Open Leads Supports Popular Real Estate Leads

The Open Leads “Email-in” feature now supports XML emails from NewHomeGuide.com and NewHomeSource.com, in addition to leads from RetireNet.com and CommunitiesNet.com – giving builders, developers and realtors the ability to have their leads from these website written directly into their Open Leads accounts.

Using filters created especially for these sources, Open Leads automatically parses the data and enters it into the appropriate fields in your account. Plus, using our Workflow feature, you can automatically assign users, send an autoresponder email, and schedule followup for these new leads as soon as they hit your account.

Open Leads Supports Popular Automotive Lead Sources

The latest update to Open Leads includes direct support for many popular automotive leads, including AutoTrader.com, Cars.com, Dealix, Autobytel, and Ford Direct.

Account Message – Now with HTML Support

The Account Message on the Dashboard now supports basic HTML code. This will allow administrators to format their messages to users with bold and italic characters, or embed information or post external links within the message body.

Email Bounce Handling

Open Leads is committed to maintaining high deliverability rates for email that is sent out from our application.

One of the most important elements of this is maintaining good relationships with the major ISPs, and the way we handle their email bounced from their systems is a key variable in that process.

Open Leads Email system manages bounces and classifies them as either “hard” or “soft” depending on what message is received back from the various ISPs that mail is sent to.

So what is the difference between a “hard” bounce and “soft” bounce, anyway?

Hard Bounces
We consider an email to be “hard bouncing” if the error message we get back from your leads email provider indicates a permanent condition, such as:

* email account doesn’t exist
* there is a spelling error in the email address (htomail.com versus hotmail.com, etc.)

In this instance, these leads will be blocked from your Open Leads Mail System – and will not be included in any mass emails. This will save you from using up credits on a bad address, and will serve to maintain good relations with the major ISPs by not bombarding them with repeated requests for mail delivery to non-existent email addresses.

Soft Bounce
If the error message we get back from your member’s email provider does not meet the criteria for a hard bounce, then the error is considered a soft bounce. Soft bounces can be due to the lead’s email inbox being over the allotted space limit, or other temporary problem.

If the email address generates an occasional soft bounce error, it will be logged but no other action will be taken. However, if the email address continues to return soft bounce errors for several days, then that then we will consider that a hard bounce.

Download User Guide

Many users have requested a simple user guide that they can print out to supplement the online help section. Here it is!

New Feature: Lead Details in Task Reminders

We just added a new feature sure to be popular amongst the road warriors using Open Leads. Now, when you receive an email reminder of a Task from Open Leads, the email message contains the contact information for that lead, including phone and email address.

BlackBerry and iPhone Users can click on the email address or phone number directly in the message body to open their email screens or on the phone number to dial.

New Feature: Modified Date

Users have a valuable new tool to track their activity with leads in their account. The date the lead was last modified is now incorporated into the Lead Detail. By selecting this data, either in the List View of your leads, or in your filter criteria, you can, for example, find all of the leads modified within a specific date range. This is especially useful in tracking leads you have contacted recently, or leads that have been neglected.

The Modified Date toggles with the Added Date on any of your Lead List Views. To display the Modified Date, click on the Asterisk in the Date Column, and then click on “Modified.” You may further refine the display by clicking on “Modified” once it is displayed in the column header, to choose between chronological and inverse chronological order of display. Inverse chronological is the default and displays the most recently modified lead.

You may also choose this field to set up Custom Views or Saved Views using Filters, choosing single dates, ranges, etc.

New Feature: Task Types

As you add a new Task to a lead or as part of a Workflow in Open Leads, you can now classify that Task – Call, Meeting, Email, or Other.

Classifying your tasks in this manner is the first step in being able to fully track your activities in Open Leads. In addition to reporting on Task Types in the View system in the near future, we will soon be adding an Analytics module to Open Leads, adding to the user and managerial functionality already present.

Tech Support: We are at your service!

Getting assistance with your Open Leads account is a just a click away!

Sometimes the online Help section does not go far enough to answer our users questions about using Open Leads. In those cases, we have two key Tech Support options available online, 24/7 – 7 days a week.

Support Form: Click on the “Support” Tab on our home page (www.openleads.com) and fill out the form. Your request will be assigned to a member of our team for prompt response. Bookmark this link for even quicker access.

Live Chat Tech Support - from either our home page, or from the Table of Contents in the Help section within Open Leads. Live operators are available to answer your questions in real time.

Click here to Chat

Open Leads Scheduled Maintenance

Open Leads will be unavailable from 4:00 am to 10:00am EST on Sunday, January 25

During this time we will be moving Open Leads to a new set of servers. This move is in anticipation of our next round of features to be released this spring. In addtion to adding capacity, the new servers are also quite a bit more robust than the old ones, and will offer us the ability to provide better performance and better service to our users.

We apologize for the interruption in service, and appreciate your patience as we make this transition.