Real estate stayed red hot in 2021, and the Follow Up Boss community was moving so fast it was hard to keep up with all of you! Congrats to all of you on a huge year, and thanks for giving us the honor of being a part of it.
With so many of you achieving record growth in 2021, you demanded that we keep evolving Follow Up Boss to accommodate your bigger teams and new strategies.
Here’s a recap of the most important things that happened at Follow Up Boss in 2021.
Numbers you should know
There’s enough data flying around Follow Up Boss to keep us crunching numbers all day. Here are a few stats that jumped out:
- 1,432 total product releases. That’s everything from big features to tiny bug fixes.
- 32 new team members, 25 of whom are in engineering or customer service roles. We’re proud that the majority of our hiring continues to be focused on improving our platform and directly serving customers.
- 93,221 support tickets solved, and 37,059 of those were phone calls. We know lots of software companies make it hard to get someone on the phone…not here!
- 10 of the top 15 teams use Follow Up Boss. According to Real Trends, 10 of the 15 biggest teams in North America (we’re talking $500M producers here) now use Follow Up Boss.
- 4 babies born, 5 pets adopted and 6 houses bought or renovated by the Follow Up Boss team. We still managed to have personal lives!
Top 10 product releases of 2021
It’s tough to pick favorites, but we gave it our best shot. Here are the product updates that made the biggest impact for Follow Up Boss users this year.
1. Power Ups
Sometimes, there’s a feature we know will make a huge difference for some Follow Up Boss users. But we also know it might not make sense for others. That’s why we made Power Ups. Power Ups are optional features, including some beta features, that allow you to do even more with Follow Up Boss.
2. Office 365 Calendar Sync
We know many of you use Office 365 calendars to manage your schedules, and you told us in no uncertain terms that syncing Office 365 calendars to Follow Up Boss was a must-have. Now, you can sync your calendars and manage your schedule from one place.
3. Cell Bridge
Historically, the Follow Up Boss dialer placed calls using your wifi or cellular data connection. That’s usually fine, but what if you’re in a spot with bad wifi or cell data? Now, your calls can also connect over your regular cell phone connection, so you’ll never have an important call interrupted by bad wifi.
4. Contact Relationships
Rare is the real estate deal with just one decision maker. Now, Follow Up Boss supports contact relationships, so you can include spouses, family members, or business partners in one contact record and keep all your communications in one place.
5. Improvements to Automations
One of the biggest changes to Follow Up Boss in 2020 was Automations. In 2021, we kept improving Automations by automating lead reassignments, notes, changing deal stages and more. In 2022, we’ll keep investing in more improvements to Automations so you can work even more efficiently.
6. Roadmap
Even with a ton of new hires in engineering this year, we still have more ideas than hours to build them. Most of those ideas come directly from customers, and now, we’re enabling you to influence our to-do list by voting on the features that you’d like to see in Follow Up Boss.
7. Batch emails
Reach more of your contacts with increased sending limits (up to 10k/day) and better deliverability, no matter which email provider you’re with.
8. Notifications
One of the most important things your CRM can do for you is show you who needs follow up. We made a few changes to how Follow Up Boss notifies you about contacts who need attention.
- Never miss an important notification with the new notification bell
- Take control of which notifications you receive with the new notification settings page
- A stronger backend notification system delivers notifications more reliably
9. Android Improvements
Android users: We heard you loud and clear–you wanted more from the Android app…a lot more. We added dedicated Android engineering staff this year and set them to work. Follow Up Boss for Android now supports:
- Team Inbox notifications
- Appointments
- Caller ID
- Collaborators
- Photo and video texting
- Refreshed navigation
And you can expect the Android app to keep improving, faster.
10. Video Texting
It’s no wonder that in a visual business like real estate, video texts are quickly becoming an essential tool to share critical information or make a personal connection with clients. But agents have been stuck using their personal cell phones for video texts, which usually means the conversations don’t get tracked and the video quality is spotty.
With Follow Up Boss video texting, agents can send video directly from their Follow Up Boss business line using the iPhone or Android mobile apps. You can record and send video texts on the fly, in beautiful HD with virtually no length limits. Every text is logged automatically and you can see when your video is viewed.
BONUS: Follow Up Boss Academy
You can have the best tech (and if you’re a Follow Up Boss user, you do 😉), but it’s no replacement for the fundamental skills required for success in real estate. We have the privilege of connecting with the brightest minds in real estate every single day, and we wanted to share their knowledge with our entire community. That’s why we launched Follow Up Boss Academy.
Inside, you’ll find expert-led training on Follow Up Boss, core sales skills and an archive of webinars and conference sessions with appearances from people like Dale Archdekin, Jason Pantana and Gabe Cordova. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or are working to onboard a new agent, everything you need is in one convenient place. It’s still very much a work in progress, so let us know what else you’d like to see there!
“Nice top 10. What about the other 1,422 updates?”
There were plenty of other changes that you probably noticed. We added support for avatars and improved our email signature editor, for example.
But lots of these updates are the things you don’t see, and never will. Our engineers spend lots of time thinking about things like speed and security–all the little things that make your Follow Up Boss experience run smoothly.
For example, this fall, we passed a comprehensive Google security audit where Google’s team reviewed our integration with them, and our business in general, to make sure we meet their standards for protecting customer data.
Now for some fun stuff
Getting older, getting wiser…
Follow Up Boss hit two big milestones this year: We turned 10 years old, and we got our 10,000th customer. Those numbers sound big to us, but in some ways they’re small for a software company.
Most software companies are venture backed, and their investors want them to get to 10,000 customers way faster than 10 years. It often means they have to cut corners to hit growth targets. We’ve chosen to grow more slowly by listening to customers, building the features you ask us for and delivering first-class service. We think it makes for happier customers and employees, and we hope you feel the same.
…But not too old to get down
In early 2020 at a leadership retreat, we all agreed: We should get out and attend more industry events. Spend time with customers. Listen to their feedback. Show them how much we love them. We all know how that turned out 🦠
But this year, with the pandemic feeling a bit more managed, we rekindled those plans. Hopefully we saw you at Inman, eXp Con, Tom Ferry’s Summit, or one of the many small events we sent people to in 2021. If not, don’t worry: We’ll be on the road again in 2022, and we’d love to see you out there. There’s usually an open bar 😇
Wow, you guys crushed it
Nothing makes us happier than seeing Follow Up Boss make a real impact on your businesses. Here’s just a few of our favorite shares from this past year:
Let’s do it again in 2022
Thanks again for being a Follow Up Boss customer. From our first customer, to our 10,000th, to the next 10,000, it’s an honor to serve all of you.
Here’s to another year of closing more deals, cutting down stress and wowing our clients. Happy new year!