November 2010 IDX Broker Office Newsletter

Welcome to our November newsletter!

If you are a new subscriber, this newsletter will help you get the most out of your IDX Broker subscription. Each month, we will send you 2-3 tips to help you understand more about the powerful features available in IDX Broker.

This month's newsletter will cover new ways to promote your myAgent iPhone app code, both online and offline. We will also talk about lead routing, and show you how to add photos to your agents' bio pages.

Best regards,
The IDX Team
help@idxbroker.com

New myAgent IDX iPhone App Links & QR Code

This month we've added a couple of new items to your Mobile tab.

We've updated the link from the iPhone Widget so that it automatically opens iTunes. The previous link sent visitors to a webpage on iTunes.com. With this new link, you can send people directly to iTunes so that they can download the application, and synchronize the myAgent application onto their iPhone and/or iPad. Another way to get this to your clients is to simply email the link to them. Provide your myAgent Office code to ensure that your logo, phone number, and website address display on every listing. The same is true for your Agents, however, they will have a separate code that also displays your Office logo and name, along with their contact information.

Please note that if you have already placed this Widget on your site, you will need to replace the myAgent link if you want to ensure that visitors arrive at the App store rather than on iTunes.com. Add the new myAgent Widget using a few easy steps:

Log in to your control panel and click on the Mobile tab. Here, you'll see the snippet of code for the widget displayed in red in the middle of the screen. This snippet of code has been updated with the new link.

iPhoneBadge

Copy this snippet of code, and paste it into your website to replace your existing code for this widget. If you are using a custom graphic to link to the iPhone app, you can just replace the link for that graphic with the following URL: http://itunes.com/apps/myagentbyidx.

We've also added a QR (short for "Quick Response") code that will send mobile users to the myAgent web page on iTunes.com (note that many QR code readers will not open a direct iTunes store link).

A QR code is a visual code that stores a URL. Smartphones that use a QR code reader are able to open the QR code link simply by taking a photo of the image. Under the Mobile tab in your control panel, you'll find the QR code image, as well as a snippet of code you can use to display the QR code on a web page.

You may also download this QR code and add it to printed brochures, business cards, or other marketing materials.

Note that you will want to test this QR code in your reader before ordering printed materials that contain the code provided by IDX, Inc. Alternatively, you may use this 3rd party service to create your own QR code in a higher resolution than provided in IDX Broker. You may also use that 3rd party QR generation tool to create QR codes for individual IDX property page links.

iPhone App QR Code

Automatically Route Leads to Your Agents

With IDX Broker, you can establish rules to determine how new leads are automatically distributed to your agents. Note that Agents MUST HAVE an email address in their profile, and a profile page, for automatic contact routing to work. If you haven't added your agents, you may do that via your control panel. Go to Manage Users/Offices -> Add New User. Below are the three contact routing options available in your control panel under Lead Management -> Contact Routing.

Core Fields - This is the default contact routing option for Office Accounts. Any leads that fill out a contact form associated with a listing will be assigned and emailed to the agent who represents that listing. Any leads that fill out a general contact form not tied to a featured listing will be 'unassigned' and their contact emailed to the primary email address on the account. With Core Fields Contact Routing, you can also establish rules to automatically route your leads by city, county, state, zip code, or MLS. Use the CC field to ensure that the primary office email receives the same lead notification.
Round Robin - Use this setting if you want to route all new leads to your agents using a random or "round-robin" style rotation. With this option, you specify a list of agents. As unassigned leads arrive into your account, they are assigned to your agents until each Agent has received a lead assignment (not necessarily a lead). You may order your list either by alphabetical ascending or descending order, a custom order, or simply at random.

Note: When a visitor loads a contact form in their browser, the next agent in your round-robin list will be selected to receive that visitor's information. If the visitor doesn't submit that contact form, but moves instead to a different contact form, the visitor may be assigned to the next Agent in the rotation.
Disabled - Use this setting if you do not want any new leads automatically assigned to your agents. When Contact Routing is disabled, all leads submitted from any contact form on your IDX pages will be sent to the primary email address on the account.

There are additional options available via Contact Routing settings. You can set a carbon copy email address for lead notifications, customize your agent dropdown menu for contact forms, and customize the contact links for agents.

A Closer Look: Uploading Agent Photos

Many offices make use of IDX Broker's roster and bio pages. One way to customize your Agent bio pages is to upload a photo for each agent. One issue you may run into when uploading agent photos is that your photo may appear much larger than the content area allowed on the bio page. This is because IDX Broker will display the Agent photo based on its original size. That may result in a Bio page that looks like this:

Oversized Agent Photo

To resolve this issue, the original photo file needs to be re-sized to an appropriate width to fit within the defined content area for the agent photo on the bio page. A good width is 250 - 300 pixels. You can use a simple photo editing program such as picnik to re-size the photo. Below, we'll describe how to re-size a photo using Paint, a program that is included with any Windows PC.

To begin, open up the program by going to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Paint on your PC. To open your photo up in Paint, click File -> Open, browse for the photo on your computer and click Open. The photo should appear on your canvas. To re-size the photo, click Image -> Stretch/Skew. In the pop-up box, use the fields in the Stretch box to change the dimensions of the photo to a smaller percentage than the original. Use the same values for both the Horizontal and Vertical fields to maintain the correct proportion. In this example, we'll use 25% which will result in our new photo having dimensions of 250x376 pixels. Click OK to see your re-sized photo and save the photo.

Re-sizing In Paint

Once this re-sized photo is uploaded onto this agent's bio page, it should display at a size appropriate for the photo area provided.

Re-sized Photo On Bio Page

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