Sending outbound cold email requires you to get a list of homeowners from services like Propstream. If you already have the list and you’re calling it, sending it social media updates, and more, why not just do an outbound email campaign as well?
Let’s be brutally honest here: Facebook seller leads aren’t great, and that’s because there's zero search intent; the quality of the lead is rarely ever high, but the lead volume is solid. This approach is juxtaposed with pay-per-click, which is when someone hops on Google and types in “What’s my home worth,” and gets greeted with ads at the top of their search results. The difference, of course, is that the seller is actively searching for information you can provide.
Making cold calls all day long is brutal, and those who hope to hire a calling assistant should be aware that it’s a role plagued by high turnover. However, that’s not to say that there isn't a smarter, more sustainable way to go about filling it. In this latest lesson, Frank breaks down the costs and benefits of hiring a full-time, dedicated assistant here in the United States or overseas, and explains how to find the right person without draining your funds or banging your head against the wall. You want a driven assistant willing to grind it out all day long on the phones and feed you legit leads that turn into appointments or fit nicely into your pipeline.
The most efficient way to reach a homeowner is direct mail. Let’s say you have a list of 1,000 homeowners to which you append phone numbers. You’d be lucky if there is a 50% match on those numbers. Most of those 500 numbers won’t work, and for the ones that do, you’ll be lucky to have a 5% to 10% answer rate.
Clients watch the full replay of the lesson here
One of the lists that you need as a real estate agent or an investor is an “equity list.” This is a list of homeowners who have equity in their homes, and you want to be in front of them as much as you can afford to be. From targeted Facebook ads to monthly postcards and community events, there are many things you can do.
Another type of list you should have is a “distressed” list. These are homeowners who are facing some type of difficulty and may need to sell. A distressed list is from all over the county, and your best distressed leads come directly from the county recorder’s office. You can go right to their office, you might be able to even go online, and look at the complaints, lawsuits, code violations, etc. for certain addresses.
Generally what you’d do first in this situation is hire a virtual assistant to log in daily to find the core complaints, recording notices, etc. and put them all into a spreadsheet. Different counties have different regulations for sharing information and data though, so sometimes you might have to hire a runner for a little more than the VA to go down there every single week and pull the data directly.
Your best distressed leads come straight from the county recorder.
The next best source for this kind of data is Propstream. The data is a few weeks old, but that’s not a big deal. You can set up a custom search to get notified each time a distressed property matching your criteria comes on the market. You can filter by home value, years owned, and more to target exactly what you want.
It’s nice to have cheap buyer leads coming into your business. If you can set it up where you have a constant drip, you'll always have business in the pipeline.
If you have any questions about this topic, don’t hesitate to reach out via phone or email so we can chat about it. I look forward to hearing from you.
Clients watch the full replay of the lesson here
You have relationships with a diverse network of people, but so do all of your agents. How do we apply this database marketing plan to swoop up all of their contacts into your list as well to maximize your exposure?
Here’s the shift you have to make: You have to rebrand your market to communicate your team concept and get people to buy into it. You want to include photos of your rainmakers on your blog, in your email graphics, Facebook page, and more.
When you send out an email, there’s a graphic at the top known as a masthead, and this should have pictures of your agents on it. Likewise, your blog needs to have a graphic that showcases your whole team together, whether it’s located at the top or off to the side.
To create a compelling team shot, take quality individual photos of everyone with a neutral background (gray is the best) and then extract them all using Photoshop; as more individual photos are added to this new group graphic, we can shuffle them around as needed to get the best aesthetic.
That way, instead of a newsletter sent by you and solely focused on you, people will receive a newsletter from a company that’s branded to highlight its team concept. They’ll check their inbox and see an update from their top real estate company, firm, group, collective, or team.
The next step is to export lists. All of your agents will need to pull out their cell phones and export all of their contacts onto a spreadsheet. They’ll then do the same with their Gmail, Outlook, etc. Perhaps they can even get a hold of some of their past broker files.
Once each agent compiles their contacts onto a spreadsheet, have them print that out and put it in a designated folder. If, for example, you have three agents, then you should ultimately have one folder containing all of Agent A’s contacts, one folder for Agent B’s, and one folder for Agent C’s.
Those of you with larger teams should be feeling pretty excited—just think about having every single agent’s respective, comprehensive list inside your myEmma account. It adds up very quickly!
Clients watch the full replay of the lesson here.
Once you have your Gmail, Outlook, CRM, Facebook, mobile phone and all other contacts exported, de-duplicated, scrubbed and loaded into an email marketing system (we love MyEmma.com), it's time to send them a warm reconnect email message. In our Classroom this week, Frank shares the psychology behind how to craft this email to appeal to literally everyone you know. Here are a few tips from class on how to write it, with the example message he shared in class for clients.
Clients watch the full replay of the lesson here.
In this segment from our client Classroom training this week, Frank covers popular people search services such as Intellius, Spokeo and Been Verified – along with FCRA regulated skip tracing sources - such as LexisNexis® Accurint®, Transunion® TLOxp, and Microbilt Enhanced People Search.
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I'm going to cover in class live this Monday, May 18th @ 12pm PST / 3pm EST “How to Pack Homeowners into Seller Workshops".
You can register here for class.
You can do it virtually with a webinar now on Zoom. The homeowners are showing up, and it's very effective!
Previously, you would hold these at libraries and market them to 'downsizers' living within a mile or so. Not anymore with COVID.
Download the worksheet to complement class here (PDF).
It's just a matter of driving people to your Eventbrite page where you get registrations (and the respective seller lead). You can sell online events on Eventbrite now for webinars - for free!
Clients and friends,
As we all do our best to slow this pandemic - while keeping our businesses afloat - I'm here to guide you to cost effectively stay in better touch with your database for low-cost opportunities as we all shift.
I wrote you last week I believe our role as professionals is to be the calming voice; guiding people with helpful, on-point advice.
With that in mind, let's talk about this week how to create videos customers want to watch.
There are 5 ways...
1. Local commentary on national news
Go to Google News and search for the topic “Real Estate”. You’ll see top news stories across all media outlets you can pass along to your database. Make sure you pick an authoritative news source, by the way, and not “The Onion”. Make a quick video on how that national story is relevant to your local market or audience. For example, “The national news just released a story on how home prices are being affected nationally, but that’s not what we’re seeing here. Here’s what you need to know…” Include a link to the main story in your email/video/blog, too.
Real estate clients and friends,
I wrote you this week on how to adjust your communication with your database due to the Coronavirus outbreak. I highly suggest you read it.
I'm of the opinion all your communication with your database for the next few months will be entirely Coronavirus related (home prices, staying safe at showings, reassuring people, providing local real estate facts, being the calming voice, etc).
With that, as we all try to figure out what's going to happen with this disease, people still need to buy and sell homes. It's my goal you still get that business.
With your permission, I'd like to give you a great marketing tip this week you can use to find people who want to sell their home with cold, outbound email.
We just wrapped up the module on “How to Build Your Seller Lead Database” in my Masterclass this week.
I covered in this module how to get seller leads into your database in the first place, in addition to staying in better touch with your past clients and sphere (of course).
Real estate clients and friends,
I figure it’s a good time to talk about new revenue sources to smooth out inconsistent real estate commissions on the heels of the US stock market dropping 10% last week.
Have you ever thought of a joint-venture with a local property management company?
I think this is a “must-do” as a real estate agent. Everywhere else around the world brokerages provide this to smooth out revenue, but not here in America!
How many times do you get the objection “I want to rent it instead of sell it”?
It’s also no secret home-ownership is down in America. We’re becoming a nation of renters.
Our clients, Adrienne and Attilio in Hawaii, partnered with a local property manager and helped him with this property management blog:
