August 18, 2026
Kurt Sutherland went from unexplained drip campaigns to 65% more appointments
Kurt Sutherland (Real Estate Agent, Zimmerman MN)
Background
Solo agent with eXp Realty in Zimmerman, Minnesota. A Follow Up Boss customer since 2020, he began receiving leads in May 2020 and logging activity in July 2020. By the time of implementation, roughly 1,500 contacts sat in the Lead stage, alongside a heavily tagged database he had built himself over three years. He found KTS through a recommendation posted in the Follow Up Boss Facebook group.
Before Kee Technology Solutions
Automated emails going out to contacts that he had not set up and could not trace back to a trigger
Roughly 1,500 contacts parked in the Lead stage, many with no identifiable source
Tags used in place of stages, with duplicates like buyer, BUYER, and buyer future all live at once
No stage framework, so nothing in the account triggered the right campaign
Time going toward generating new leads while the existing database sat untouched
Paying for Follow Up Boss for 3 years and using a fraction of it
The part that bothered him most was not knowing what his own account was doing on his behalf.
“Sometimes it will trigger an action and I'm like, how do I control that action, and it just starts automatically, like suddenly they're on this drip campaign and I'm like, I didn't even set that drip campaign up.”
By the time of implementation, he had named the underlying pattern himself.
“I'm kind of realizing that I really need to become fluent in my CRM. I need to really know what is going on.”
Results After KTS Implementation (Setup completed November 16, 2023)
July 2024 to December 2024 vs December 2023 to June 2024
Calls up 22%
Appointments up 65%
Avg. text message attempts up 154%
% of leads responding up 50%
January 2025 to June 2025 vs July 2024 to December 2024
Calls up 45%
% of leads responding up 75%
% of leads responding by email up 199%
% of leads responding by text up 33%
July 2025 to December 2025 vs January 2025 to June 2025
Avg. text message attempts up 25%
% of leads responding up 21%
% of leads responding by text up 41%
What changed operationally
Stage changes and tags now drive the work. Moving someone to Past Client automatically starts the post-closing campaign. Adding a Buyer tag to a hot, warm, or cold contact starts the corresponding nurture campaign. Tagging an aging contact as Unresponsive starts the stale campaign, giving the contacts that had been sitting untouched in the Lead stage a reason to receive follow-up instead of nothing.
The smart lists replaced the scrolling. Contacts surface on a 7, 14, or 60 day rhythm depending on stage and drop off once communication is logged, so he can work through part of a list, step away, and return without having to hunt for where he left off. On his first implementation call, he described what he was trying to accomplish.
“If my CRM becomes to me like the back of my hand type thing and I know exactly what I'm doing and how to use it the best way, it's going to just help a lot.”
He now recommends KTS in the same Follow Up Boss Facebook group where he first read about us.
Ready to stop guessing what your CRM is sending and start using one system?