So, you have email addresses gathered because you have been asking people. And, you have set up your databases in your real estate or email software. If you are like many agents, you now have the problem of what to send and how often.
For email marketing to be effective, consistency is imperative. Automating is the only way to achieve this without creating another time and energy drain. You must use or develop systems that will support your marketing efforts, such as the action plans in PREP and in Top Producer and other real estate software.
Step one: Use a real estate software to set up action plans for your email marketing.
Step two: Create a separate plan for each type of contact. Determine the frequency you want to “touch” each of these contacts and plan the dates in. For instance, you may want to contact future clients weekly or every two weeks and your Realtor networking partners only every 4-6 weeks. This can also dovetail with snail mail or phone contacts. A mix, especially including phone or personal contacts, will increase your results.
Step Three: Set up separate groups in your database so you can send more targeted and personalized messages. Some possible groups would include:
- Past clients and customers
- Current Prospects
- Future Prospects
- Realtor Networking partners
- Other groups specific to your niche markets
Step four: What To Send
Some Great Ideas:
Birthday and Anniversary Cards and/or Reminders. Include the birthdays of each family member, their anniversary and the anniversary of their home purchase. Or send the husband (or wife) a reminder of their spouse’s birthday or their anniversary the week before.
Resources that pertain to their interests: For an out of town buyer. websites links on services or information about your town and mortgage information would be of interest. Alice Held of Coldwell Banker Success in Scottsdale AZ sends a great monthly e-mailing with scads of links every month depending on the holiday;i.e. Easter, Memorial Day, etc. to her referral network and to her client database.
Co-marketing with other companies or service providers. Creating a LONG list of others who are interested in the same demographic and psychographic markets that you are. Link to others willing to give discounts or a benefit for contacting them. Maybe $5 off an hour massage. Or a free 15 minute tax consultation.
Articles of interest. There are scads of sites with consumer information that will be helpful to your clients. Insert a link to articles found on Realty Times or at Realtor.com. Give them the title and the link and they can go, if it interest them.
Offer a contest and have them go to your website to sign up. Convince a local restaurant to give a dinner for two, if you’ll send out a review and the contest offer. Or you can sponsor a $1000 drawing by going to www.webstakes.com and it won’t cost you a thing!
Give a neighborhood or city update on the real estate market; i.e. number of homes sold in the last 30 days, average sales price, etc.
Share information about what is going on at the local school, with the Girls Scouts or any other kid related information, if you are marketing mostly to families with kids.
Health tips or links to places where your clients can get tips to improve their quality of life.
Specific tips or reports that will increase the salability of their home.
Your real estate software has letters, cards and reports that can be easily modified for this purpose.
You get the idea and I bet you could brainstorm with some agents in your office and each come up with 5 more ideas. The important thing for you to do is to spend the couple of hours that it will take to plan the next 6 months of emailing, so it is a no-brainer and all you’ll have to do from now until Christmas is to hit the send button because the plan has already been created. Do it THIS WEEK! Months from now, it will make for a very Merry Christmas!
Published: June 23, 2000
Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.
 Joeann Fossland ePRO, GRI, MCC, PMN, SRS is a dynamic speaker and business coach. Co-creator of THE REAL ESTATE GAME® and NoBloggerLeftBehind.com, she provides coaching solutions to enhance your effectiveness and life balance. You can subscribe to her free weekly tips, attend free monthly tele-seminars, and find out about classes delivered by email and personal coaching by visiting Joeann.com or email her at .
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