Estate Agencies Need WhatsApp: Faster Leads and More Conversations with Stitch AI

Why does WhatsApp matter for estate agencies?

Hi, thanks for coming through and looking to find out more about what we can do with WhatsApp. I want to talk you through how you can use WhatsApp to convert leads, stay in touch with customers more frequently, and therefore get more instructions for your agency.

You'll be having conversations with landlords, tenants, applicants, vendors. All of these people will respond a lot more quickly using WhatsApp if you can't get them on the phone. Speed to lead is extremely important, and WhatsApp is crucial for that, because you're able to respond to people straight away. When we speak to agents, we find a lot of them are struggling to get hold of people on the phone — and that's only natural: people are at work, or maybe they just don't want to talk to somebody. If you're in that position, and half the time you can't get hold of a prospect, often WhatsApp is the answer to get that response.

The thing I talk to people about most is conversations — getting conversations going when you're looking to convert somebody into a customer. That is the number one thing I'd recommend. Rather than sales messages going out, we want to get people into conversation; then they're more likely to want to talk to us. That engagement through a conversation is what we're looking to achieve.

And if you're swamped by applications — you might be a letting agency spending 15 to 20 minutes processing an application — our WhatsApp tools automate a great deal of that process and can take it down to under two minutes.

What do the numbers say?

Your competitors might be responding to leads with email, or using WhatsApp on a standard business account. What we're looking to do is enable you to get there quicker — to automate a lot of these responses, 24/7.

Some quick stats. With email, we all know what it's like — a lot of us get hundreds, and open rates are dropping. With WhatsApp, 95-plus per cent of messages get opened, and the read rate is 65 per cent plus. It's the reply rate that makes the huge difference: we get a message out straight away, then get people into a conversation before our competitors do. Response rates on WhatsApp generally run at 15 to 20 per cent — but with estate agents in particular, when they're engaging with landlords, tenants and prospective buyers, that rate can grow really quickly and be as high as 80 per cent. That gives you a huge advantage.

What can the tools actually do?

You're quicker to respond to leads, and you can do it around the clock. You can send bulk messaging — reaching large numbers of people in your area or on your database. And you can have visibility of all these conversations: if you're the agency lead or a manager, you can see all the chats going on in your agency. People conversing on their own private WhatsApps is exactly what we don't want — you don't want those details walking out the door if somebody leaves the business.

It can also feed data out to prospects and link into databases. If you want to run online valuation surveys — which can be a great way to get people to the point of listing or an enquiry — feeding that to them via WhatsApp is really good for getting them over the line quickly. We can run multiple types of campaign: your new instructions going out every week, local newsletters, questions, surveys, and live chat on your website that pops up just like a WhatsApp icon. Some people just don't want to speak on the phone — with these tools we can lead them into a conversation, get them valuing their own property, and turn that into an enquiry.

What is coexistence?

One of the barriers we sometimes hear is "we don't want to use a separate tool". Coexistence, which is new, means WhatsApp now allows numbers already in a business to be brought in and managed through one portal. Your team carry on using their devices as they are, and those numbers — and the conversations in them — can be seen in the team portal. If somebody's off on holiday, you can still see their conversations. You can have branch accounts, assign chats to individual users, and give the manager or branch owner a team inbox to oversee what's going on.

Who is behind this?

We're a business called Institution, an agency based in Doncaster serving clients all over the UK, and we partner with Stitch. Stitch AI are an official Meta business partner, so they work with the official WhatsApp API — that's how we enable you to converse at scale, compliantly. Everything is compliant with data protection; we're not using personal mobiles. If you have people in your business sending messages on their personal devices at the moment, that is not compliant — so be careful, and talk to me.

If you want to learn more, I can show you inside the tool and how the AI works — with a templated system you can have responses going out to customers straight away, engage the lead, and gain more instructions for your agency. Book a call through the link below, or hit the WhatsApp icon and talk to me there.