Email Marketing is a powerful and valuable tool in real estate.  With technology taking over, and having to either jump on board or be left behind, email campaigns are a great way to simplify and systemize your real estate business, and it’s not that hard.  In this real estate coaching and training session, I discuss the value of email marketing, creating drips or email systems to keep in touch with your sphere, and what to expect when implementing email marketing into your real estate business.  Enjoy.

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Email Campaigns – An Effective Real Estate Marketing Tool

Hey everybody welcome to this weeks real-estate coaching and training session. My name is Daren Phillipy, CEO of Phillipy Consulting. This week we’re going to talk a little about e-mail campaigns, it’s an effective real estate marketing tool.

Now when you go into this business as either a loan officer or realtor, I’m sure you were sitting there thinking it would be really cool to help people sell houses or find homes or help finance and get refinancing for homes and things like that. And that it was a great way to be able to make money. There is a ton of freedom when it comes to this job to, and that’s what attracts a lot of people to this business. They love helping people and they really love the ability to help people find or finance the home of their dreams. And there is a lot of reward with that.

Many of us when we start this business we might of thought we were real torah or lender, but really our job is lead generation. As long as we have leads we can continue with our business, but if we don’t have leads we don’t have the potential to show people houses, we don’t have the potential of selling houses, we don’t have the potential to do loans for people. No matter what our job title is, it always boils down to lead generation. Creating leads and prospecting is always an important part of your business and in fact should be the number one key to your business, because if you provide the leads the rest will come.

Now one of the things that having a passion for is marketing and using different types of marketing and there is a ton of different types of marketing out there. Now before I get into specifically e-mail marketing I want to talk a little about what is marketing. So I went to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia told me because it’s all knowing. Wikipedia says that “marketing is the activity set of institutions and processes for creating communicating delivering and engaging offerings that have value for customer’s client’s partners and society at large.” One of the most important statements in the definition of marketing is value to customers or that keyword value. When it comes to marketing your focus should always be the value, what I bring to the table has got to be value. If it does not have value then it’s not something that you should not be moving forward on.

There’s lots of different ways to do marketing; there’s marketing from setting direct mailers, doing open houses, doing cold calling, using social media and of course the topic which I’m going to talk about today e-mail marketing and e-mail trip systems or drip campaigns. i am such a geek when it comes to e-mail marketing. I have a passion when it comes to e-mail marketing, because it is just such a cool amazing tool. To be able to go and meet someone and add them to a campaign and be able to stay in contact with them on a regular basis, In hopes to build the pickup their business in the future. Now there are a couple things I want to talk a little about. I want to talk a little about how to use e-mails for marketing, creating systems for when it comes to e-mail marketing and then the last thing is kind of what to expect when it comes to e-mail marketing.

The first part is how to use e-mail marketing. E-mails are just another way to communicate. You know you can pick up the phone and call somebody. You can stop by their house and have a conversation with them. Even send something in the mail if it’s either a direct mail piece or postcard or just listed just sold over or some flyer envelope or something like that. You could drop by flyers and put things on people’s door handles. You can use social media as a tool to build staying communication with people. There is a zillion different ways designed to be able to stay in contact with somebody and communicate with someone. Now e-mail has become a main source or main way to communicate with an individual.

I remember back in the day when I was in high school there was no such thing as e-mail, or I’m sure it was but I had no idea about it. I graduated in nineteen ninety two and I remember going through high school never heard of e-mail or anything like that. And I remember a couple years later I had this friend who is kind of a computer geek, and for the very first time show me what an e-mail was and I was floored by that. And to see just twenty years later the majority of business is done by e-mail. Everybody has e-mail account and communicating in e-mail is a very simple direct way to be able to communicate.

Sending an e-mail is cost-effective of course, because you do not have to send any stamps or anything like that not having to pay forty special things, it is practically a free way to communicate. The cool thing about e-mail is you are able to send your message in a way that can be impactful. Not only can you just send a written text message but that it can also have images in it, you can also attach photos and put links to audio and video and you could do a lot of really amazing things. With a simple e-mail you can send a message to someone that on their own time they could read it and if they are engaged they can either click on links or watch a video or look at photos or attachments or they can reply back. And it allows you to be able to contact not just one person but hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of people. Now that is what the cool thing about e-mail is. Over the years over the past six or seven years I have slowly gathered my database and as I meet people I’ll put them in my database.

Over the years I have now developed a database of about twenty thousand real estate professionals across the country. And that’s a super cool tool because whatever I want to say something or having an interaction or launch something or tell somebody about what’s going on I’ll create an e-mail and send it out to my database. And it’s really crazy because in fifteen or twenty minutes I can reach twenty thousand people. And now I would honestly say there’s probably about three or four thousand bad e-mails as time has gone on. Either the e-mail I put in is incorrect or they just don’t use it anymore or they have moved companies or something like, but that still even that’s a still significant amount of people that I’m able to reach in contact on a regular basis.

That database that I have is always growing because people are always coming to my website and signing up for my newsletter or signing up for some of the tips that I provide on my website. In fact if you’re listening to this right now and haven’t signed up for the newsletter or signed up for the twenty social media tips make sure you go and do that it’s good stuff  and it’s a great way to be able to know what’s going on next with Phillipy Consulting.

Anyway thanks for the little side note there, buy anyway it’s just a great way to be able to do that. And so as you are out and about and you meet people and they give you their business cards take that information put in your database. And make sure that when something happens and there’s something of value that you think you’d like to be about to share with your sphere of influence or your database that you now have the contact information. To many people take their the business cards or take phone numbers or e-mails they write them on a little post-it note or sheet of paper and it gets lost and it never ever makes into your database. People may be looking for a house or looking for a loan and at that point time maybe it’s not right for them and so many people take that information just throw it away. You’ve put a lot of effort getting that lead if it’s either by a referral or it’s by paying for some sort of marketing campaign or something like that. You spent too much time and too much effort and too much money to just take that and throw is away. Six months or two years that person may be ready to pull the trigger and purchase a house or refinance a loan, so make sure that you take that information and input into database. Alright so hopefully you guys have been able to kind of see that if you’re diligent and you take effort and time to be able to input stuff into your database, that you’ll slowly start building a group of people that you’re able to stay in contact with.

Now one of the most important parts of an e-mail campaign is if something’s happening if there’s an open house or if there’s some cool event or something that you find of value to the to your clients, and you wanted to send out a little something to them that you could do that quick and easily. But I’m a huge believer in creating drip campaigns, or e-mail marketing campaigns that will help you, it’s kind of basically creating a system for staying in contact with your sphere of people in your database. What happens is this, person sometimes when you meet them they’ll say “okay yeah you’re a realtor, when I think about buying a house I’ll give you a call.” And time goes on two years and three years and four years goes by, and they don’t buy a house because they aren’t in the market of buying a house. And what happens is that time comes where the kids go away or they made a big change of jobs or something like that and they need to either buy a house or sell a house. And whoever’s on the top of their mind is the one that’s going to become their realtor or their loan officer and what happens is if you don’t remind your sphere that you’re still there then you’re never going to have the opportunity. So what we do is create drip campaigns, we create systems and put systems in place to make it easy for you to remind your sphere remind your clients that you’re there, and keep them close to you as you’re working through a certain process.

So there are different types of campaigns that you can kind of create and these are the kinds of campaigns I like putting together myself. I have a drip campaign and just as a definition for drip campaign if you’re not familiar with the term. A drip campaign is basically you take a name you put it into a marketing (I guess it’s called marketing drip campaign) and what happens is they will receive a regular set of e-mails or it could be e-mail/phone call/direct mailers or whatever it is, but it’s a campaign that will go out on a regular basis for a very specific timeframe providing a very specific message. And it goes out automatically, well most of them do, but it’s just your slowly dripping on them, you’re slowly reminding them that you’re there.

These are some of the areas that i like to create a drip campaign on. I like to create a drip campaign for people that as i get to know them. Maybe I meet them at the grocery store, or I meet them in an office. I’ll  grab their card and put them in the drip campaign for getting to know them and basically what this drip campaign does, it tells a little story about who I am and what I’m about what my values are and how I help people. It’s not all in one e-mail, it’s in multiple e-mails. So what will happen is I’ll get somebody’s card, cool I’ll put you in my database, and they say no problem that’s big deal. I take their name put it my database and they’ll receive an e-mail the next day that says, “hey was great meeting yesterday am really excited to build relationship with you if you ever need anything please let me know,” or something like that. What will happen is maybe a week or two weeks later another e-mail will automatically go out and it’ll say something like, “as we met a couple weeks ago one of things that I help people on is staying efficient in your business.” And it will be a just a short little paragraph or a couple sentences that just talk about the value of being efficient in your business and then it will just leave it at that and if you want to talk or direct them to my website or something like that. And then another week and a half or two weeks later however I set it up, they will start receiving e-mails that kind of let the person know what I’m all about and as time goes on they’ll get to know who I am, so if I pick up the phone and call them later on they will be familiar with us.

Now this is just really interesting because I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and still to this day it happens. I cold called one of the top producers here in Las Vegas and I just called him up and said, “Hey this is Darren Phillipy, real estate coach with Phillipy Consulting.” And he basically stopped me in my tracks and said, “I know exactly who you are. I know exactly what you talk about and I’m totally willing to meet with you.” This guy had never spoken to me but he knew exactly what I was all about and because he was familiar with my face, because I have a picture in my signature. Because he was familiar with my face and because he was used to seeing my stuff go across this e-mail for years and of course many of those e-mails have been thrown away and deleted or never read, there has been enough impressions where when I called him he said I’m willing to meet with you. And so I was able to meet with one of the largest producers here in Las Vegas, just because he knew who I was and he knew what I was all about and it was strictly because he was in my database and I had been sending e-mail tips to him.

I have an e-mail drip for as a get to know people. I also have an e-mail drip for people as I’m working them through the process maybe I’m coaching with them and I want to teach them certain things or help them with certain things I’ll create a drip campaign for that. And then when I get working with them I’ll also create a drip campaign for after I worked with them, to pick up referrals or to get more business with them or start working with them again at a later time. I want you to start thinking about that with your business if your real estate agent.  People that you meet and they’re not ready to buy a house right now they might be ready to buy a house in three years or five years so what you do is take their name and you put it in your database. And they start receiving automatic e-mails that will just tell them a little about you, a little about your style, a little about what you’re all about and when time comes where either you pick up the phone and call them or if they are in need or looking for a good realtor that they contact you. Then there’s also a time where you can go ahead and then create a drip campaign for while you’re working with them, either looking for house or when you’re listing a house. As time goes on sometimes clients need to be told this is on a regular schedule or this is what to expect. So you can create two or three e-mail drips that will automatically go out and all you do is just take this their name and add it to a drip campaign and the system takes care of that.

Of course there are the drip campaigns for after you’ve closed the business with them that will stay in contact with them for years and years and years. Just letting you bring them value, giving them tips on homeownership and gardening an organization and things that are of value. What happens is that maybe they might not buy a house for five or ten years, but their friend will talking and say, “hey Joe Blow I’m thinking about buying a house do you have a good realtor that you work with?” And if you don’t stay in contact with them and its four years later they’re not even going to remember you. I think the statistic and of course I’m pulling this one out of my tail, but if I remember right it’s that there’s like a statistic that says eighty or eighty five percent of the realtors that close a deal with someone never follow-up or speak with them again. If you want to separate yourself from all the other real estate agents or all other loan officers, all you need do is create a drip campaign that will automatically stay in contact with them over the years. What will happen is four years down the road when someone asks if they know any good realtors they’ll say, “ oh my realtor send me stuff every once and awhile, I’ll forward it to you,” or, “let me check my email and get that for you.” That is how you capture referrals and that’s how you’re able to grow your referral business is by staying in contact with them and reminding them that their. You can create drip campaigns for anything you’d like from staying in contact with your investors or sending e-mail drips to first-time homebuyers it doesn’t really matter. The key is this, creating a system that makes it easy for you to be able to stay in contact with your sphere on a regular basis.

Now there are lots of different tools that will do this, outlook does not do this, but there are some things that you can do to tweak it to kind of make it work. Of course I’m a huge believer in databases Top Producer and Wise Agent are two excellent databases that do a great job of e-mail drips. That all you need to do is create the drip, add that name to the drip and it automatically happens. With both top producer and wise agent both have e-mail drips that are automatic. And I would suggest you using one of those two databases, but there is also other e-mail companies out there that you can connect with your website if you have an IDX a lot of these IDX ‘s will have the e-mail drips that go out automatically. And then of course there’s Aweber or Mail Chimp. if you’ve ever seen the e-mails that pop up whenever you go to a website for the first time it says, “hey give your name and e-mail with it and you’ll be signed up for the newsletter.” And you have seen that on my website. It’s a way to be able to sign up for a newsletter of course, but it’s called Aweber or mail champ, and both those companies do it for inexpensive, like twenty bucks a month. And what they do is people who sign up will start receiving automatically either a newsletter or whatever message the provider wants to send. And so for me you receive a new podcasts that going out or new coaching systems or new things that are going out and it basically just happens automatically. And what I’m doing is trying to create a system to make it easy for me to be in contact with you and remind you that I’m there.

Alright now this is that kind of the last things I want to talk about is, what to expect. I think people believe sending out an one time e-mail is kind of like swinging for the fences, you know what I mean? They think that if I just go ahead and send an e-mail then I will get a bunch of business, I have about two thousand people in my database and I’ll get a bunch business. Typically that’s not how it works. When I send out an e-mail to all of my sphere, I typically get ten to twenty replies back and have a large database. But most are not like sign me up right now. There might be one or two that says, hey let’s are working right now on whatever the message was. The purpose of an e-mail drip is to remind your clients to remind your sphere that you’re there. It’s to remind them that if they need your services that you’re the one to call, most of them are not to pick up the phone call you. Most of them are not going a reply back. What you’re doing is just keeping them close so don’t expect to close three or four houses off of one e-mail, that  not the purpose of an e-mail drip that’s not the purpose of e-mail marketing. What it is again is just to remind them you’re there. And then the other thing to is it’s not just one e-mail that’s sent. One e-mail out and get no response, that’s kind of expected to. It is something that you need to do on a regular consistent basis. If it’s once a month or once a week or every three months or something, it needs to be sent on a consistent basis.

Now this is probably the most important part when it comes to e-mail drips the most effective way to use your e-mail or use your database is not to just send e-mails, but it’s to pick up the phone and have a conversation.  If you’re sitting there and your hungry and you received an e-mail from a pizza place you’ll think, that sounds really good to me get a pizza. Then you get busy going and doing other things and go make yourself a sandwich. That’s one thing. But if you are hungry and then you received a phone call from the pizza place said, “hey how you doing this is pizza pros, we want to bring you guys some pizza if you want some.” How easy would it be for that person to say yeah I’m hungry were going to get a pizza? But the same thing when it comes to our database and our sphere is one level of response is going to happen when you send out an e-mail. But if you pick up the phone and just have a conversation not saying “what can you do for me.” To have a conversation saying, “I got a discount on this place or here is something of value or I have an open house,” or something like that.  Just pick up the phone and have a conversation and you’re willing to give it more opportunities to be able to capture referrals, capture leads or maybe even get business with that person. It’s picking up the phone and I know that’s one of the most painful parts of this whole business, but it is the difference between sending out an e-mailing and getting zero responses or one response. Or sending out an e-mail and then following up with phone calls and getting twenty or thirty leads from it and that’s reality.  I know it’s painful and i know it’s kind of a pain in the tail, I’m telling you if you want to make your database work in your e-mail drips effective you need to pick up the phone and you need to call. You need to do the things that nobody else is willing to do and if you do that you will get leads, I guarantee you that and I challenge you to do that.

That’s pretty much it I just wanted to kind of cover e-mail marketing. I hope it was helpful for, if you have questions of course you’re always you able to contact me. You can send me an e-mail at Daren@phillipyconsulting.com. Alright now before I wrap this up I want to thank somebody I got a really cool review that I thought was really nice on iTunes, and encourage you guys if you’re listening to this podcast or if you’re watching this on my website please go to iTunes and leave a review on the podcast. Find my podcast and leave a review, sign up if you don’t have an iTunes account and leave a review. It helps me when it comes to my rankings and helps me when it comes the placement on iTunes and it’s also kind of cool to know that other people really like what they’re hearing. And so the most recent review was left by someone called “keep an open mind.” “Keep an open mind” left me a review five stars and that’s pretty sweet he said “podcast junkie, real estate agent first industry related podcast I enjoy. Smart.” Okay so that was it, it made me laugh but also the same time I want to thank “keep an open mind” for leaving the review it meant a lot to me. It was really cool to hear that somebody who listens to a lot of podcasts took the time to leave a review and let me know that he or she loves the podcasts and think that it’s smart, and is hopefully really helping this person out with their business. I really do appreciate it so if you guys can, if you’re listening to this podcast and you and you enjoy it share with other people let them know that it’s there. It’s a lot of good free content good information. So anyway “keep an open mind” thanks for giving that the review. I encourage everyone else to go out and do the same.

Alright last thing, the stuff that I’ve been working on for so long and I’m so excited I believe it’s going to be a couple weeks, and you can see the first phase of real estate tech academy.  Just a reminder real estate tech academy is a website that I’m developing that is going be a step-by-step tutorial video website, that you can learn how to use all levels of technology and this is good to be the coolest thing in the whole dang world. If you want to learn better technology when it comes the real estate businesses, thing is a website specifically for that. What I encourage you to do is go to learnmytechnology.com and sign up for the newsletter. In that newsletter that you get to receive notifications for when the modules become available, you also receive a couple of tips and some information as the website develops and things like that. Take some time go to www.learnmytechnology.com ,sign-up for the newsletter, and you’re going to be the first to know when the modules are available. First module that’s going to be available is the social media module, it is almost complete and I would say by the end of June that module will be done. And that probably my next two modules that are to be coming out is going to be the mobile tools your iPads, iPhones and your droid devices will be one and then also how to build a website. Those are the two that are probably going to be my next two modules that will be complete, so anyway thank you so much for listening guys I hope you really enjoy it.  Now go out and take action today.

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