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Real estate agents who use digital signage have reported up to a 35% increase in property inquiries, which shows the value of keeping listings visible and current. Managing digital signage content manually becomes a time-consuming administrative task that takes away from client-facing activities that close deals.
Automation removes this burden by syncing your listings directly from your “source of truth” to your screens. This streamlines your workflow and maximizes the impact of your signage investment. In this article, we'll explore how to automate property listings with digital signage, the benefits for real estate professionals, and walk through a complete workflow from new listing to automatic screen display.
The Problem With Manual Updates
Your Brand Images Suffer
Unless you have a brand guideline in place and enforce it every time someone touches your display content, there’s a big risk of mismatches in font sizes, image borders, and color schemes that can weaken your brand image. And even then, there is a big chance that those guidelines might get overlooked or shortcuts taken if you’re in a hurry. An automated system only updates the selected fields from your pre-set template, like price or status, and leaves the rest of the layout intact.
Waste up to 3 hours Weekly
Out of the 16 hours real estate agents spend on admin tasks weekly, according to NAR, manual signage updates easily consume 2-3 hours of uploading and resizing images, navigating different interfaces, and updating each screen one by one. At an average agent hourly rate of $75-100, that's $150-300 in lost productivity every week, money that could be earned through client-facing activities.
Difficulty in Managing Dynamic Content
Real estate markets change quickly, with listings, prices, and availability shifting frequently. Manual updating cannot keep up with this pace, which makes it hard to operate real-time or dynamic content tailored to audience needs or specific viewer times, which limits the effectiveness of digital screens as a marketing and communication tool.
Increased Operational Costs
Frequent manual updates often require staffing or outsourcing dedicated personnel for screen maintenance. This adds to operational costs and complicates logistics, especially when screens are installed in various lobby or window locations.
What Is Real Estate Listing Automation
Real estate display automation means connecting your property data with your digital screens so that updates happen instantly and automatically across all displays. When you mark a property as sold in your CRM or adjust a price on your website, every screen in your office updates simultaneously without any manual intervention.
In practice, this involves a digital signage content management system (CMS) that connects to your property data source. Through the CMS, you design and organize the content (property photos, details, videos, etc.), and set rules for when each piece should display. Hit publish, and the CMS sends the content to the media players over the internet, updating your screens in seconds.
How To Automate Property Listings With Digital Signage
Our CMS at Look Digital Signage makes this possible through its powerful Zapier integration, which connects your displays with hundreds of third-party applications through a simple trigger-and-action system. Here's how it works in practice:
- Create a Trigger in Zapier: This is an event in another app that starts the automation. For example, a price update added in Google Sheets or a new client inquiry in a CRM could be a trigger.
- Create an Action in Zapier: After the trigger, the action updates the content on the digital screens. To connect, you provide your Action API key, which you find in the Company Settings section of your Look CMS dashboard. Then you choose the specific layout and action to update on your screens, such as changing a text field or image.
- Activate the Zap: Once the trigger-action workflow (Zap) is tested and activated, any time the trigger event happens, Look automatically updates the screen content accordingly without manual intervention.
You can create multiple automation workflows for your real estate listings, for example, one that adds new listings to your screens when entered in your CRM, another that removes sold properties, and a third that updates pricing whenever it changes. These workflows run independently and simultaneously.
The technical requirements are minimal; you only need an internet connection, your existing (or new) displays, and Look Digital Signage software running on a media player connected to each screen. Plus, Look DS offers features such as scheduled playlists, continuous playback offline, and a layout editor to customize your displays for maximum impact.
Data Sources
Rather than creating yet another place to update listings, real estate listing screens automation pulls from your existing workflows.
Property Listings Database (IEG, MLS, or Similar)
If your property information is managed through listing services such as MLS, IEG, or similar databases containing details such as photos, prices, and availability, any changes you make here, such as marking a property as sold, adjusting prices, or adding new listings, will be reflected on your window and lobby screens in real-time. For example, a condo that sells will no longer be displayed, which helps you maintain credibility throughout.
CRM Systems
Just to mention a few, real estate CRM integration with Look and Zapier connects to HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Salesforce, and Pipedrive. If your client and appointment information live in any of these systems, then your digital screens can pull relevant details directly. For instance, when you schedule a new open house, add a client meeting, or update an agent’s availability in your CRM, those updates can show up instantly on lobby screens or agent spotlight displays. This way, visitors get real-time information about appointments and events without anyone needing to manually update the screens.
Spreadsheets (Google Sheets)
Many teams track property info, pricing, or event schedules in spreadsheets because they’re simple to update and share. Your digital screens can connect directly to these spreadsheets, so when anyone on your team edits a cell, like changing the date of an open house or updating a listing price, those changes appear immediately on your lobby or window screens. This way, you don’t have to visit each screen or remember to update menus manually.
Calendar Apps (Google Calendar, Outlook)
If you maintain an Open House schedule on Google Calendar or similar, that calendar can feed a “This Week’s Open Houses” section on your screens. Add an event to the calendar, and the integration can push it to your display playlist automatically.
Benefits for Realtors
Moving to automated property displays delivers tangible improvements that directly impact your bottom line and daily experience as a real estate professional.
Real-Time Market Responsiveness: With market conditions shifting constantly, having the ability to refresh property details, pricing, and availability instantly ensures prospective buyers always see the latest info.
Scalable Operations for Growth: As your agency grows, managing signage updates in multiple locations manually becomes impractical. Property screen content automation lets you scale effortlessly, since updates made once are pushed out simultaneously across all your offices and display points. This means whether you have two branches or twenty, you maintain control and ensure consistent client communication without increasing workload.
24/7 Professional Presence: Your window and lobby screens display accurate information around the clock with zero staff effort. The system monitors your data sources continuously and refreshes content as soon as changes occur in your CRM or MLS. This creates a professional storefront that operates independently. Prospects browsing your windows at midnight see the same current inventory as clients visiting during business hours, all maintained automatically while you focus on revenue-generating activities.
Stronger, Unified Brand Image: When new listings populate your displays, they inherit your exact fonts, colors, logo placement, and layout specifications in the pre- designed template. Every property appears in identical formatting across all screens to create a cohesive brand experience that manual updates often compromise through rushed formatting or individual interpretation of brand guidelines.
Consistent branding can increase client recall by up to 80%, meaning prospects are far more likely to remember your agency when they’re ready to buy or sell.
Competitive Advantage Through Technology: Once you modify your listing information in your data source, the update to your screens is instantaneous and applies to all associated screens without errors or mismatches. Clients always see current information, and your agency outpaces competitors who still update content manually.
Example Workflow: Automating Property Listings Updates
Objective: Automatically update digital screens to display the latest property listings whenever new listings are added or existing listings are modified.
Step 1: Choose Your Trigger App in Zapier
- Use a listings source such as Google Sheets, your MLS system, or a CRM (like HubSpot or Salesforce) where listing data is entered or updated.
- Set the trigger event, for example, "New Spreadsheet Row," "Updated Spreadsheet Row," or "New Listing Created" in your MLS. Zapier will monitor this source for changes.
Step 2: Configure Look Digital Signage Action
- In Zapier, add an action and select “Look Digital Signage.”
- Pick “Send Action” as the action event type.
- Connect your Look Digital Signage account using your unique Action API key found in your Look CMS company settings.
Step 3: Set the Target Layout and Action
- Choose the specific layout (screen design/template) that displays your listings.
- Select the action within that layout you want to trigger, such as updating a text field with a new price, changing an image to the newest property photo, or updating a slide in a playlist.
Step 4: Map Data Fields
- Map the fields from your listings source (property address, price, photo URL, status, description) to the corresponding digital signage fields. This ensures the relevant information shows accurately on your screens.
Step 5: Test and Activate
- Test the Zap to confirm that when a new or updated listing appears in your source app, your digital signage content changes accordingly.
- Turn on the Zap to automate the process going forward.
Automate Your Property Listings the Smarter Way
Once you automate property listings on digital signage, you gain a significant competitive edge through timely and synchronized content delivery. This reduces operational workload while maintaining brand consistency and accuracy, both critical to client confidence. The result is a scalable, tech-forward marketing approach that enhances client experience, accelerates sales cycles, and positions your agency as a market leader ready to grow in an increasingly digital real estate landscape.
Let Look sync your listings automatically so you can focus on closing deals.
