#213 Mail-Right Show With Jonathan Denwood & Robert Newman

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Both me and Robert have a discussion, this week, on why so many real estate agents are totally confused when it comes to all the online marketing platforms that are on the marketing at the present moment and how to choose the right one for your needs.

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail Right Show. This is episode 213. It is going to be an internal discussion between me and Robert. We have got some great guests in October. We’re going to have some great interviews, but we’ve got a great subject as well. We’re going to be talking about the difference between direct traffic kind of website and organic traffic to your website. Or the different types of websites that you can purchase as a real estate agent. I think it causes a lot of confusion. Robert tells me he’s getting a lot of inquiries and that’s a major question that’s asked of him. And I can totally understand. Now, Robert, what do you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

Robert: I would love to. So hello ladies and gentlemen, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of inbound REM. It’s a blog. It was originally a blog. And now that we have a small host of technology products that we’ve also launched. All of the things that I do and that I talk about are aimed at educating you on how to get a better ROI, how to own your own marketing destiny. And you can learn all that stuff on my website here in podcast with Jonathan as part of the Mail Right podcast. And I’m excited to dig into these topics today.

Jonathon: Yeah, and I’m the founder of Mail Right, we are a platform that gets you quality leads with a software solution combined with the power of Facebook. And don’t deceive yourself. Facebook is still one of the major ways of getting direct traffic to your website, which is one of the things we’re probably going to be discussing during the show. So Robert when we were having our pre show chat before we go live, you’re saying you’ve had a few inquiries over the past couple of weeks. And there seems to be a lot of confusion about the different type of websites and website solutions out there. So would you like to take over and give the listeners and viewers an outline of ways some of them key areas around why this confusion occurs?

Robert: I would love to. So today, and thank you Jonathan for letting me run with this. I really appreciate it. Today we’re going to talk about definitions. And the reason this comes up is because a lot of people don’t understand the marketing language that companies use when they’re describing their products. This means that ultimately you don’t even understand that websites fall into different categories. Or that services fall into different categories. And so I want to try to untangle a little bit of that confusion and make it a little bit simpler for everybody to understand. So first of all, there’s some language that’s used around direct marketing. All right? What is direct marketing? What is the difference between that and other marketing that you can buy as a real estate agent? Well, direct marketing implies that you are spending money or advertising directly to your marketplace.

That’s why it’s called direct marketing. So direct marketing and real estate would be like buying Zillow, advertising, Trulia advertising by realtor.com. These are direct market leads that you can purchase because you’re going directly to where the audience is that searching for properties on these various platforms. You’re spending money and in theory you’re putting up an advertisement in front of these. And then you drive in those cases you actually just get a lead. Other direct marketing solutions drive you to a website, so you’re going to another website such as Google or Facebook and you’re driving traffic to your website or a website that you may control or you may be leasing from somebody.

The thing that frustrates me about almost all direct marketing solutions is that they have combined another package of services together and they identify themselves as one big service. So they’ve a lot of good direct marketing solutions have also created a CRM pipeline follow-up product. Like a whole system, like a front to back end system. And then they use this very confusing language to describe it.

They also make you make a deal with the devil in order to buy it. In the sense that you will spend a reasonably large amount of money setting up one of these systems. You don’t own it. They own everything including your data and not that they do anything with it. I’m not saying that these companies are going to forests, but they actually own the data even they’re just letting you use it. So you go ahead and you buy the system and all you’re doing is leasing their system and they control everything from top to bottom.

And so should you ever have any like dissatisfaction, you’ve got very little recourse. And if they bought sell themselves or anything happens with these companies, you’ve got no recourse. It doesn’t matter if they have a data break-in and they all your leads get stolen. Guess what? You signed away the rights to them a long time ago. There’s nothing that you that you can do, but let’s stick with language. And Jonathan is being 11 and not actually correcting today.

Jonathon: That last bit, I was a little, and there was a kind of tinge of you. It wasn’t exactly what you were saying. You were seeing your tone obviously. Because I know you now quite well to some extent. So in your tone you were kind of saying, if they don’t really spell it out to you, that is a problem. And I think what you’re suggesting is a lot of agents don’t understand that if they stop paying for a particular CRM service, that it goes away the next two days or the next week.

Robert: Correct.

But on the other hand, I’ll think what you’re really saying is they don’t really understand the principles of SAS. Do they?

Robert: No they don’t. And SAS is a software as a service, which is what that means. Cause today show is about definitions. So we might as well cover that one. So software as a services where you’re paying for something and it’s literally, it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s like, okay, so I’ve built this really cool thing. You’re going to give me a hundred dollars a month to use my cool thing. But it’s my thing. It’s my toy.

Jonathon: Are you saying then, I’m a little bit surprised that you feel that because if you have Netflix. Now you’re buying your films from them. You know, if you cancel your subscription to them, you no longer get your films. Do you?

Robert: Right. Netflix. Correct. And I don’t feel that way about like I use a ton of SAS services in my life. The frustration for me is specifically real estate, S a S services that are related to lead generation. And more importantly, I think my frustration comes down to, or, or actually it’s not frustration, is just, it’s a, listen, I’ve taken a stance. I’ve decided to evangelize a certain idea inside the real estate industry, which is you should own your own real estate destination. It should be hyper local. You should create a brand and you should stop relying on all these big companies to help market you. Because every single one of them is walking away with the prize, all Trulia, Zillow.

Jonathon: Well, my position with Mail Right is that we offer a website with or without IDX integration.

Robert: Sure.

Jonathon: You get the IDX integration from IDX broker, which is a leading word price and often it’s the service that you use for your own business websites, solutions that you offer for your client. We offer more basic websites and they shouldn’t, it’s not the IX designed implemented into more basic solution. Much more basic solution. But our deal is, if you spend time and money on the website, and putting unique content on that website. And you get hooked up with Male Right. We will transfer that website to another hosting provider free of charge. So you’re not in fat ass. We’ve kept her services.

Our application side on a separate platform. But when you stop buying, will you stop paying for Mail Right. You no longer will have access to the landing pages to the social media calendar. The five main key applications built into Mail Right. You won’t have access to that, but you will have access to your website and any content that you’ve bill on that website. And all, if you build local SEO or links to that website, you won’t lose that if you decide to walk away from Mail Right. So I feel that’s a very fair solution.

Robert: I don’t disagree. I mean we’ve had a lot of conversations about this. And honestly I think another reason that I evangelize inside the real estate space specifically is that most agents like having conversations that are pretty basic about technology often times missed the mark. Because real estate agents.

Jonathon: Well, cause what I’ve just said, what you’re pointing at, what I’ve just said, which you clearly understand. And I am not being disparaging because we’re in this bubble. Both of us are in this bubble. But if you have that discussion with the average age, if I had that discussion with the average agent, they would probably say they would start nodding their head. But fundamentally they probably haven’t understood much or what I’ve just said.

Robert: I would agree with it. I would agree with that 100%.

Jonathon: Well, what do you think is the main area confusions?

Robert: Well, number one, you know you’re going to move a site from one place to the next. That’s not an easy process, even when you’re experienced. Even when you know what the hell you’re doing, you take a domain name. You move it from one place to the next. And if you don’t bother to move the entire URL structure, like all of the pages from one place to the next, all you really do is keep the URL authority, domain authority.

Jonathon: Well you probably lost a lot of people already by saying that. But we need to clarify that in a minute. But when it comes to Mail Right, this is what we suggest when we set up the website is set up on a sun domain. And then we then talk to the client and we suggest that they purchase a domain. And we suggest they purchase it through Go daddy. Or they set up a Go daddy account and give us the log in details. And we will but the domain for them, through their Go daddy account, they own a name. Then we do what is called a sophomore risk where we use that domain for the public. The public sees the domain, but the agent owns the domain. The Mail Right system and we’re move it to another hosting provider for them. And then we are point where Go daddy is pointing to. Way sayings that than mine to the website. We can change it in about five minutes and it will point somewhere else and they’re up and running again.

Robert: So we’re getting a little off topic. I want to get back on topic. Yeah, leave that alone and move back into the topics that we were talking about, which are basic definitions today, not advanced definitions. That’s not what I personally intended to want to talk about. So the basic definitions. So I wanted to quickly go over. So you have these direct marketing platforms in real estate marketing specifically. I’m going to give you a long list and they all basically do the same thing. And maybe some of the things that they do have to be explained at the, at the tail end of it. But you have realtor.com Zillow and Trulia and you buy leads from those services. Okay. That’s an easy definition. They’re very large search websites and somewhere in the search process, somebody registers with the website not understanding that they’re going to get in touch with you, the person who is advertising or in some cases like truly and maybe they do understand that.

But regardless it is. One of my clients left me always gives me a second here. One of my clients actually is logged onto the show and talking to us. I can’t believe you’re here first. Keep your definitions right. So there are those three types of companies. Which is basically buying a lead and sometimes they are buying you and sometimes they’re not. Because when you get a little picture of yourself with all of your reviews associated with it in your phone number. And when they register, they fully expect that the registering with you. So Trulio is the best of these services in terms of how you as the advertiser are being displayed. Then you have other direct marketing platforms and this is the big lists, the huge list. And you have Boomtown town, easy agent, pro Sierra interactive luxury presence, Boston logic. And the list honestly goes on real geeks and the list goes on and on and on.

Jonathon: The only thing I would say about that is there is a definite. There’s a definite you can divide those in my mind between the broker or power team platforms and the singled or Capitol power team platforms in the fall. But they all do the same thing.

Robert: And Jonathan is correct because whether you have a team where you’re an agent, the, the list of these products is definitely going to be divided down. But that still doesn’t change the basic definition of what these products do. Okay. They just do it better for a team or an individual depending on which product. And I would break it down since John has been kind enough to point out the divisions. But you have, so for an agent’s easy agent, pro, real geeks these are.

Jonathon: Mail right.

Robert: Mail Right. These are all guys that offer websites that you don’t own. All right? And you direct market it to those websites if you want to return, if you want to generate leads off your web presence, you would then use direct marketing. And all of these sites have different capabilities. Because remember I told you at the beginning of the show, people are getting lost about what’s included as part of these packages.

And really its people are using words like, Oh, we have a CRM, which is horrible language. Because a CRM is a customer record management. It just takes Jonathan’s name and email and allows me to do cool things like email him or keep track of them or put them in a task calendar. That’s what traditionally CRMs did. Today, what people are calling CRMs are really pipeline relationship management tools and what, what was that? That’s people that’s getting email and, and, and you, you create a single thing called the funnel, which is a brand new concept that’s just been in the marketplace for like the last five or six years. And a funnel is where you get a text to an email, a reminder to yourself in your calendar, the call a lead. All of that is done automatically by your follow-up system. All these things can be set up by you, the end user.

And that is called people are calling a CRM. It’s not a CRM. It’s something different. And depending on which one of these direct marketing companies that you subscribed to, they have this follow-up ability. Everybody’s got different things that they do in this category. And some of those things like John mentioned a few minutes ago, like Boomtown is better for teams. You can have an entire team login, and you’ve got a dashboard. Whereas the owner, you can see all of your team’s activity in one place. And again with Boomtown you get a birth to death of you of what’s happening with the lean.

Jonathon: Like the marketing director, I should have him back. Or follow up boss, a fantastic CRM. I would don’t suggest that for somebody starting out or for you only if you’re somebody that’s handing out multiple leads to multiple agents, you know, you’re kind of principle agent or a broker. We’re going to go for our break folks. And when we come back we’ll probably confuse you some more. But we tried to clear, get some terms. Straighten some things out for you. I can make it difficult for Robert. But that is my job. I will be back in a few seconds folks.

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Jonathon: We are coming back. Robert is bitching at me.. But there we go. I do tend to try and clarify every time I seem to be even more confusing. But I am not doing it intentionally Robert. Back to the conversation Robert.

Robert: This is a challenge that I’ve had. I mean, technical resources and sales resources, they need to be different. And there needs to be somebody in between the two that explains services. Because there’s a lot of background when you start using, like every time we use language that is properly and detailed, descriptive, such as domain, people don’t understand it, right? Because then we start talking about domains. And that gets super confusing super-fast for a lay person who’s still struggling to understand the concept of what a website is.

Jonathon: Well, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Somebody hires you. Hires Robert Newman and your company to build a website. So what do, do you do? You got a number of themes and you can customize those themes and you set up the website. So after a certain level of payments, you and your team do the people I own their own website.

Robert: Yeah.

Jonathon: And then after that initial payment, that agreed payment. When they get their website, they can hire you and your team to do various other things for them. But that’s on a retainer basis, is that correct?

Robert: Correct.

Jonathon: But if they stopped paying you on the retainer, they still got their website and they still got their domain.

Robert: Right.

Jonathon: If we’re talking about Male Right, is if you stop paying we stop doing our services. But you still have a website which we move somewhere else for you. This is not quite the same as you, but getting there. If you go to real geeks, if you go to agent pro, easy agent pro and there’s a couple hours as well. If you stop paying for your website or any of the services, everything’s gone. Is that correct?

Robert: Yes.

Jonathon: So if you stop paying folks for about three or four of these services, poof everything’s gone. Website, CRM, lead generation, the lot, it will disappear in whatever period of time they give you to start paying again. It’s all gone. I think what you’re suggesting is a lot of clients or our possible clients or seeking advice from you, they just don’t understand that.

Robert: I think that that’s true. I think that the lack of comprehension is even bigger because the reason I wanted to talk about this is we’ve been building steam and going in a direction. And here’s where the steam is. 99% of everybody that you can call guys is going to tell you always that direct marketing is the only way to go. You got to pay to advertise to get traffic back to the platform and the inbound marketing is too hard. And that I disagree with that entirely. But one of the reasons they tell you that is what John just covered actually. Is that they know that it is a shitty sales proposition to tell you a perspective client, Oh, if you ever turn this website off, everything that you ever put on it is gone. Unless you somehow copy and paste it. Like imagine you’ve been producing blog posts for year as an example. That would be a pain in the ass. Some providers will let you transfer a WordPress install to a WordPress install. But the answer to that is most of them done. All of them say they don’t. And you have to get them to make an exception for you.

I know I’ve got partners telling you they’re going about ready to walk through the door. Those, which is good because now I get to tell everybody like, Oh, Hey, there’s going to be a loud noise. You know, it’s like they, you know, so I have the little, pay a little attention to the message. And then tell them, you know, put on some clothes, you know, stuff like that. So anyway or else they’re going to be on film. And then, you know, we’re going to have 10,000 people ask us what the hell. So but inbound marketing is the concept of where you provide really valuable information and the quality of your answer attracts the attention of your audience. And also keeps them coming back over and over again to the website. That’s inbound marketing. And it’s getting huge write-ups because every single professional marketer that I know that is worth their salt is saying that at least a percentage of your marketing campaigns. If not all of them, should be based on inbound. It’s very unusual that the entire hold on, I got to tell.

Jonathon: I’ll take over. So what I think Robert is basically saying folks are that when we were talking about inbound, I think we really got to clarify for you listeners and viewers what inbounds means. Because we both know inbounds mean is basically you got to provide content that’s relevant to the audience that you’re trying to market to. It is that simple. And basically if it’s set up in the correct technical way, Google should index it. When somebody does a search through Google and it’s like there are other search engines, but Google totally dominates the area. Especially when it comes around to local search term. There’s a good chance if it’s optimize and it has some real value to your target audience. You spent a little bit of time putting yourself in the shoes of the target audience.

It will show up and it will show up above regional and national websites. Because it’s locally targeted. That’s what we are talking about. That means some commitments. That means some commitment to either you write it, you develop it, or you get somebody like Robert and his team to develop it. So either you’re going to put in some equity or your time. Or you’re gonna pour actual cash to somebody for them to do it for you. But that kind of content will attract clients to your website. And then depending on how well it looks, how well it converts, you can hopefully turn that traffic at some stage into a paying client. Would you agree with my summary there Robert?

Robert: I would agree with your summary.

Jonathon: The concept is easy but likes mostly to do with this folks. The actual practice of doing it is the people complicate it. Is that it Robert?

Robert: Yes it is. It is very complicated.

Jonathon: But what you’re saying I think is that what you’re a little bit upset and based on your most recent conversations with a number of possible clients is that a lot of platforms. I wouldn’t quite say you feel misleading and in some ways taught me understandable because they sell a platform to a client is that they don’t really, in some ways they can`t. They don’t explain that as soon as you, because the way their platforms are structured is that they discourage you from doing any kind of inbound marketing. Because basically they want you to be hooked on their system basically. Now you could say the same thing about Mail Right. My only defense I would say is that wasn’t the reason why I did it. The reason why the Male Right system has been set up. Mail Right version 2.0 is being is that most agents won’t commit themselves and don’t have the financial resources to actually build content.

Or get somebody who knows what they’re doing to build content to get inbound traffic. So we offer the ability to get traffic by using Facebook. But on the other hand, I do try and encourage people to build out their Male Right sites with individual content. And that’s why I give that guarantee that if they do want to leave the Mail Right system, we will for free transfer their websites to another hosting provider. Because I actually believe in what your signed, the only reason why I built the Mail Right system is a lot of agents will not commit themselves. Or financially cannot commit them to an effective inbound strategy Robert.

Robert: Oh, I agree. And there’s a lot of pros and cons when we start talking about inbound versus direct marketing. And one of them is inbound takes a long period of time. Two, it’s more complicated if you want to get into the ins and outs of it. Like if you want to know what the details of the services and you should, I would say you should understand. I wouldn’t say you should become an expert if you’re gonna pay a service company to do it for you. But you need to understand the service well enough to look at the product that you’re being delivered by that service company. And say, are you doing a good or bad job like you? Like you need to understand because inbound marketing, unlike direct marketing takes a while. Once it gained steam, the effectiveness of it increases a great deal over direct marketing spend 12 grand. You probably gonna get, you know, a 120 leads in and that’s what you’re going to get. Or let’s just call them 1200 leads even.

Jonathon: And also just to finish off folks is, the truth is, and that’s why I asked you to come on the show is that I think we’re in two very different sectors. And that’s why we can effectively work together. Is that what your offering is inbound marketing, superb customized websites, solution sample road. You know, if you know what sample road is, listening to some views, that’s where you buy per stoke suit that you know, you don’t buy it off the peg. It’s all measured. Some experienced tailor makes a custom suit for your body size. That’s what Robert offers and his team per stoke solution. In Mail Right we are in the kind of off the peg, not the cheapest but the medium range. At Mail Right we’re offering basic functionality at good value as well as solutions.

So we’re aiming at a very different target market really. I think we’ve had a fascinating conversation Robert. I think we got back. Hopefully we haven’t confused people a bit more. We’re going to have to think on some terms and listed terms and see what feedback we got from this episode. Hopefully I didn’t confuse them, that was too much. And we will be back next week with a guest. I think it’s a couple actually. We’ve got a power couple, Robert. So we will be back next week. We’ve hopefully not giving you really confusing information that will make you a more successful real estate agent and provide the lifestyle for you and your family that you wish. We will be back next week, folks. Bye.

Robert: Bye