We just announced the release of our new-and-improved web application, Shovels Online, and it’s time to dig deeper into some best practices, tips and tricks, and other insider guidance from the Shovels team to help you leverage our platform to it’s fullest.
Note: We’re still technically in early-adopter territory, as far as pricing goes. If you’ve been considering our platform thus far, now’s the best time to get in on the action before prices go up! Black Friday is coming a little early this year 🎁
Shovels Online Use Cases
Compared with our other products, like our API and Enterprise data offering, Shovels Online has the lowest barrier to entry. But just because it’s web-based and codeless doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful in it’s own right.
Like any tool, it’s important to know which one to use. Shovels are designed to dig, and Shovels Online is designed to explore opportunities. Let’s get in to a few of our most common use cases.
Homeowner Leads
f you’re a New England regional heat pump retailer (or installer!), then you can use the Shovels Online permit database to find addresses with homeowner contact details in your market that show signals of buyer intent and interest.
Those signals might be recently pulled permits for other green or climate-friendly appliances, like solar panels or other electrification projects. This shows that they’re already interested in upgrading.
Cross-referencing those results against a list of addresses that recently pulled permits for fossil fuel-based heater installs lets you narrow down your search to those who may have aging heating systems, in need of replacement. Now you’re confident that you wont waste your time selling a heat pump to someone that just replaced their gas heater last year.
You now have a lead list complete with contact details and permit contexts, and all that’s left is for your Sales team to start reaching out.
It truly is that simple. Replace “heat pump” with “bathroom remodel”, “roof”, or whatever business you’re in, and the rest of the logic will stay the same.
Contractor Leads
Using nearly identical logic to the homeowner section above, you - a completely different New England regional heat pump supplier - may instead want to search for contractors in your market area.
Based on your model, you may want to go after the experienced and proven contractors and offer them a better deal than their existing supplier. Alternatively, you may want to look for brand new contractors, fresh-faced and newly entering the market, and build a relationship with them from the very beginning. The world is your oyster (stew).
Using the Building, Permit, and Contractor filters, you can fine-tune your search to the exact specifications of your business model, and export all that data (including contact info) into a CSV and the waiting arms of your outbound Sales team.
Derivative Lead
Homeowner and Contractor leads are by far the most common, but we’ve been routinely surprised by the breadth and width of opportunities that you can glean from public permit data.
For example:
- Permit approval timing: Use Shovels Online to figure out how long it will take to get that heat pump permit in your target jurisdiction!
- Resident demographics: We just released a new API endpoint for identifying residents of addresses. Now you know who to make that postcard out to 😊
How to Build a High-Quality Search
Now that we’ve got the general use cases covered, let’s dig deep into the logic of a Shovels Online search query, how to leverage the entire range of filters, and make sure that the results are actually what you’re looking for.
Specific Geographies
The first step is to determine what scale are you looking at, and in what region. If it’s a pretty niche project type, like New England pool installations, then you may want to zoom out and look at the state level.
On the othe end of the spectrum, if you’re looking at something very common like New Construction and Residential, then you may want to get as granular as zip code.
At the end of the day, you have unlimited searches, so there’s no harm in going piecemeal and working through your market area and seeing what volume you’re getting back.
Permits or Contractors?
Permits and Contractors are the two main axes by which all Shovels data is aligned, and Shovels Online is no different. While there is some overlap, like wanting to know the connected contractor on a given permit, most people will want to search for one or the other.
To start, we suggest looking at which persona you’re trying to sell to (a homeowner or a contractor) and choose accordingly.
Focusing on Key Filters
Some of the most important and powerful upgrades to our web application with the release of Shovels Online is the increased number of filters and parameters. You can now specify minimum project details for a given structure across multiple dimensions. Things like minimum market value , minimum lot size, or even keywords from the permit description make it easier than ever to get the exact kind of projects that fit your business model.
On the Contractor side, you can filter by performance metrics too: minimum total permits or maximum [project] duration and others.
Spot-Check the Results
Now that you’ve built out the perfect query, it’s time to put the results to the test. Once the filters are applied and the results are in, spot check a few by clicking “View Details” and make sure that it matches your expectation.
To get the volume you need, you may need to expand or contract your geography or date range. Adjust those, or any other filters, as needed and re-apply.
In any case, once you’re happy with what you’ve found, there’s two final steps:
- Save the filters, so you can repeat this search query later.
- Download the list, so you can run whatever final filters on the CSV file before dividing it up amongst your Sales team.
Using all these steps, you’ll set yourself up for the greatest chance of success in curating and delivering a high quality lead list. If you run into any errors, or have other questions about the results you see, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Tips and Tricks
The general tutorial above should get most people 95% of the way there. However, there are a few nifty tricks and optimizations that may be useful to you. As the Shovels Online platform grows and matures, and our engineers get to deliver on the functionality they’ve been dreaming up, expect this “Tips and Tricks” list to only grow from here!
Smart Exporting
By default, the “Download List” button caps out at 1000 rows in CSV file. If you want to get more than 1000, then you can slightly adjust the filters (such as geography) to get a new set of 1000 rows. With some quick combination and deduplication, you can easily build a Frankenstein lead list of as many rows as you can find.
We will note that this is not suggested at scale. If you’re finding yourself working at such volumes, we highly suggest checkout our our API, which is purpose-built for those kinds of loads. Plus, there are even more filters for even better search results.
Saving Your Work
With Shovels Online we introduced the Saved Profiles feature, which allows you to favorite and save individual permits, contractors, or geographies for easy and convenient future access. Beyond that, you can also save the exact filters and search parameters you’ve been working on already.
So once you’ve fine tuned your super query that fits the exact model and needs of your team, never fear of needing to recreate it later. It’ll be there, under Saved Filters, for next time.
Get In Now!
As we mentioned at the top, this is an exciting time to be using Shovels Online. If you want to lock-in our old pricing then be sure to reach out to our Sales team for help getting your account set up and your discount confirmed.
On the other hand, if you’re new here (welcome!) and interested in our platform, then we’d love to chat more about your specific use case and learn what permit data means to you.
We hope that this tutorial is helpful, and Happy Digging!