#146 Mail-Right Show We Discuss Why There’s Gold In Your Old Database Lists

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Too many real estate agents are all about getting new leads and forget that there real gold ‘MONEY’ to be found in their old database lists of contacts from old clients to people who they slightly know in the community. We discuss in this show what you can do effetely to get real gold from your old database contact lists!

Jonathan: Welcome back, folks. This is the Mail-Right Show, all about getting you results from technology for your Real Estate business. And in this show, we’re going to be discussing lists and why lists are so important for your business. And then, we’re also going to have a discussion about doing things on your mobile phone. We know that you Agents are away from your office most of the time on the road and basically you have great technology in your pocket so we’re going to be discussing that as well. I’ve got my great co-host here, Robert. Robert, would you like to quickly introduce yourself?

Robert: I’d love to. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound Real Estate Marketing. You can go to inboundREM if you have any interest in seeing my website or learning more about me. But I’m a 10 year veteran of Real Estate Marketing and I love sharing information that helps Realtors make money with technology.

Jonathan: That’s great. And like I say, I am the found of Mail-Right. It’s a Marketing platform that helps you get leads, quality leads at an affordable price with an emphasis on using Facebook. So we’re going straight into the show. I think I said it was show 146 and we’re going straight into it. Lists and why lists are important. I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve been listening to various other resources last week and over the weekend. You can have really experienced Real Estate Agents that get amazing results from utilizing systems that they have been using for quite a while. Even now I know some Agents that do a lot of door knocking. They actually go in the field and they do so much of it every week and they still get results from it. I know Agents that do a number of calls per day or have like 2 to 3 days, a couple of hours, they do it every week and they get results.

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: I’ve also noticed that a lot of Agents are not very good at keeping in touch with their, what I would call, their past clients and their sphere of influence, i.e. people that they’ve met in various functions, at the gym, at business lunches, it doesn’t really matter what it is but they’re in your sphere, somebody that could recognize you. And then, anybody else that you touch in the community through any form of Marketing or collecting their email and phone number. I’ve found that a lot of Agents are very, very poor at keeping in contact with these different groups, different, I would say, lists.

Robert: And how would you recommend that you if you’re going to do it the right way? Because you’re definitely, between the two of us, my opinion is that you’re more the list expert than I am. So I’m curious to know how would you stay in charge of these lists if you were indeed a Real Estate Agent?

Jonathan: I think that’s a great question. Thank you, Robert.

Robert: Yeah. Serving it right up for you.

Jonathan: Yeah. Thank you. That’s why I like it. So, first of all, segmenting your list. Don’t treat your list all the same because I’ve just outlined three ways of dividing your lists into lists and fundamentally, depending on where you are in your career, you have different list structures. If we’re talking about an Agent that’s been in the business for less than a year or less than 2 years, your list of prior clients is going to be limited. It’s just a fact of life. If you’ve been in the business for 5, 6, 7, 8 years, you should have a reasonable list of clients that you’ve done business with and it doesn’t have to be totally to selling the house or buying a house. It could be even somebody that the deal fell through. It depends how the deal fell through. If there was personal conflict between you and the client, obviously contacting that client probably won’t work. But if it was just a deal that fell through but the client was satisfied that you did your best but it fell through and you didn’t go on to another deal, I still say it’s a good idea to contact that person. Right?

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: So you’ve got this list of people that you’ve actually bought houses, sold houses or there’s been some kind of business transaction. Right? They are what I call high touch business prospects. They either could have been thinking of moving again or buying another house, an investment property or somebody in their family or somebody that’s a close friend. They’ve done business with you so they should be open to referring you much more easier. Right?

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: So I call those high touch. With those high touch type of people, I think the kind of email that you should send, most Agents, based on my experience talking about those type of people, you’re talking between 200 to 300, probably, people on that list. Right?

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: I would call them. The emails I would send to them would be highly customizable and I would utilize something like BombBomb on that kind of list.

Robert: Okay.

Jonathan: I would send them a personalized video email saying how are you doing, blah, blah, blah and then I would follow through with a call and I would keep on trying to keep in contact with those people on a regular basis depending on what each individual on that list is comfortable with. Is that making any sense, Robert?

Robert: Yeah it is. But why don’t you explain why you would use BombBomb? I know what BombBomb is and I know that you really are familiar with it. You’ve had somebody on the show from BombBomb.

Jonathan: I wasn’t available to interview him that week, unfortunately. Well, I think BombBomb’s a really, really great tool and I think it’s a power tool and I think it’s worth the price if you can afford to utilize it with other Online Marketing systems. I think for mass email and for the other parts of the list structure, as what I’m going to describe it, I don’t think it’s suitable and I think overusing it you could diminish its power by overusing it.

Robert: Sure.

Jonathan: But I think you’re going to get a bigger opening rate. They’re going to recognize your face straight away.

Robert: A lot of people don’t know what it does though. Why don’t you explain?

Jonathan: Basically, it enables you to send out video email to people. It gives you an interface that enables you to do that reasonably easily. To those 300 people, the beauty of it, you could set up email that’s personal. You don’t have to mention their name and you could blast it to all those 300 people on your list in one go so you’re saving a lot of time, first of all, and it still comes across really personal. Right?

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: You’ve got to get your wording correctly and you’ve got to be comfortable on the camera. It uses the webcam that’s on most people’s laptops or it comes with an app for Android or iPhones so you can use your phone to record your message. Actually, the audio is probably the thing that you’ve got to get done well but it deals with all that as well. And then, it gives you interface to put your list in and manage it and I think for those people that you’ve done business with over the past, let’s say 2 years or plus, it’s just a really good tool to regenerate that relationship again. And then, do a follow through call because it will show you who opened the email. Right?

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: And then, you can take that information and put it into your customer relation system and then you can set up to do a follow through call for the people that actually opened the email.

Robert: For the record, I agree 100 percent about using BombBomb on various parts of your list. I even would go so far as to suggest recording different BombBomb messages. But as you and I have already discussed and we agree or at least I think we agree but it doesn’t matter whether we do or we don’t. I think that video, the concept of somebody talking to you, is the most powerful form of Marketing that’s currently available in 2018. So, even if, let’s say that your open rate or your engagement rate was lower with BombBomb or video emails, I believe that the messaging inside them is stronger than other forms of messaging and I think that that relationship that you’re keeping alive or establishing with your customers is extremely important.

I use video in my business every single day. Every single day I use video. I send video messages to my clients to update them every month. I don’t have my list segmented correctly which is why I’m staying quiet for this particular episode is because I don’t like to actually talk about things I have not taken the time to do myself. But I very much could see the day, actually, that’s not true. Using the example that you just used, I have done that. I have a list of clients. I have a list of people that I’ve done presentations to and then I have my main list. But I don’t really segment my Marketing out too much to those three lists and that’s something I should be doing and that I’m not doing.

Jonathan: Thanks for that Robert. And then, we get onto your sphere list. I call it your sphere of influence.

Robert: Okay.

Jonathan: These are anybody that knows you, that maybe could recognize you if they saw you in the street and they know your name or your business name in the area. These are looser than people that have done actual business with you. Right?

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: And it’s really important to keep in contact with those people, just not to overdo it. These people, probably you’re not in the present moment looking to buy or sell but they will be so sending the right short but friendly kind of email to those people is probably appropriate because they will recognize you. The email should be branded with a recognized photo of you, an up to date photo of you, it should be professional in look. But I feel it shouldn’t be like a report on the condition of the housing stock in the last 3 months. I’m just pulling that straight out of my head.

Robert: Sure.

Jonathan: One of these template report PDFs. That is not the purpose of, I don’t feel is that this is not the purpose of you sending this email to them. The purpose of this email is to see that you’re friendly, you’re still in business, you’re still there and it’s just a friendly tap on the shoulder to say I’m still here. I’m still here to serve you. I’m sending this email. It’s a quick read. When you have had a coffee break, you’ve opened it because you recognize the name of, you know, that’s Bill Conrad. I recognize the name, opened it up, gave it a quick read, might have got rid of it. But it’s a quick tap on the shoulder. Does that make sense, Robert?

Robert: Sure. No, it makes perfect sense.

Jonathan: And then, through your Online Marketing, if you’re doing Online Marketing to generate leads, you’re trying to generate leads from people that don’t really know you. So the emails that you send or you should send, let’s say you’re doing a Facebook or Google AdWord campaign and you’re driving traffic to a page to get their contact details. Those people that you’re successful and given their contact details, you should then send them a series of email and hopefully, a percentage of those you’ll get into a position to have a discussion with those people because that’s the point, to get face to face with them. But then, you should then put them on another list and then give them a tap of the shoulder. But the email that you would send to them would be different to your sphere list because that should be slightly a little bit more formal in tone and content. But you should still put them on a secondary Drip campaign after your first Drip campaign. That could be monthly. Is that making sense Robert?

Robert: Yeah. No, I mean, it makes sense to me. You just have to set all that up.

Jonathan: Exactly. I mean that’s why a lot of Agents don’t do it. But I’m talking about four segments at the most. You can overdo this folks. I’ve seen other people that have gone the other way and they segment, segment, segment. In my opinion, there’s a level where you don’t get a great return. I’m going to go for the break now folks and when we come back, I’m going to finish off on the lists side and then we’re going to go on to discussing mobile and how to work with it. We’ll be back in a few moments folks.

Jonathan: We’re coming back. Hopefully, I haven’t bored you to tears with lists. But it’s something that was in my mind and I really, really think a lot of Agents fail on this. Basically, it’s well known, especially with past clients. Not engaging with them, I looked at some statistics. Let’s say you’ve got 300 people in your past client list. You should get a 10 percent engagement from that and from that, you should get a couple of deals. So you’re literally leaving dollars on the table by not doing this folks. So that’s why it’s worth doing.

Just to wrap up on this is the other thing is when people get into Online Marketing and driving traffic to what we’ve described as landing pages with lead magnets, is that, I’ve just lost my train of thought there for a second but let’s regain it. When you’re driving that kind of traffic to your system, you’ve got to have automated systems. Because the difference, which a lot of Agents can’t grasp, is what I call the Buffini methodology of building type community relationships which I agree works. And I would never tell an Agent not to engage in what I call the Buffini way. When you’re getting leads off the Internet, their quality is going to be quite less in quality. So you’ve got to have automated systems because you cannot handle those like an Agent that’s been really ingrained in the Buffini or the Tom Ferriss methodology.

Robert: Tom Ferry.

Jonathan: Ferry. Yeah, sorry.

Robert: Yes.

Jonathan: It just won’t work. But I would exclude either. The other thing that a lot of Agents don’t understand, especially if they’re in that 1 to 5-year span, is that they don’t have a lot of people in their contacts. If you’re going to go into Online Marketing or do Online Marketing, you’ve got to really try and build your lists for re–targeting reasons and for other reasons which you can deal with next week or in the coming weeks. But ways of really building your list up. Here’s two tips. Do events yourself. What I mean is do family events like every 3 months and get a sponsor or sponsor it yourself and then get somebody in the community that can be a joint partner and do a joint sponsor event, a family event. Picnic in the park and provide and bouncy castle. You’re going to have to spend a little bit on money on this with some balloons and then advertise that event. I would charge a nominal amount but say to people if they go to your website and they sign up, you’ll send them a coupon which will enable them to go to the event for free. But to get that coupon, they have to give you a name, an email, and phone number. Right?

Robert: Sure.

Jonathan: That really works. That really builds up your email list. The other thing is, especially with slightly more experienced Agents, they’re very negative about Open Houses. They need to get over that. The purpose of an Open House is not to sell that house. The purpose of an Open House is Branding, Marketing and list building. That is the purpose of Open Houses.

Robert: Sure.

Jonathan: You should provide food, coffee, really nice food, should be really staged well, should have a system of Marketing the Open House and you need a system, do an offering, a Starbucks or whatever. If people fill in either a form or Mail-Right comes with a system. But you really want to utilize those Open House as a methodical system for building your list and also just having discussions because, through discussions, new deal possibilities come.

Robert: Right.

Jonathan: What do you reckon Robert?

Robert: So, I’m the kind of Marketer that would be reluctant to do Open Houses because I’m more of an inside salesperson and if I’m going to show up at a property, I want to sell the property. So, I fall on the opposite side of the spectrum. However, I definitely fall under the bucket of being, if I was getting into Real Estate, I would start with a budget. I’d already be ramped up and ready. I’d be able to generate lead flow immediately and I’d probably wouldn’t even do it unless I could invest in some kind of assistant and I’d have a system set up where somebody was physically located at the Open Houses because I agree with you in theory. Going to an Open House, doing list building, it would be very important.

You could just shake a lot of hands, make an impression with people and I think there’s two ways to do it. If you’re new in the business, you’ve got to be there yourself. You’ve just got to suck it up and do it. Go there, be there, it’s boots on the ground. It’s putting you in front of people that you could potentially do business with today, tomorrow, next year. You’ve got to do it. If you’re more experienced like me, you’re going to set up a window of time in which you personally will be at the Open House while your assistant will manage everybody. And if you do your Marketing right, you’ll have your assistant build your Marketing credibility and your Marketing presence by saying, “My Broker, my Agent is extremely experienced in this area. They’ve been selling homes here for 10 years. They all the ins and outs of the neighborhood, the closing costs, the lenders, all those details. That they will be here between 11 and 1 o’clock if you have any of those questions.” And then, you build up that audience that shows up and your serious people who come to see the house will circle back around when that resource is going to be present. In addition, you get the list building that you’re talking about which is where people are signing into the Open House so on and so forth. Yeah, that’s my thought.

Jonathan: Oh, that’s great. I totally agree with you and that’s how I would do it. What you’ve got to understand folks is I get a lot of Agents that say, “Well, I don’t get many people turn up with the Open House.” Well, you haven’t promoted it. You’ve got to have a methodical system of promoting it. And the beauty of that, there’s two methods. There’s get some leaflets printed, won’t cost you that much. You get a template designed for you which you can rapidly change, change the address, change the photo but the format would be the same. So you could rapidly get that knocked out, get it printed and get that distributed. But if you’re really short of the pennies, you walk the pavement and you distribute them. Then, you advertise the Open House on Facebook because the geo ability of Facebook, it won’t cost that much and you can really promote. You’ve got to set up your caricel or a video, having a nice video of the property, a short teaser and then have the address in that. That’s what works.

Robert: Well, so there’s two sets of thoughts. The way that the people used to do it out here is you used to take leaflets and you post Open House at grocery stores, the post office and the penny saver and those methods still work. They don’t not work anymore. However, you would be selling yourself short if you didn’t understand the vastness of the digital swimming pool as well which is where you do the Facebook stuff. If it’s me, I’m going to put a process in place and tell my assistant and team every time I take a listing. All of these steps need to be done and I would still include the post office and the penny saver. These methods are either free or very low cost. And then, I would also do, as you’ve suggested, Facebook and then I would also as the Agent to the Broker where I’d be spending my time and I’m going to blatantly segment into our other topic here. I’d be using my time as the Broker and using my cell phone and at some point, even if I am determined to be an inside salesperson most of the time, I still have to go physically put my feet on the property. And when I do that, I’m going to make sure that I utilize that time to the best of my ability and I’m going to collect my Digital Marketing assets.

What’s a Digital Marketing asset? These days these phones are so incredible. There’s these wands that you hold out where you can hold them at a distance and they film you and they do all these different things. And you also have these automated pods that you could set up and they’ll follow you around a space if you’re talking. I would use one of these tools and I would simply walk the home and I would take about 5 or 10 minutes worth of video. I’d make sure I got every single room. I’d make sure that I was basically doing a video log or vlog about what my thoughts about the property were. It would almost be like mental notes. Here’s the sink, here’s this, walk through each room. A discussion shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds to 1 minute per room and that would be my digital asset. I’d spilled that video up into 6 or 7 pieces and now I have all the assets that I need to market the property, not only on Facebook but Instagram is one that I would use.

Jonathan: Definitely. It’s not something that escapes me regularly but Instagram is really important folks. When you’re posting these Open Houses on Facebook, you want to select to also post them on Instagram and you do need an Instagram account and get at it. And also, you can put these past Open Houses on to your website. The beauty of it is, that people forget, is that people are bonkers about houses. They love to know about the neighbor’s house, other people’s houses, the worth of their house at the present. That’s the good thing of being in Real Estate is that you’re talking about a subject that literally every other person in your community is bonkers about. Is that right, Robert?

Robert: Yes, that is correct.

Jonathan: You’re not selling like plumbing.

Robert: Or they’re curious.

Jonathan: They’re curious.

Robert: That curiosity is where you get your list building because a lot of people are going to walk into a house that aren’t going to buy it and that’s the frustration of a Realtor. My feeling is that what you’re trying to say is those walk-ins have a lot of value and I would agree with you. When you’re doing an Open House, a lot of the people that walk-in are the neighbors and they’re just curious to see what their neighbor’s house looked like inside. Does it look like theirs? Did they do something with the floors? Did they do something with the kitchen? And that’s great. They’re not going to buy anything from you and there’s no possibility of it. They’re not even remotely in market. However, you get them to sign in and now you have their contact information and you have that chance to make the impression so that maybe 4 or 5 years from now when they’re ready to list their home, you have a chance to list it.

Jonathan: The main purposed is Branding and list building for Open Houses folks. But I’ve known on a regular basis, Agents, if they’ve approached this with the right methodology, they’ll actually get strong leads. If you’re a new Agent, that’s why you want to do these Open Houses for established Agents because you’re building up your list, you’re building out your social credibility in the community, you’re meeting loads of people, it’s costing you time and but it’s not costing you a load of money and by doing these leaflets, I wouldn’t even talk to the actual Agent you’re doing it for. I would still do this promotion for them. Obviously, I would negotiate a little bit of a split if something happens but I would do it, you know, you’ve got to get real about this and you really fundamentally got to look to do this every weekend. If you’re a new Agent, you’ve just got to be prepared to do an Open House every weekend and really promote it effectively. I just want to talk about one quick other thing and I’m sorry, I think we’ve almost taken up all the time on this subject. I’m sorry about this Robert. But when we have another internal, I’ll make sure that it’s discussion about your mobile phone. How does that sound Robert?

Robert: Sure.

Jonathan: Managing contacts on various computer systems, you’re on your own or if you’ve got a small team, how do you do it? Well, the best system I’ve come across for this is FullContact. They’re great people. I interviewed their Marketing Director about over a year and a half ago and it’s a great product. They offer a free product folks but they do offer some paid versions but they’re not ridiculously priced. They’re very, very good value. And what does FullContact do? Well, it works on almost all devices. It will work on Android, iPhone, PC, and Mac and it will basically work with either Gmail or work with Outlook. It will suck all the contacts. They come with extensions for your browsers, for Chrome, for FireFox. Basically, if you’re using Gmail, it comes with an extension. You highlight an email and it will pop up and tell you everything about that email address. Is it linked to social media accounts? It will actually also give you a very good indication if that’s a real email address.

Also, if you use the applications, it actually does the same thing in one interface. If you have a small team, if you have the team version of this, let’s say all your Agents, to link to what Robert was saying, they rely on their smartphone, well, it will suck all the contacts from all the different Agents that are in your team into one centralized container platform so you have a list of everybody’s contacts. And then, you can sub-divide those into the list structures that I’ve outlined during the show. It’s just a great platform. What do you reckon about that?

Robert: I don’t know it. I always feel that your input is wise, well thought out and I know for a fact that it’s well researched. So, when you’re talking about things like Contactually, I have to take you at your word. I wasn’t there for the meeting and I’ve never really reviewed the tool. You know me well enough to know that I’m a big believer in not volunteering too much until I have.

Jonathan: You’re very wise.

Robert: I want to see and not only that but I usually want to use anything that we’re going to talk about because I feel like our users are people that are going to tune into our show are going to do so or my show, whatever we’re doing, I really strongly believe that the only reason they’re doing that is because they want to hear specifics and well reasoned out thoughts about these tools because the advantage of listening to us is that maybe instead of reviewing 100 tools which, believe it or not, there’s that many and more out in the Real Estate market, they can review three or four and that saves them 5 or 10 hours. So, they listen to us for an hour, save 4 hours and still get their list of two or three that they’re going to look at and hopefully, find what they need to use. So, Contactually, I take your word for it.

Jonathan: No, FullContant, actually.

Robert: FullContact, sorry. My bad.

Jonathan: FullContact. Just to wrap up Robert is that they offer a free account and it’s not crippled. It has some limits on how many contacts. Oh, the other thing I didn’t point out is if you go with the paid version, I think with the free version you could buy a pack that would enable you to do this. I’m not sure they’re still offering that. I’m sure with the paid versions, which we’re talking around $9 a month if you pay yearly. It’s really very competitively priced.

Robert: Okay.

Jonathan: What I’m getting around to is they offer a card reader. It will take a picture of a card and it will suck all those details into the database.

Robert: Okay.

Jonathan: And it actually works.

Robert: Okay.

Jonathan: Because if it doesn’t do it manually, it would send it to the cloud and I think they’ve got some human beings that will actually do the work as well but it does a really fantastic job of it. But I know of a couple Agents that weren’t that techy that had a problem about having a unified system on their phone, on their laptop, on their main computer and by using FullContact, it’s made a big difference.

Robert: That’s great. Excellent.

Jonathan: So, I think we’ll wrap it up. It’s surprising how the time goes. Like I say, we’ll discuss in our next internal show about using mobile. I think it’s fantastic but I didn’t want the episode to be too long. Robert, how can people get a hold of you?

Robert: I would love it if people would stop by my website which is inboundrem. That’s the word inbound Rabbit Edward Michael.com. And that’s it. They can contact me or set an appointment with me or just see what I have to say about lots of other topics all on my website.

Jonathan: And if you want to get a hold of me, it’s really easy. Go to the Mail-Right website, use the contact form. If you want a demo, it’s right on the top of the header, click it and you can book a demo that will be with me and I’ll show you the Mail-Right system. And we’re building it out, putting new functionality in almost every week. Or just Twitter me or Facebook. I’m very approachable and we can have a one on one chat and I’ll just try and help you out. We’ll see you next week where we’re going to have feast around emails, tech in general. We’ll see you soon folks. Bye.