading to more efficient processes and more closed deals.

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FUBCON 2024: Back in Vegas, baby!

We’ll be back at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas this fall for the biggest FUBCON yet. Expect an even bigger menu of breakout sessions and tactical content, along with the big-name keynotes and high-impact networking you’ve come to expect. 

You can get super early bird tickets to FUBCON 2024 here — they won’t get any cheaper than this. 

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🥂 Sayonara 2023, bring on 2024

Follow Up Boss has always been popular among top performers in real estate, so it’s no surprise to hear many of you tell us about how you made the most of a tough year. Whether that was grinding out deals despite the odds, turning the slowdown into a recruiting opportunity, or finally finding the time to improve your core systems, the FUB community never quits. 

We see you out there making it happen, and we’re grateful to have a small part in your journey.

All that said, there’s every reason to be hopeful that things will start to thaw in 2024, so while we want to acknowledge the work everyone’s put in over the last year, it’s time to turn the page. 

From all of us here at Follow Up Boss, cheers to you and your success in the new year!