Suppose you are a fan of driving for dollars, both virtually and physically.
In that case, you may have already come across several apps that can help find seller contact information, either in the field or comfortably from your office.
Batch Driven is such a tool.
This article is dedicated to looking at what it is, its features, the mobile app, the free trial, the costs, user reviews, and its differences from Propstream and Dealsmachine.
What Is Batch Driven?
Batch Driven is primarily an application that helps you gather seller contact information when you are physically and virtually in a particular neighborhood looking for real estate sellers.
Therefore, it can help you when driving for dollars or virtually and physically doing door-knocking.
It is part of the same “Batch” brand as other apps for real estate professionals, such as BatchLeads, BatchDialer, BatchSkipTracing, and BatchData.
It offers the same features as “BatchLeads”, with the difference that it offers more “street-capacities” for door-knocking and driving for dollars.
I will dive a bit deeper into the features in the next section.
Still, they mainly consist of driving routes tracking, owner detail lookup, team management, off-market property search, skip tracing, lead management, text messaging, and direct mailing campaigns.
Batch Driven Features – A Walk-Through
You arrive at Batch Driven’s dashboard after the whole onboarding procedure (opening an account and scheduling an onboarding call).
You can choose to drive for dollars virtually by using the street view map icon (the little yellow figure).
This feature is pretty interesting because you don’t need to literally get into your car and drive around.
BatchDriven, through Google’s application programming interface, manages to integrate Google’s Street View and overlays property and owner information when you click on the properties that interest you while moving through the streets.
If this is the right candidate, you can immediately add the property to a list or skip trace further owner information.
The app can also pull Zillow information right on the spot.
After doing your virtual driving for dollars session, you can check the driving routes you used by clicking on “driving routes” from the menu.
It will show how many routes you’ve completed, the miles driven, and the number of trips.
Moreover, you can also check the date-time duration for the drive, the number of properties added on a particular route, and the route listed with the location.
You can see the difference between virtually tracked routes and routes that were tracked when you did real driving for dollars by the yellow person icon, and virtual routes are always marked with the yellow person icon.
In the top center area, you will also find a search bar to search for properties by address.
Just below, you also have access to an additional search option that uses boundaries.
This helps you search in a particular area and define the boundary by drawing on the map.
Like with “BatchLeads, “you can also filter your different searches according to the property or owner criteria you are looking for.
Filters available are the following:
- Vacant properties
- Tired landlords
- Preforeclosures
- Vacant properties
- Inherited
- Cash buyers
- Unknown equity
Should you choose the base pricing plan, the only filter available to you will be the one for vacant properties.
You can then organize the different owner and property information in folders and apply tags.
I recommend the video below, where the search and virtual driving for dollars feature is well illustrated.
On the left sidebar, you have different options.
The first one is a house icon; this takes you to the area where you can filter and analyze the properties you have found and could be potential deals.
With a speech bubble, the following section is where you can send and receive messages from prospects.
The next feature illustrated as a route icon is the driving routes.
This feature is tailored to the mobile app and helps you in the field avoid driving around without orientation or inefficiently.
You can also use this to see previously driven routes.
Direct Mail or SMS campaigns can be found via the megaphone icon.
This feature allows you to prepare and send your different mailers or text messages to owners.
The next feature presented as a stats icon is the statistics feature, where you can check key performance indicators of your BatchDriven activities.
KPIs available are mailers sent, driven miles, time-driven, and properties added.
These are the features you can access from the left sidebar navigation area.
Just as with “BatchLeads,” you can also order different phone numbers if you don’t want to receive phone calls on your cell phone.
You can forward these calls anywhere, and BatchDriven has phone numbers from all area codes.
And if you work in a team, you can also grant access to the app to additional users.
For teams and personal use, another feature might come in handy: setting a particular status on your leads.
You can set the status of your leads in the settings you find in the left navigation bar and there in “folders, statuses & tags.”
You can check on the current status, change the order and create an individual one.
This can be customized by selecting different symbols, names, and colors.
This can also be done for a specific property when clicking on details and selecting “status.”
Batch Driven App
The Batch Driven App is fully tailored to the use case of driving for dollars.
This makes more sense since your smartphone usually has GPS capacities, which the app can take advantage of.
When you first open the Batch Driven App, you will find an overview where you can go to three areas: finding deals, viewing existing leads, and viewing team performance.
Selecting “find deals” will lead you to the map, where you can search and find properties by zip code, address, city, or county or drive for dollars.
As with the desktop version, you can also draw a boundary on the map to find properties in this area.
When you tap on the second area, “View existing leads,” you will arrive at the list of your saved properties. There you can apply different filters.
Lastly, the third app area is “View team performance,” where you can look at the key performance indicators of your team (provided you work with one).
Available KPIs are:
- Text messages sent
- Properties added
- Skip tracing done
- Mailers sent
- Miles driven
- Time driven
You can use two approaches when you use the app to drive for dollars.
You can just start driving by tapping “start tracking” beforehand and then save the properties you find immediately or after checking their details.
Or you can load a list of properties you already prepared in a particular neighborhood in advance and have the app guide you to drive by those properties.
You can also send text messages to owners from the app, but you will need to do two things before.
You must purchase at least one phone number and register for 10DLC (10-digit long codes), or the third-party software Twilio needs to be integrated.
It’s the same principle I already discussed in my article about Batch Leads.
To be able to send an SMS, you will need to skip tracing the particular contact information, tab “SMS Message,” and “add new.”
Before, you could use several mobile phone numbers linked to the regarding property, enter your message, and finally send it by pressing the “airplane” icon.
The mobile app also allows you to customize the status of your leads.
Per default, new properties are colored in green and labeled “New.”
To customize or edit the status, tap this “New” icon to lead you to the property details. There you will be able to select the new status for the property.
The following statuses can be set:
- Danger
- Dead deal
- Not interested
- Currently marketing (when the contact is already part of a marketing campaign of yours)
- Hot (highly interesting lead to you)
- New (default status when no status is defined yet)
Batch Driven Free Trial – Is It Free?
Batch Driven offers a free trial version for seven days but is not a generally free app after this period.
To get the free trial, you need to enter your data, such as your name, phone number, and email address, and set a password for your account.
According to Batch Driven, you don’t enter into an obligation contract when getting the free trial and can cancel anytime.
Batch Driven Pricing/Cost – How Much is Batch Driven
Batch Driven offers three pricing plans: Base, Performance, and Performance+.
In addition to the fixed monthly pricing plans, you can buy additional options, such as “Add Property Images” (curbside views), and real-time driving routes, for an additional $20 per month each.
To provide a complete overview, you can find the pricing table with all the features below.
| Base ($49 per month) | Performance ($119 per month) | Performance+ ($199 per month) |
|---|---|---|
| Unlimited property lookups | Unlimited property lookups | Unlimited property lookups |
| Uploading lists | Uploading lists | Uploading lists |
| Vacant properties | Vacant properties | Vacant properties |
| One-click skip tracing | Pre-foreclosures | Pre-foreclosures |
| Text messaging campaigns | Equity filter | Equity filter |
| DM options and custom templates | Tax defaults | Tax defaults |
| Training portal | Cashbuyers | Cashbuyers |
| Users included | MLS active/pending data | MLS active/pending data |
| $1 per phone per month | Tired landlords | Tired landlords |
| Cost per text: $0.07 | Inherited properties | Inherited properties |
| Skip tracing: $0.14 per hit | Unknown equity | Unknown equity |
| Cost per postcard: $0.53 | One-click skip tracing | One-click skip tracing |
| Cost per letter: $0.60 | Text messaging campaigns | Text messaging campaigns |
| DM options and custom templates | DM options and custom templates | |
| Training portal | Training portal | |
| Users included | Users included | |
| $1 per phone per month | Up to 10 users | |
| Cost per text: $0.07 | $1 per phone per month | |
| Skip tracing: $0.14 per hit | Cost per text: $0.03 | |
| Cost per postcard: $0.50 | Skip tracing: $0.12 per hit | |
| Cost per letter: $0.57 | Cost per postcard: $0.47 | |
| Cost per letter: $0.53 |
As you can see by the table, if you want to take advantage of most of the features and rather work solo, you may need to start with the “Performance” plan and skip the base plan.
And if you work in a team, you will need the “Performance+” plan.
Batch Driven Reviews
You may also wonder what current users think about Batch Driven.
That’s why I also analyzed different reviews across several user-based reviewing platforms.
Overall, Batch Driven has, on average, 3.9 stars out of five stars on Trustpilot (source), 4.1 stars on the Google Play Store, and 4.0 stars on Apple’s App Store.
You will also find three positive and three negative reviews from existing users to provide a balanced view.
One Positive Review
“I’ve been using BatchDriven to virtually drive for dollars.The software is loaded with features and tools to help you get deals! It’s always being improved. Their customer service is the best you’ll ever find on the market. I highly recommend it!” (source)
One Negative Review
“The app is great for virtual driving and about 100 SMS drip messages at a time. However, for me to get three or four leads per week. I need to have a list of 1000 messages at any one time. I did this and got some positive feedback that took me hours to get to. These were the messages that were over 100 down the message list. The app would freeze for up to 5 minutes when attempting to open a message. I had 1200 messages in 2 drip campaigns.
The app does not renew my credits as stipulated and this has stopped my campaigns unexpectedly. When I manually add credits and restart a campaign, it sends repeat messages that Annoy the recipients.
Looking for an app that can handle 1000-plus SMS messages without compromising processing time.” (source)
Batch Driven vs. Propstream – A Performance-Based Take
Batch Driven and Propstream compete pretty directly since their features are very similar.
One difference is that Propstream has more filters to offer. In addition to what Batch Driven can do, some additional filters are:
- HOA & Mechanic’s Liens
- Public Auctions
- Free & Clear Properties
- Divorce Filings
- Zombie Properties
- Senior Owners
Also, they are basically in the same range in terms of pricing.
Another likely difference is in the hit rate for skip tracing, which I analyzed in my general article about real estate skip tracing.
I mentioned that users reported getting only a 20-30% hit rate for skip tracing with Propstream. (source)
In contrast, BatchLeads skip tracing, and since it’s the same system, also BatchDriven can get a hit rate of more than 90%. (source)
Here, you can learn more about Propstream.
Batch Driven vs. Dealmachine – A Performance-Based Take
Dealmachine is another direct competitor to Batch Driven with the following main features:
- Skip tracing seller contact information
- Virtually driving for dollars
- Driving route tracking
- Seller lead management and follow-up campaigns
At first glance, the first two-tier monthly plans look more affordable than Batch Driven pricing plans.
But that’s only at first glance. When you look closer, property lookups are limited in their numbers according to the pricing plan, and this is not the case with Batch Driven.
Direct mailing pricing per piece is a bit higher with Dealmachine.
On the other hand, you have more filters available in Dealmachine in the basic pricing plan.
You can only filter for vacant properties in the same pricing plan as Batch Driven.
In Dealmachine, you can also do this for preforeclosures.
In terms of skip tracing performance, Dealmachine mentions that they provide a standard hit rate of 30%. (source)
In contrast, Batch Driven can get you a hit rate of over 90%. (source).
You can check out Dealmachine here.
This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.
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