Real estate project marketers need to have a wide variety of skills - whether it's the planning of the next big launch or event, designing and producing brochures and direct mail pieces, defining and developing the lead nurturing process, or the many, many other responsibilities that come with the job. Email marketing can play an important role in the marketing of a project, but often the resources to call upon to help create the email are scarce!
Have you ever been frustrated when creating an HTML email? One of the challenges I have, I'll admit, is that I'm not an HTML coder. I do a lot of the creation of email right in design mode or in an HTML editor, like Dreamweaver. Many will tell you that you really need to know HTML in order to create an effective email. No question, it does help and it may eliminate some grief, but take it from me it can be done - especially when there are templates available so you're not starting from scratch!
There are always many things to consider when creating an email. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that an HTML email cannot be created exactly like you would a web page. It's coded the same way, but you need to keep it REALLY simple. All the cool things you can do in HTML web pages today won't necessarily render properly in certain email providers. So you must test your email and test it again, and again! Focus on your message, not the creativity bursting within!
Here are a few things to consider:
- Use tables. Because email providers use different HTML rendering systems - it could be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or in many cases Microsoft Outlook, which uses Word to read the HTML code and can cause a lot of problems! Using tables allows you to control where the text and images are placed.
- Keep your emails to a maximum of 600 pixels wide. Design your emails for the preview pane. Most preview panes are no wider than this and much of the message will be missing if you don't confine your email to a 600 pixel table. What a recipient sees in their preview pane could determine whether they want to learn more, or not!
- Don't assume people are going to see the images. By default the majority of recipients will have images turned off. Look at the email you're creating in this mode - can a recipient still get the gist of the message?
- Browser-based email providers like gmail and hotmail will strip away certain code and CSS (cascading style sheets). And Microsoft is no different - there are even differences between Outlook 2003 and 2007 - for example, background images won't work in Outlook 2007. And sometimes background colours don't work so be cautious of using text colour that may not show up on a white background. Keep it simple!
- If you are contracting a web developer or designer to create your email, ask them to code it like it was for a website from 15 years ago - don't use fancy features that won't work and will only cause your recipients to be frustrated. Ensure there's a good balance of text and images.
For more email suggestions for improved design, development and delivery, view this email marketing white paper. Before you know it, you'll be creating HTML emails like someone who codes them!
Interested in getting trained in real estate email marketing? Contact Lasso Support - support@mylasso.com
I listened to a webinar recently where Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki were keynote panellists providing their insights for 2010. As part of the closing, they were asked to make a recommendation to the audience for 2010 . . .
- Guy quickly said ‘Never ask someone to do what you don't want to do".
- Seth challenged everyone to turn their TVs off for a week and read a couple of books. Learn.
Given it's Januar
y and it's a time when we resolve to do better, refresh our thinking or take new approaches, I thought it appropriate to develop a reading list both for myself as well as professionals for new home builders and developers who really want to learn more about online marketing. Traditional forms of marketing are costly and there is an accelerating shift to more online marketing options; which are often more effective in producing results.
So taking Seth's advice, the following is a list of books that are worth a read this year for anyone focused on marketing, sales or customer service whether its new real estate projects and developments or other consumer goods - the same principles apply.
- Linchpin: Are you Indispensable? By Seth Godin - (to be released at the end of January) - Godin shows that the key to being indispensable is overcoming the fears that hold most of us back. Seth's the most influential business blogger in the world, and consistently one of the twenty-five most widely read bloggers in any category. Anything written by him is worth a read and get's you thinking.
- The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott - How to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly.
- Browsers to Buyers by Mike Lyon - Internet Marketing for Home Builders. Learn more about creating a successful measurable online sales program.
- Inbound Marketing: Getting Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Darmesh Shah - an actionable "how-to" guide to getting found via Google, the blogosphere, and social media sites.
- Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki - From competition to customer service, innovation to marketing, he shows readers how to ignore fads and foolishness while sticking to commonsense practices.
- Social Media for Builders: It's Easier Than You Think by Carol Flammer - Social media expert Carol Flammer demonstrates the power of this new marketing medium through case studies and online outlet created specifically for the home building industry.
A final read is a free ebook by Seth Godin. It's entitled What Matters Now. It's a thought-provoking read and worth the time.
We often get asked the question - which day of the week is best to send out mass email? Not an easy question to answer as it's really dependent on the type of email addresses in your database.
- Are they business emails or are they personal emails?
- Are you sending to realtors and brokers or are you sending to prospects and leads?
- Are you looking for a call to action?
- Is it a time sensitive event, such as an open house or VIP event on the weekend?
Regardless of the size of your database it requires some testing to see what works best for you. The day of the week is important, but the time of the day that you send should also be part of your strategy as often this can be more important than the day sent!
At Lasso, we recently did some testing and got some great results - one of the highest open rates for a mass mail. Following was the scenario . . .
It was time to send out our quarterly company newsletter - New Developments. The average open rate for the real estate industry is about 20% - anything over that is considered good, but we wanted to see if we could do better. Our database of clients, as you would expect, is home builders, developers, and real estate sales and marketing professionals. In the past, we've typically sent out emails mid-morning. This month, we decided to see what kind of results we would get by sending between 3:00pm and 3:30pm. A time, when for some, much of their work for the day is done and they may be looking for a quick break from work. We thought that maybe the recipients of our email have a little more time to open and read email at this time of the day. The result - a 35% open rate! Will we always see this kind of result? Maybe not, but the point is, don't be shy to try something different, and continually try to do better.
There's no question there are some basic email best practices that you can follow to improve open rates - a creative subject line, consideration given to who sends the email, a good balance of images, etc. - but there are other factors - day of the week, and the time of day. If you have a weekend event happening, Friday night may not be the best time to communicate this - but Thursday afternoon with a reminder on Saturday morning, may work. It's a common thought that it's ineffective to send email from about 10:00pm through to 9:00am. Mid-morning during the work week is not a great time either - most people are more focused on work-related activities than personal email. The late afternoon into the early evening may be the best time for business-to-consumer emails.
Think about when you open emails, or think of when you don't open them, and why. Don't be satisfied with average open rates, challenge yourself to see if you can do better . . . I bet you can!
The blog post from Seth Godin. . . Shocking Tiger Woods Video. . . really illustrates a great point.
Part of the content of his post is:
Is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?
The mindset of the brazen copywriter is, "well, even if only 1% of the people I trick are actually interested in the content, that's worthwhile. After all, there are a lot of people out there, and offending 99 to get one one sale is good math."
The word I use for people like this is 'spammer'.
The mindset of the modern marketer is, "I can build a reputation in everything I do. If I teach people to trust me, then over time, I'll conserve their attention and build permission. That's priceless, particularly in a world that's getting more skeptical by the minute."
Over the past couple of years we are seeing a gradual and very definitely a positive shift to more and more new home builders wanting to go the ‘permission' based marketing route that builds a trusted relationship versus ad hoc mass emails and communications approach that basically says ‘let's toss it against the wall and see what sticks'.
We are here to help builders that are on the journey --- helping to equip you to capture every lead then target, nurture, communicate and close more deals with your prospects. Permission and nurturing also has a better chance of creating long-term loyal homebuyer to builder relationships.
Lasso has scheduled the first of a series of educational webinars specifically focused on helping home builders, developers and real estate sales and marketing professionals sell more real estate. The first webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, December 8th and will cover Lead Intelligence and Online Lead Behaviour . . .
We've all heard over and over again that 75-80% of new home buyers are starting their search on the internet. Using tracking and analytics software, you can learn a lot about your website visitors and leads - how they found you, how much time they spent on your website, what interests them and when they come back.
This information is valuable to sales representatives to help determine the interest level of a prospect so that messages can be specifically targeted. To learn more and to register for this webinar, click here.
We know time is tight these days so this webinar and ones in the future will be short (30 minutes) and are designed to help you with many of the challenges faced today in marketing and selling new homes. Upcoming webinars will include:
- Email Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Lead Nurturing and Sales Process Management
Let us know what interests you and what topics you'd like to see us cover.
On the heels of the recent Canadian partnership announcement between NewHomesDirectory.com and Lasso Data Systems, we are excited to also announce the launch of the Canadian version of NHDBuzz.ca.
Canadian homebuilders, developers and real estate sales and marketing professionals can now post news items about their communities and new development projects at NHDBuzz.ca.
Lasso has historically provided real estate software solutions for new home builders and developers to capture, target and close more deals. Now offering the suite of services from NewHomesDirectory.com that drive homebuyer traffic to home builder sites is a natural extension for us. NHDBuzz.ca is a free PR service that further helps our builder clients get found on the internet.
NHDBuzz.ca is a social networking media that gives builders, advertising agencies, and public relations companies the opportunity to drive new home community information deeper into the Internet. Broaden the scope of your press by publishing your stories on NHDBuzz.ca.
MORE PRESS, MORE PLACES
A company cannot have enough good press. NHDBuzz.ca is uniquely dedicated to new home community, new home builder, real estate for sale, and green home press releases. If you're a builder, publish unlimited press for your communities and your company. If you're an advertising agency or a PR company, publish unlimited press for your clients. Try it, it's free for you to use!
And, for US Homebuilders and Developers, if you haven't already used NHDBuzz.com for your press releases, we encourage you to check it out. To-date, over 1,700 press releases have been published, by over 400 publishers and viewed over 8 million times!
When a new home community is on NewHomesDirectory.com, let us know and we will add a link from the community listing to the Buzz story. NewHomesDirectory.com now has Canadian listings! View the following listings:
To read more information about this announcement, view the news release.
I have received a number of calls and emails in the last couple weeks asking about NewHomesDirectory.com. Several inquiries about the service and also about the nature of Lasso's partnership with NewHomesDirectory.com.
Basically, there are a couple of reasons for the partnership:
- Builder marketing and sales executives have repeatedly told us over the past couple of years that quality traffic is a major issue - whether it is referral, walk in, traditional ads or from online sources.
- And while most builders have invested in website technology (often substantial amounts), most are not aware of the challenges of getting found online. That is, the trouble in getting found by prospective consumers on Page 1 of Google (or Yahoo or MSN).
NewHomesDirectory.com does a terrific job of organic search engine optimization (SEO), catering to the 75% or so of prospective home buying consumers that start their search for a home on the internet.
The directories, organized by city, create a simple landing place, typically on page 1 of Google (see the image below where the Vancouver Directory places in the 3rd spot in Google's search for "Vancouver New Homes"), for consumers to click through to a comprehensive listing of new home communities and projects by region, by builder and by price categories. Plus, it is really easy for consumers to navigate because the directory is exclusive to new homes (no resale or rental listings), has no banner ads or other typical distractions. It is purposely a very simple site.
So for home builders that are interested in generating more traffic, especially of high quality, we think NewHomesDirectory.com is a natural, and very economical, extension of their advertising and online marketing strategy. And at $2/click with a monthly cap per community it is impossible to go over budget.
At Lasso we have historically been all about Real Estate CRM technology to capture, target and close prospects. Now we are extending our reach to offer additional services that will help developers and builders market and sell their projects. We think helping them drive more quality traffic and also providing our expertise in online marketing ultimately helps with the number 1 priority - More sales!
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!
In Search of Quality Homebuyer Traffic . . . Lasso and NewHomesDirectory.com Announce a Strategic Partnership
We are really excited at Lasso about the opportunity to help our homebuilders and
developers drive more quality traffic to their project websites. Read more about this exciting partnership.
Lasso has been involved in over 1,000 new residential developments around the globe and our clients have repeatedly told us that driving quality traffic has been a major marketing challenge in the past couple of years - even more so with over 80% of homebuyers starting their research on the web.
NewhomesDirectory.com is the perfect marketing alliance for us as they already are a leading internet directory listing service for new home builders in the United States. Our new partnership means Lasso will be able to offer these services exclusively to builders throughout Canada and to our clients in the USA. The benefits for homebuilders are many:
- Newhomesdirectory.com is solely focused on new residential developments;
- The directory is simple and uncluttered with a home buying prospect able to get to a developers website with just a couple of clicks;
- Homebuyer prospects find builder projects via organic rather than expensive paid search, and
- The unique pay per click model is economical and it's really easy to measure results.
The ultimate objective is to help our clients sell more homes! We think we can increase the Lasso value proposition to homebuilders, beyond being a terrific CRM solution for managing the prospect relationship, to also being an avenue for traffic generation, lead behaviour, intelligence and nurturing - really, the full gamut of a builder's online marketing strategy.
New Homes Directory .com will initially include directories in the following Canadian cities:
A recent post by Sarah Yaussi of Big Builder is worth a read if you are ready to take the plunge into blogging - BigBuilder Online: Builder Blog Basics.
It's no secret that blogs are a fantastic way to improve your position for keyword searches. Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! are looking for fresh content and blogs certainly help with Search Engine Optimization. (Want more information about SEO? Here's a link to a favourite blog - www.ducttapemarketing.com and a recent article called The Simple Math of SEO. The ebook: Let's Talk - Social Media for Small Business is also a great starting point as an educational resource.)
Start blogging. We did and it's working. Our primary objective to blogging was to provide relevant and interesting information to home builder marketing and sales professionals and we've seen the added bonus of improving our position in keyword search. We are coming up in searches that we never did before and it's due to the efforts we've made to our blog.
In addition to improving search results, the Social Media Ninja (as Mike Lyon affectionately calls Sarah) points out the additional benefits of blogging:
- Simple to implement (there are many user-friendly templates available)
- Low cost (some blog hosting services are free)
- News focused (fresh content drives Web traffic)
- Authoritative (promotes link-building)
- Highly interactive (comment features are king)
- Spread easily (think RSS feeds)
My only comment about Sarah's blog post is the frequency of postings. Yes, I'm sure it would be wonderful to have daily posts or as Sarah recommends, 2-3 times per week, but quality trumps quantity and think about your email subscribers. You want to make sure that you blog frequently enough for them to remember that they subscribed and for them to anticipate your posts but don't post just for the sake of posting and you may want to consider posting on the same day each week. Also, be somewhat wary of the free blogging software out there - free is a wonderful thing, but sometimes there are restrictions and you don't want to discover that you're limited to what you can do.
Share your blogging ideas with us! We're launching a new blog in September that will showcase our clients' new real estate developments. Send us your project information and we'll post it.