Lasso's Real Estate Technology Blog

Industry Tips for Selling to New Home Buyers

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My role at Lasso is to provide useful topical information to new home marketing & sales professionals, so as I gather useful tips from webinars, blogs and articles, I will pass them along via our blog and hope you find them interesting and worthwhile.

Can you sell if you don't have an established process? Perhaps, but in today's competitive new home sales market there's more need than ever to manage, educate, follow-up, and nurture your leads to the goal of setting the appointment, then continuing to connect throughout the prospect's ‘buying process' to the eventual ultimate goal of the sale. Check out this short blog by industry consultant, Mike Lyon on setting an online sales process.

The 5-5-5 System is something that Jeff Shore prescribed in our March 25th Webinar: It's Likely Not a Traffic Problem. He also mentions this in one of his blogs for Builder Radio. He explains that it's easy to fall into the "email trap" where we rely on email as a sole communication medium. He suggests the 5-5-5 System of picking out 5 prospects, mailing them a hand written note or post card, and then following up with a call 5 days later - a nice personal touch. What do you think - is this a repeatable process you can implement?

Have you been thinking about how to use social media to your advantage in your online marketing program as part of your selling process? Carol Flammer of mRELEVANCE writes about the opportunities for increasing internet traffic and building relationships through taking advantage of social media outlets in her book Social Media for Home Builders. By the way, our next free webinar will be on May 20th and will feature Carol presenting the competitive advantages of blogging for new home builders and developers - Details to follow, so please save the date!

Check out our recorded webinars here.

What's in it for the Home Buyer?

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How do you go about crafting your mass mail messages? Are you thinking like a prospect when you're creating the copy and the images? What are you doing to entice the recipient to open the email and take action? Are you updating the message depending on the audience?

If you can answer all these questions, you're likely well on your way to successful email marketing! Often this is easier said than done and many factors come into play when creating your message. More often than not, email is created quickly and a lot of testing or time for proper messaging is not possible. It's happened to all of us - you're under a time crunch, there's an event happening this weekend and an email needs to go out today to let everyone know - copy is done quickly, the subject line lacks excitement and proper list segmentation isn't done so everyone gets the same message and yes, everyone gets the message, not just those who have asked for it.

This post won't solve all of these issues, but let's address a few key areas that will help when you're under a time crunch and you absolutely have to get that email out but you also want to improve deliverability and your open rates.

1. The Sender - think about how you react to messages you receive and whether you delete a message, or not. If you don't know the sender, or it's not recognizable where they are from, the email likely gets deleted. Use a familiar email address. That may be someone specific, or it may be a generic email address that includes your company name as the user name. whatever you decide, be consistent.
2. The Subject Line - we don't all have the wit to create emails like the ones from Marketing Profs (a favourite of mine), but here are a couple of things to point out. The subject line is important. This is the one line that will likely determine whether someone opens your email or marks it for delete. TYPING EVERYTHING IN UPPER CASE doesn't help (in fact, it will likely hinder your performance). Try to put your company name or project name in the subject (especially if your sender is a person's name - see above point). Make it relevant and enticing. Think about what compels you to open an email. Ask for help (and opinions . . . there's likely no shortage of these when you ask!)
3. Don't be wordy. Keep the important part of the message "above the fold" (the top part of the email, before someone has to start scrolling) and avoid writing scads of text. Entice the recipient with words to get them to click to your website and save the detailed information for the website.
4. A good balance of images and text. Ensure that the message can still be understood even if images aren't appearing.
5. What's your call to action? What are you trying to achieve in the email? What's the purpose? Make sure it's clear to the recipient so you get the results you want.
6. Tweak Your Messages - maybe you need more than one version of the email. Are you sending the same message to everyone? Consider modifying the email based on segmented lists. Send a different message to Realtors vs home buyers and perhaps different again to those who have answered specific questions. Yes, this takes a bit longer but could be well worth it from a success perspective.
7. Ask your email recipients what they want to receive - setup subscription options so prospects can pick and choose what they want to receive. You may end up with a smaller list but it will be more targeted and I promise you higher open rates!
   

Before you begin your next email campaign, start by thinking like your prospect when creating the email and keep your message short and to the point.

So many real estate professionals are tapped for time these days.  If this is the case for you,  Lasso would be happy to help design email templates for your campaigns. Contact support@mylasso.com for more information.

The New Economic Order. What???

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I recently had the opportunity to meet with Bryan Woolley, an accomplished Real Estate Marketing & Sales Executive, whose companies have sold $billions in real estate projects across the continent during the past 15 years. His new company, Fingerprint Strategies Inc., has written a WHITEPAPER which provides a provocative and refreshing view of the North American home buying consumer and their behaviors in 2009-2012 and beyond.

The whitepaper challenges real estate ‘traditionalists' and the status quo. For sure. Whether you agree with the viewpoints expressed or not it is a great read in a transforming market - stimulating, insightful and thought provoking.

Bryan's company is not a Lasso client (wish he was), but the new economic order (NEO) he describes about both consumers and home builders, is forward thinking and leverages the value of technology. Similar to what we have been saying for several years about the power of the database and internet marketing to target your audience, tell your story, sell and build loyal customer relationships. In good or turbulent times.

Enjoy!