When even the sun starts going to bed early, it sure underscores the point: there's never enough time in a day. Especially in an industry that requires you to juggle tons of tasks at once — from marketing new listings to ensuring your buyer finds the right home — it can be difficult to keep up and still have time left to spend with family and friends. But you can get precious hours back in your day using the right real estate marketing solutions. After all, saving time has been the point of technology since the start!

Here are five ways real estate marketing technology can help you do this:

1. Stay on Task With Automated To-Do Lists

Some people love them and others hate them, but most of us can't do without a to-do list. When you need to have one, why not use the power of artificial intelligence to make sure it's always up to date?

With access to all of the information generated by your website, listings, and digital marketing, your real estate technology should always know the next steps you need to take. Like a virtual assistant, your technology will be there with timed reminders to keep you on track, helping you spotlight items that mean the most to your business. 

If you want total visibility into tasks as well as people, it's critical to find the right technology to fit your workflow. You'll save hours when you stop hunting around for reminders about what you were supposed to do!

2. Send Automated Emails and Texts

Writing emails to your leads may be a labor of love, but it's also a numbers game. As your email list grows, it provides the opportunity to pick up new business by sending a single email. But to make that dream a reality, you need to email consistently.

Automated emails and texts create the perfect balance:

Customers and leads feel supported and appreciated as they receive content tailored to their needs. The more helpful, informative content you share, the more you'll be seen as a trusted expert who is really in their corner.

You have the opportunity to grow and scale your business while saving weeks every year. Instead of painstakingly wondering what to write next, emails can quickly be populated with important listings, market data, buying and selling information, and blog shares throughout your marketing campaigns.

Email newsletters enchant buyers and sellers alike. Text messaging for real estate is today's rising star, allowing you to automate follow-ups so leads won't go cold — and engaging them with value-packed information wherever they are.

3. Update Customers and Prospects With Automated Reports

Real estate agents are sought out for their local expertise. They're virtuosos when it comes to compiling important data from the local area: insights that help buyers and sellers alike understand the big picture.

The challenge, of course, is that this can take days. Information may even go out of date in the interim.

Real estate marketing technology solves the equation. With the right solution, you can instantly generate detailed, accurate white-label reports:

• AVM Reports combine valuations from the most respected and accurate AI-driven platforms available today so you can plan your seller's pricing strategy and property marketing. 
• Market Watch Reports represent the gold standard in local market reporting for buyers, allowing them to see a snapshot of current market conditions with key points highlighted at a glance. 
• Seller Reports not only provide data on the local market for sellers but also summarize all property marketing activity you have provided as their agent and the results for any given period.
• Home Finder Reports enable you to pull together data on all the hottest home listings and showings around a buyer's location.                             4. 

4. Get Updates About New Leads Your Digital Marketing Generates

Even if you have the best digital marketing techniques in the world, it would hardly be worthwhile if you found yourself dragged underwater by all that information. Instead of coming at you like a fast-rushing fire hose, technology turns the flow into something that will power your business.

Through real estate marketing technology, you can get consistent, accurate, and timely updates whenever you capture leads through your website, email, social media platforms, and more. If you can imagine it, you can do it.

A streamlined, comprehensive technology solution makes a big difference not only in saving time but for using the time well. For example, it's well known that you're most likely to turn leads into customers by responding to an inquiry within five minutes. Your technology supports you by sending alerts straight to your phone.

We all know that you can't be ready to answer questions around the clock — but with automated technology, it will certainly look like you are. After you schedule a chat, meet in person, and start the relationship, you can use it to supply your customer with a steady stream of value while maintaining boundaries.

It's the best of both worlds, and everyone wins.

5. Keep Your Customers Organized in a Database

In the history of modern real estate, what would you guess has taken up the most time?

It's not showings, even though they were much more common in the past than today. It's not networking, pressing the flesh, or pounding the pavement, even though everyone starts there. 

It's simply this: figuring out what the heck is going on with all your contacts. Where are all your leads? Are they still leads? Have they found another agent, or maybe dropped out of the market entirely? Are all your customers content and moving forward? What are the next steps you need to take?

When you're juggling that much, dropping anything can feel like a disaster. That's why you need what some productivity experts have called a "second brain." In the form of a database, the real estate CRM was built and designed with the unique needs of real estate in mind. A real estate CRM remembers all your prospect and customer data, so you don't have to.

No matter the season, you can get hours back in your day with real estate marketing technology. For an independent agent or small team, it could mean adding weeks or months to a year. Sure, you can't slow down time, but this may be the next best thing. And the sooner you start, the better!