Marketing Automation Tops The List of Modern Real Estate Marketing Tools
Using personalized real estate marketing will help close your sales faster!
Marketing Automation tops our list of real estate marketing tools because it has the biggest impact on leads and sales. Real estate professionals live and die by their lead flow. Getting listings, finding buyers and renters and moving them through a pipeline are all processes that automation can help flourish. With a little assistance real estate agents and companies can quickly develop online forms, landing pages, microsites and email campaigns that make it easy to be found, easy to contact and can efficiently distribute important content to the right audiences.
Email is among the most popular real estate marketing tools, and all marketing automation platforms have powerful email marketing options. While many real estate organizations use the email newsletter tactic, real estate marketing automation tools have a more modern approach – lead nurturing or drip marketing. When interested buyers, renters or sellers fill out an online form, the real estate marketing automation platform takes over, and sends out a stream of pre-planned emails that are spread out over a period of time, typically over the course of a few weeks. By getting helpful, educational content with periodic calls to action included, the recipients are more likely to look at the agent or broker as a helpful consultant with a high degree of kno
Adding a platform like marketing automation to your real estate advertising tools, will cost less and give more time to developing and nurturing leads. Automation is the best way to follow up and to continue to communicate with leads and customers alike.
#2 Personalization – The Key To Success
Among real estate marketing tools, personalization seems to resonate deeply with most agents and brokers. tools help real estate marketers send the most relevant information to the right people. The days of brain-dead mass marketing (we still see postcards that say “To Resident”) are quickly fading, and with good reason. Personalized content, messaging, calls to action and more help web and email based campaigns target and deliver with tremendous efficiency. At the end of the day, customers want feel like they matter to a company, that they are more than just a number. According to recent studies, personalized email campaigns generate a 29% increase in open rates, and 41% higher unique click rates.
Using a marketing automation platform is a way to reach customers but adding personalization to the marketing process is the way to create a relationship with customers.
#3 Customize List Building
There are actually many reasons why anyone would want to contact a realtor. They could be selling a house, buying a house, renting an apartment, the list could go on and it is important to keep those customers all on their appropriate list. You wouldn’t mail a piece of direct mail to a couple who just bought a house that advertised new homes.
Keeping lists properly segmented avoids quite the hassle and headache for both you and the potential customer.
#4 Automated Direct Mail With PURLS
In the direct marketing world, PURLS, or Personalized URLs have long been used to boost response rates. A potential customer receives a piece of mail with a URL on it that contained their name. When the prospect enters their URL (or scans their QR Code) into their browser, they are brought to a personalized landing page or microsite, showing off relevant content and tracking the exact interaction of that prospect with the site.
pURLs in direct mail campaigns give consumers what they want – a place to go online to learn more about an offer. Simply adding pURLs in direct mail pieces gives your company the benefit of a detailed analysis of exactly who has or has not visited the page and when each target responds.
Using a PURL tailored to the person that is receiving the piece of direct mail, it is easy to track who went to their landing page and how they navigated the site. After the interest of the target is captured in a lead, PURLs that are a part of a marketing automation platform can begin sending out relevant email content immediately, keeping the prospect interested and engaged.
#5 Use Drip Campaigns To Move Buyers Through Their Journey
Savvy realtors are using technology to consistently nurture their leads throughout the buyers journey with information and messages that are useful and timely. Real Estate drip email campaigns can be configured to send a series of automated emails to prospects based on a variety of criteria. According to the real estate CRM pro’s at Follow Up Boss, drip email campaigns can be easily configured to focused on:
- Buyer Leads
- Seller Leads
- Non Responsive Leads
They great part about drip campaigns is that once setup, they run 24x7x365 – they act as super organized assistants!
Another very powerful drip campaign technique is to combine email with direct mail to touch leads across multiple channels. Triggered drip direct mail campaigns can be set to send out automated postcards and letters to work in conjunction with drip email campaigns. When used together, email and direct mail have boosted campaign results by over 40%!