As a realtor, you might have heard the phrase “marketing automation” and are wondering what it is, or perhaps you know what it is and just need help identifying how it can help you in your business. Well if you were to keep reading you would find out that automation is basically what it sounds like. Automation allows you to replace some of the tasks that you would normally have to do manually with automated scripts. We want to share a few of the ways we feel realtors can take advantage of this functionality. So, stay with us and keep reading.
Every business owner, whether you are a realtor, restaurateur, hairstylist, accountant or manufacturer, chances are you wear many hats and are incredibly busy. So, the thought of having to run your own marketing on top of everything else can be daunting and often times takes a back seat to other tasks. Unfortunately, without marketing, your business can’t grow. In walks marketing automation, with the main goal of taking a load off of marketers. The idea is to take marketing tasks that are repetitive (or should be) and making them happen with little interaction from you. For instance, let’s take something as common as a followup email, you just met with or talked to a prospective client and now you need to follow up. The first email is pretty easy and you can handle that ok but then a week later when you still have not heard back you need to send a second email and then possibly a third. Staying in front of prospects can make the difference between landing the client or losing them.
This scenario is one of the most basic for automation, using a tool to send out pre-drafted emails that include links to either calendar booking sites or other helpful information is easy and can be set-up to send at set intervals of your choosing. So the same scenario as above, with automation this time:
Realtors on the call:
Before ending the call ask the prospect for both their physical address and/or their email address so you can send them some materials to review.
Realtors after the call:
Add the prospect to your automation software. (We suggest having a few different options set up in your software that would be for prospects at different places in the buyer’s journey. For this sample we are going to assume that the prospect is at the front end of the process in the “Awareness” stage. )
Email 1 to Prospect: Sent automatically and immediately once the prospect is added to the system.
This email thanks the prospect for their time and interest and provides them with your contact info and a link to check out other listings on your site.
Possible addition to the automation: Sent automatically and immediately to a third party thank you card company.
Handwritten thank you cards are an amazing way to show a prospect that you care. There are several companies out there that specialize in this area and allow you to send in a message via email and they handle the handwriting and the mailing of the cards on your behalf. That said you can have an email message that pulls in the name and address of the new contact that gets sent directly to the card company, this way the prospect will receive your thank you card within one to two days of the call.
Email 2 to Prospect: Sent automatically 1 week after the first email.
The second message is auto sent one week after the first. The point of this email should be to get a second meeting/phone call set-up to discuss next steps. There are several great calendar booking tools out there that connect to whatever your calendar tool of choice is that allows prospects to choose times that are convenient for them.
Email 3 to Prospect: sent automatically 1 week after the second email.
The third message is sent one week after the second and should have 2 points of focus. One, providing more quality content and two, an invitation to meet you for a cup of coffee with a link to your calendar booking site to choose the date and time.
This is a very simplistic workflow but even this represents enough manual work that typically this level of follow-up fails to ever happen. Once you get started with automation the wheels will start turning on all of the more complex scenarios you could accomplish with this. So give it a shot and let us know how it works out for you.