April 2011 IDX Broker Agent Newsletter

Thank you again for choosing IDX Broker!

As noted in last month's newsletter (you may view past newsletters here), we have added many new servers to our infrastructure, 24/7 monitoring, and other infrastructure enhancements.

Now that we have enhanced our infrastructure, it's time to enhance our tools. We have taken several steps to do just that:

• A New Control Panel for the myAgent Mobile App is only a few weeks from Alpha, with Beta soon to follow. More to come in next month's newsletter!
• An Android App is currently under development. This App will launch soon after the launch of the iOS myAgent App version 2.6, a major App upgrade that will include several important new features. Again, more to come in next month's newsletter.

This is just the beginning of our product development plans. Fortunately, you can expect the same great services and all NEW features at the same flat-rate price.

Please take some time to review the training articles below. Leverage your IDX Broker subscription to acquire more business!

This month’s newsletter will explain how to setup saved searches for leads, add a featured listing slideshow, and manage your listing details.

Best regards,
The IDX Team
@idxbroker

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Saved Searches For Your Leads

The IDX Broker Listing Manager tool gives you and your clients the ability to save custom searches, and receive email updates as those new listings arrive on the market. While your clients can manage their searches and properties themselves, there may be times when you will want to do this for them. Save searches for your client in order to demonstrate the value of working with a Realtor who can provide direct access to accurate and timely listing data. Review the items below to get started:

• All of your leads are stored in IDX Broker under Lead Management -> Manage Leads. You can see whether your leads already have saved searches by reviewing the "Saved Searches" column.

• To see the details of a lead’s saved searches, just click on their name and scroll down to the Saved Searches section. Here, you’ll see the form you can use to create new saved searches for leads.
  Or simply scroll down the page to the save a search form.
• Use the Advanced Search form to set up searches based on Subdivision, Area, or any other fields unique to your MLS.

• Existing saved searches are listed below the search form. Here, you may view the search criteria, click to remove a saved search, and view lifetime or daily search results. If at least one listing displays in Today's Results, that listing should be in the client's email update. Most email updates are sent out in the morning, however, this may vary by MLS.

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Add a Featured Listing Slideshow

IDX Broker provides several Widgets that you may use to display listings on any web page – even if those listings are Supplemental or Sold listings. One of our most popular Widgets is the Featured Listing Slideshow. This Widget rotates your selected listings in real-time, on all pages, or just on your home page.

Your Featured Listing Slideshow is available in IDX Broker under Widgets -> Slideshow Settings. Here, you’ll find several options available to customize your slideshow. Setting a height and width for your slideshow is handy if you need the slideshow to fit within a specific content area in your website. You can also set a number of seconds between the listing rotation, and a sort order for the listings included in the slideshow. You may also customize the font size and color, background colors, and border styles, without knowing CSS.

To add this slideshow to your website, simply copy the line of code appearing in red at the top of the screen, and paste it into the HTML of the page where you would like it to appear. Publish your changes to view the Slideshow live on your website!

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Intra-Day Listing Management

IDX Broker automatically pulls in your active listings each day. These listings are displayed on your Featured Properties page link as well as under the Listings tab in your control panel.

However, there may be times when you need to make a change to one of your listings in the middle of the day. Price changes, property description changes, and new photos sometimes cannot wait until IDX Broker can retrieve this data the next day. IDX Broker provides a set of listing management tools to help you make these changes at any point throughout the day.

Your active Featured Listings are located under Listings -> Active in IDX Broker. Click one of the addresses here to view the listing management screen for that listing. This screen provides you with a way to update the listing in IDX Broker without having to wait for the overnight MLS data feed update:

• Custom Property Description – Enter in a custom property description into this field, and it will display in place of the description provided by the MLS.
• Custom Price – Enter in a new price for the listing here, and it will display on your results and details pages immediately.
• Display as Featured –This preference allows you to choose which listings you would like to display on your Featured Properties page. Toggle this preference to No to remove the listing from the Featured Properties page.
• Display on Slideshow – Switching this preference to No will remove this listing from your Featured Property Slideshow.
• Latitude & Longitude – If the map location for your listing is incorrect, new latitude and longitude coordinates may be entered in here to adjust the map location. You can look up the latitude and longitude of a street address by using a free tool like iTouchMap.com.

• Add/Modify Photos – Edit which MLS photos are displayed or upload new photos for your listing.
• Add/Modify Virtual Tour – Some MLS’s provide Virtual Tours in their IDX data, but many do not. Using this tool, you can manually add Virtual Tour links to your listings.
• Add/Modify Open House – Add an open house schedule to your listing. Listings with open houses will display on your Featured Open Houses page.
• Add/Modify Custom Link – Use this tool to add an additional link of your choosing. Many use this feature to link to listing brochures, floor plans, rental applications, etc.