Often times you hear all this chatter about which CRM has the best real estate drip email campaigns? What’s the best way to drip on leads?
As a “marketing dude”, it’s my job to tell you what’s working today and what’s not. Automated, template based, multi touch text based drip email campaigns will soon be a way of the past.
One of the cool things about marketing is that it’s always changing. The Realtors who thrive change with it.
I’m not saying that real estate drip email campaigns don’t work anymore, I’m just saying that they don’t work as well and I believe their effectiveness will continue to fade away really fast in real estate.
They will continue to be effective in many other businesses, but real estate is a belly to belly business and is unique from others.
WHY?
I’m going to let you answer your own question to that. Have you ever been on the receiving end of an autoresponder? How does it feel? Cold? Robotic?
The entire point of an real estate drip email campaign should be to trigger engagement and identify prospects who may need your services. In theory you send out x amount of emails over the course of x amount of days and they are supposed to “engage” the potential prospect who opted in or inquired to your marketing piece.
The problem today is that everyone knows about autoresponders. It’s obvious when you are on the receiving end of one and that’s exactly why their effectiveness are fading fast.
People’s inboxes are also cluttered with SPAM and other messages so less and less of emails are getting opened. Especially ones with very boring subject lines that offer no value to their recipients.
Think about it…
You as a consumer opt in to receive information on a property and within seconds you receive this generic email from the “source” you opted in to and it feels totally robotic. It loses all authenticity and the “prospect” feels less connection to you right off the bat.
The key to converting leads that opt in to any lead source you implement whether it be Zillow, ZBuyer, or a PPC campaign is…
Personalization & Humanization
Automation doesn’t convert leads, human interaction does. Start putting the focus of your follow up on relationship building and leads will start converting. Quit acting like your in sales and start acting like you’re in service.
Make the focus on serving your prospect with the answers to their questions they are inquiring about in the fastest amount of time possible doing so in a very personable way. Also, personalize your interaction with them so you have a better opportunity of attracting them to work with you.
Converting leads is sort of like dating. You have just a few minutes to get their attention and make an impression. I don’t care where the lead comes from, this is true across the board.
Here’s what I recommend adjusting your real estate drip email campaigns to.
#1 Speed to the lead
This is no surprise. We know that the faster you respond back to any inquiry the better chance you have to converting the lead. However, the key to converting the lead is building a relationship first, then looking to see if they are good prospect or not. Following up ASAP is the key.
Whatever system you are using for your follow up, if not doing so personally, needs to follow up ASAP.
#2 Determining Your Channel Of Communication
What do you think is more effective, an email auto-responder boiler plate message or a text message? Some of the top agents dominating lead sources like Zillow, Realtor.com, and Z-Buyer are personalizing their follow up using text messaging and video email.
WHY?
It’s way more personable and feels more natural to the prospect. People don’t want to be on the receiving end of an autoresponder. They want your attention. Following up with a text or video email is WAY more effective than a real estate drip email campaign. If you can follow up with phone call right away, then great, but chances are you are not available 24/7 and speed to the lead is crucial.
Think about automating your initial follow up with video email or text message so it stands out and has a better chance of connecting with your prospectand creating a response. It’s when they respond to your quick reply that you can really personalize your communication.
#3 Personalization
Did you ever hear the phrase, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it? It’s absolutely true. If you want to start converting more incoming leads you need to humanize your brand. You want to let people know you are not a blood sucking commission based salesperson as fast as possible.
If your real estate drip email campaign is not giving you the results you want, maybe it’s because you are coming off as a robot. Often times, Realtors overthink the simplicity of follow up by trying to be someone they are not. Be yourself and talk like your normally do. When you do so, it will be more natural and that’s what people are connected to. Focus on creating a level of service catered to what your “lead’s” inquiry was all about.
Did you ever get cold called from Comcast/Xfinity and hear the “boiler room” in the background? The telemarkter is reading a script and it feels slimy. This is no different. No inbound phone call received from your marketing should ever feel “scripted”, because doing so would not feel NATRUAL. The key to converting leads is communicating effectively. This is what you need to know about how humans perceive communcation. Once you understand this, you will want to focus all your marketing efforts with this in mind, including responding to your in-bound leads.
How Communiction is Perceived
60% of all communication is based on your tone.
30% of all communication is based on your body language
10% of all communication is based on the content or what you actually say
YOU CONVERT LEADS WHEN YOU COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVLEY
This means that what’s coming out of your mouth is not as important as how you say it. A real estate drip email campaign lacks tone and body language, therefore tends to lack following the rules above of effective communication.
It’s more important to be Personable vs. Professional
For example, my local brand is the Chicago Real Estate Dude. When I follow up I am a “dude”. If I were following up by phone, my initial line is, “Hi this is the dude, the Chicago real estate dude that is…”.
It’s almost always followed up by a laugh by whoever I’m speaking with. I use my friendly brand to take away the “sales” aspect and focus on connecting on a human level. How many people get mad at a dude? How many people already have an impression of a “Realtor” before speaking with you?
If I were going to send a text message on follow up, I would say something along the lines of “hey this is the chicago real estate dude, just got your message, I’ll follow up within the next hour to answer your question is that ok :). Notice that I want to put some kind of emoticon or smiley face to personalize the text.
This is more natural. My text message, even if it’s automated, will not be known its automated. It has to feel natural for max effectiveness.
If I were using a video for my follow up, I would either use BombBomb’s drip email campaign and have a pre-recorded video sent immediately to the prospect. Again my goal here is to stand out and “connect” on a personable level, not conversion.
I know that regardless of what I say that it will go in one year and out the other so the main goal of any interaction from any opt in I receive is to build a relationships first. When you make this your focus, the pressure of “converting” tends to go away and you find yourself more natural.
So let me ask you, what do you think is more effective? A robotic real estate drip email campaign or a personalized text, video, or phone call? did you get in to real estate to help people or make money?
*Please don’t be a real estate agent to “ONLY’ make money. Do it because you have a passion of helping people with their house problems and not because you want to be “rich”. If your passion is REAL, you’ll attract LOTS of business following what I show you.
How Many Times Should You “Drip”?
I get a lot of opt ins on my website. I follow up with all of them once. I’m not saying this is what you should do, but here’s my take. People who are shopping around online are also visiting more sites than yours. Because they are fishing for information, don’t be surprised they forget about your existence just a couple hours later.
My only goal in marketing is to initiate engagement.
In regards to real estate drip email campaigns, I don’t do them. Instead, I automate my initial follow up once and then personally follow up only with those who respond to my initial reply.
The initial text, video email, or phone call(which I don’t have time to do) is only to identify people who did respond because I know they are more likely to engage. It’s the ones who respond initially that’ll I’ll invest my time to follow up with.
I DO NOT put them on a 5-15 day real estate drip email campaign!
The reason for this is because I know the more time that goes past their initial inquiry the less they remember what they inquired about. I also hate being “automated” because regardless of how well you personalize it, most intelligent people know it’s automation by third plus email they receive from you.
The key is to personalize and humanize your follow up.
You can do that through the method in which your communication is delivered and focus on delivering the most impactful way to respond, which also happens to be the most personable.
Converting leads is about relationship building. If you are good at that, this should be a breeze for you, but make your response service oriented vs. sales oriented and watch the difference.