Overview
Pond Accounts are a valuable asset to any Office or Team, especially when it comes to minimizing lead loss and maximizing Agent availability. Ponds provide flexibility when assigning New Leads, the structure around Agents working the leads, and more coordination when recycling cold leads.
Please Note: Only Admins are able to create and manage pond accounts. Agents can only be added as members of the pond and view the added leads.
Important: Ponds will default to next Admin in entity if Pond Admin or Appointed Agent is removed from BoldTrail.
For more information on pond accounts, click here.
Creating A Pond Account
There are a few important items to keep in mind when creating a pond account:
Admins can only create pond accounts for the entities they are an Admin for. If you are a Team Admin for a single Team then you can only create a Team pond. If you are a Company Admin, you can create a pond for any Office or Team.
A pond account can only be associated with 1 entity and only that entity's Agents can be added. The pond for Office A cannot include Agents from Office B or Team C unless they are added to Office B or Team C.
Only Active Agents can be added to a pond account. No Lenders or Inactive/Roster Only users can be added.
In order to create a pond account, you must first be logged into your BoldTrail account.
First, navigate to the Contacts tab to the left. Then, click on the blue "Create Pond" button to the right.
Pond Settings
The first section of the pond's setup is the settings list. You will name the pond and choose optional settings that will control when and if a lead claimed from the pond will be automatically returned to the pond.
Please Note: If no reclaiming rules are created for this pond account, any claimed leads will stay with the claiming Agent indefinitely unless the Agent returns the lead to the pond.
IMPORTANT: If any of the settings under 'Requirements to keep the contacts from being reclaimed by the Pond' are toggled on, automated emails (such as from Smart Campaigns, Scheduled Mass Emails, etc) do NOT count towards these settings. Only manual communication (emails & texts), or auto-texts will count.
Add Pond Members
The second part will ask you to choose the Office or Team that this pond should fall under. Remember that the entity you associate this pond with will automatically become the owner of the leads added to this pond.
After you select an entity from the Office/Team list, you will be asked to select Agents from that entity and add them to the pond account.
Pond Notifications
From the pond 'Notifications' section, as an Admin you can toggle on different types of notifications such as a daily summary (this will go to you, the pond Admin), or pond member notifications which will be sent to the Agents in the pond.
Please Note: If 'New lead available in pond' is toggled on and leads are added in bulk, Agents will only receive one email.
Even if notifications are toggled on, Agents do have the ability to turn them off from the pond within their account using the 'Receive notifications' toggle.
Appoint Agent
Out of the added Agents you will then appoint someone to act as the main pond user, meaning that all communications sent to contacts in this pond account will come from this Agent and include their profile information for the contact to respond to.
Please Note: If you do not select an Appointed Agent it will default to you as the Pond Admin. This means that all contacts will show as being assigned to you as the Admin until they're claimed.
TIP: You can add yourself to the pond and then choose yourself as the appointed pond user. You can also create a "pond Agent" as an Active user in your Agents list and set the profile up with generic office or brokerage information.
Add Contacts
The last section allows you to choose existing contacts that match a filter you have previously saved or those that have a specific hashtag.
Please Note: Your Team & Office members' leads will not be added if they're not owned by the specific entity.
If you want to manually transfer or create leads to add to this pond, simply click the green "Finish" button. If you do choose to automatically add leads according to a saved filter or applied hashtag all of the leads from the associated entity (Office or Team) will be transferred, including any assigned or owned by yourself.
For instance, let's say that you are an Office Admin and create a pond for Office A. You have a #coldleads group that you would like to add to the newly created pond account and you do so by choosing that in the Hashtags drop-down.
All of the leads with that hashtag that belong to Office A and yourself as an Agent user will be automatically transferred to the new pond account and unassigned from the Agent previously assigned that lead. If you own any of the leads with that hashtag, those will also be added and Office A will now own the leads.
Please Note: Contacts added to the pond account in this step will have their status changed automatically to Prospect unless their status is already New Lead. If you wish the contacts to retain their current status that is neither Prospect nor New Lead, you will need to manually transfer them after the pond is created.
Pond Actions
Once the pond is created you will see the name you chose for it saved in the Ponds section of your Contacts list. You can easily tell the difference between a personally saved filter and a pond account since pond accounts will have a water droplet next to their name.
As the creator of the pond account, you have access to the pond's settings on the top right where you can rename it, add or remove Agents, and/or change the reclaiming rules.
Please Note: Within the pond settings, you, as the pond Admin, will have a lockbox next to your name. This means that you cannot be removed from the pond. Other members or Admins may be added and removed as necessary, but the Admin who created the pond cannot.
You can also take specific actions within the pond that affect the pond's contacts, including removing contacts from the pond. The pond's associated entity (Office or Team) will still be that lead's owner, but it will no longer fall under the pond's reclaiming rules.
If you would like to filter for specific contacts within this pond, you can do so by using the green "Filters" button to the left as you normally would.
Because all of the activity related to a contact is housed in their Timeline, you can easily see who the contact was assigned to prior to being added to the pond by clicking on that contact's name and scrolling down to the bottom of their Timeline.
TIP: The Summary area in the Insights section will include the Source and System Source for that contact as well, so you can tell if it was Agent-owned prior to being added to the pond.
To confirm which Agent within the pond has claimed a particular contact, you can see this in the contact's record on the very bottom left.
Viewing a Pond's Summary
Any time you view a pond's contacts the analytics for that pond will automatically appear along the top.
At a glance you can see how many pond contacts there are in total, how many have or have not been assigned (claimed) yet, how many new contacts have been added in the last 7 days, and the average response time.
If you click on the 'Pond Contacts', 'Unassigned', 'Assigned', or 'New in last 7 days' tile it will pull up a list of contacts matching that specific statistic.
Lead Routing Rules and Agent Accountability
Any Admin for the entity a pond is under can set up a lead routing rule to automatically add New Leads to a pond when they are added to BoldTrail.
To learn more about lead routing rules, click here.
All you have to do is create a new lead routing rule or edit an existing one and make the pond a recipient of the leads you determine. You can route leads to a pond using their source, an associated hashtag, or deal type, among other options.
Additionally, any pond accounts set up under a Team entity have access to a new Agent Accountability setting.
If this setting is enabled, Team-owned leads that are distributed to Agents will be automatically moved to a specific pond if the Agents don't follow up with lead communications. Admins who have access to the Team settings can choose a number of days and select the pond those Team leads should be moved to.
Please Note: While this setting is only available to Team entities, the pond selected to move these Team leads to does not have to be set up under the Team. However, only the ponds an Admin has access to will appear as an option to choose from in this setting.
Have more questions? Please reach out to Customer Support via the blue chat bubble to the right or by emailing support@insiderealestate.com!