Is Mobile Technology a Useful tool in the Hands of a Successful Agent… Or is it Overkill?

Via PRweb I read an interesting press release about Casey Margenau Re/Max’s #1 agent worldwide for 5 years straight.  It caught my eye because it’s always helpful to look at the best agents to get marketing ideas and inspiration.

Casey just recently started using a service called mobilepricecheck.com.  Here’s how it claims to work:

1. Stick a sign in your yard with a toll free 800 number.
2. The “drive by” customer can call this number and enter a special code that is specific to each listing.
3. Then they receive a text message telling them more about the listing.
4. The agent receives an email report giving them the cell phone number of the person that requested the info, and the property address they were interested in.

• Bonus Feature: allows you to catalogue all the cell numbers on one address and send out a mass text message to all the customers that originally requested information.  This could include: price reduction, open house announcements, etc.

I see a few problems right away with this service.

• Why would you need to request a text message when there are probably flyers by the sign?
• Verizon and Sprint both limit text messages to 160 characters.  How much information about a property can you actually put in such a short text message.
• Will it be confusing to non-tech savvy customers?

I definitely love the follow up idea.  It is probably the most useful feature of the service.  Being able to snag customers in a way that is not “pushy” has some value.  The press release also talks about the opt-in feature which requires each customer to agree to receive text messages, and mentions that each text message has an opt-out feature.

It looks like this company has thought of everything, but the bottom line is: do you need it?  Does it add value?  Or is it just overkill?

As I see it, the primary value in this service has to do with the follow up text messages.  That could be helpful.  But really… how many people actually use the text messaging feature on their phones.  I maybe use mine 2-3 times per month.  I don’t know anyone over 20 years old I would consider to be a “heavy” text messaging user.

Is this technology actually making any headway?  I would guess that the next big thing will be a video tour that can be sent in a text message to someone’s phone.  To my knowledge, you can’t send video messages with Sprint or Verizon…  But that would be cool.  I’d pay for something like that.