Forget Big Data, Show Me Intelligent Data

September 4, 2015

For years we’ve been hearing how “big data” is going to change the real estate industry. See Forbes and CNBC for reference.

Some may argue this point with me, but I don’t really think it has. At least for residential realtors out in the trenches on a day to day basis.

So, I’m just going to come right out and say on your behalf “we don’t care about big data… show us some intelligent data!”

But, what does that even mean? (sorry, I just HAD to include that)

For the most part, big data efforts for marketing purposes have been centered around information gathering (things like preferred location, familial status, employment/income status, etc) and exploration of habits (think click patterns on your website), but all this knowledge is meaningless without the right context and the ability to narrow down which data points are important and will eventually lead to a conversion or sale.

Cutting through the noise of all of this, and using predictive analytics to find the points that matter is what will make a difference. I call this… intelligent data.

Some examples:

Cloze – Cloze is a pretty sweet relationship management platform that automatically keeps track of your email, phone calls, meetings, documents, Evernote, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other services (even direct integration with your cell phone carrier). Cloze’s learning algorithm knows who is important to you based on interactions and patterns in your emails, phone calls and text messages and will automatically prompt you when its time to reach out, so you’ll always be on top of your customers and pipeline of business.

RealVolve – RealVolve has long been my favorite CRM for managing contacts and transactional data thanks to their “workflow” processes that can be created (or downloaded thanks to other power users). But now they’ve gone and added some predictive analytics and database scoring into the platform and took things to the next level, once again. I mean… a CRM that’s smart enough to scan emails performing sentiment analysis and scores prospects using a unique algorithm to determine when they need follow up activities performed? Yep.

BryteCore – BryteCore was one of the coolest things I saw when I was at Inman’s Real Estate Connect in San Francisco last month. It’s basically a machine learning system that alerts you when a website lead is ready to be converted. They offer full brokerage websites, or simple snippets of code to use their algorithm on your current website, with some ridiculously awesome features. Know what your website visitors are looking at, when they’re looking at it, how many times they’ve looked at it, and when they’re ready to discuss it with a live human. This is the stuff my geeky dreams are made of!

Cool stuff, right? And the best part… these are actual examples that can be utilized today. Not some fictitious pipe dream promise like those we’ve been pumped full of the last few years from “big data” companies.

Of course, with all this intelligent data comes a new set of concerns. For example, Facebook was recently granted a patent that would allow lenders to use analysis of an individual’s friend list in determining whether they should be granted a loan or not.

Scary huh? Really makes you think about who and what you want to be associated with on Facebook going forward, doesn’t it? Sorry mom, you’ve got to go. I’m just looking out for my future financial interests! 😉