Realtors Hit A Home Run With Your Email Marketing
By Tim O'Keefe, Sat Dec 10th
Do you remember the old School girl/boy game of "Around theWorld", or "Around the Bases"? If you got a kiss you got toFirst Base. A french Kiss was Second Base. Read further to findout how to hit a Home Run! Are You Trying to Hit a Home Run With Your Prospects WithoutAsking Them on a Date? Most prospects are only leaving their phone number about 1/3 ofthe time. So 2/3 are leaving just a name and email. If you don'thave a strategy to approach this group, you are losing big timebecause your cost per lead skyrockets.
If you invest $9,000 a year into your online real estatemarketing campaign. And you get 500 leads a month, your Cost perLead is $1.50*. But if you aren't touching your email onlyleads, then you are affectively only getting 165. Your Cost PerClick jumps over three times to $4.55! *$9000 a year/12=$750 amonth. $750/500 leads=$1.50;$750/165=$4.55) Email marketing is the most important part of online marketing.Yet, I find that it is the least understood, and least timespent by Online Realty professionals. Some agents will spend allday on their website. They will effort on SEO to capture a realestate lead. Yet, they never spend the time to strategize on howto court the opt in subscriber. Marketing your real estate services thru email is about gettingto the first date. Then the second, and then third. Until thereis a marriage whereby you both swear allegiance to one another.And of course like many modern day relationships, this guy orgal will break this allegiance as soon as the scent of the next"hottie" walks past. You may not even get to First Base let alone hit a home run. Andyour prospect may not even let you go on a second date. But onething is for sure you will never get to a sale unless you startat the beginning. Then you can get to First Base....and secondand so on. But most agents try to steal a kiss, without evenasking the prospect out! Instead of being "easy", think of your prospect as that guy orgal you have to beg and beg to go out out with you. And thenafter all that finessing she only agrees to go to breakfast! Youhave to strategize to win her over. You bring flowers. You doapparant random acts of kindness just to get to a second dateand maybe first base. Before Free Love, this was called Courting. Your prospect is not a product of the 60's. They believe thattheir loyalty comes with a cost. They want to be courted and youto prove yourself worthy. And making your listings available oroffering a free report is a nice olive branch, but this frigidDiva expects some major courting. Do you really want this gal?Are you going to take care of her in good times and bad? Thenyou gotta pah-roove it. The fact is that the vast amount of your prospects will notleave a phone number, and most won't take any serious action forseveral weeks. As I explained in one of my Ten Commandments ofOnline
Marketing, people typically come to a real estate websiteto compare property. And they just do not know what they do notknow. At this point there is very little or no loyalty to you or yourwebsite. As long as the info flows, and they can get your MLSlistings they will be happy enough to revisit your site, if foronly the new home listings. So in order to breed loyalty and afinity you must do a fewspecific actions. Get yourself an Autoreponder/Drip Email system. These automatic email systems communicate with your prospectwhile you sleep. You write your letters and articles once. Andthe system will send a mailer on pre-programmed days for ever.Until your prospect raises their hand and says I am interestedto take this relationship to the next level. Take your list and segment them. Why would you segment yourvisitors? Because they think they are the most important personin the world. And if you want them to think you are the mostimportant Realtor in the world, you have to make them importantfirst. This goes eons beyond dividing your prospects into buyers andsellers, and hot, medium and cold. Your email communications toa 30 year Vet at IBM should convey a unique tone and contextdiferent than your typical communication with say a selfemployed-entreupreneiral Contractor. Educate & Interact When you can get someone to have an "aha" experience, you oftentimes will etch out a piece of their brain for you.Congratulations! You have now risen above just Real Estateagent. You are above the rest because you have become not justsomeone who sells real estate. But someone who cares enough totake the time to care for this person who is the most importantperson in the world. How? Teach them and get them to move along the sales funnel bybringing them to your site to learn and or get valuable and freereports. I am not talking about the typical pre-written Real Estatearticles and newsletters. You need to pour blood and write fromyour experience, from your heart. Would you send the object ofyour affection a templated love letter from a book? What wouldher reaction be? Thats the same reaction you will get from yourprospect. Your personality and expertise will shine thru and you willseperate yourself from all the others whom are too lazy to provethat they are an expert. Which is why when you do it, you willprofit handsomely. As you get your real estate prospect to interact with you andyour site. You can ask them to reveal more and more until youhave enough information to segment them, and take them to thenext level of your relationship. And then perhaps they will wantto do more than just "go out with you". About the author:Tim O'Keefe is President of Spider Juice Technologies and is anexpert at all phases of online marketing from Search EngineOptimization, Lead Capture and Converting Leads to Sales. TimO'Keefe Spider Juice Technologies Real Estate MarketingBlog 310-533-9145 |
