Real Estate Marketing Blog

Hello I’m Richard Brown, President of ReaMark. I have been in direct marketing for over 30 years with the last 18 years helping real estate professionals like you, to substantially increase their listings, sales, and ultimately, their income.

There has never been a better time to improve your business by using a consistent strategy to contact anyone who knows you and can refer clients. All signs are pointing to a steady rise in the real estate business since interest rates are at record lows. In addition, home inventory  is still low so listings are being sold quickly and for top dollar.

Each year I take hundreds of calls from realtors. The same question comes up time and time again, “Rick, what works best? How can I make more money?”

So, last week I sat down, got away from the kids, and really thought about all of the success stories, trials and errors that realtors have told me during the past two years.

• With all being equal why are some realtors more successful than others?
• What does actually work?
• What makes top agent?
• How can my business survive when I have less money to spend because I am making less money?

One fact that kept coming up is that my business only makes money if the programs we recommend to you makes YOU money. To that end, I came up with a few things you should be doing if you are serious about increasing your yearly income.

Four Real Estate Marketing Strategies for 2019

Reach Out to Past Clients

You MUST reach out to your Past Client contact list at least every month. Over 50% of your business should come from referrals. If you are not mailing to this specific contact list you are losing money. Your Past Client contact list should includes your colleagues, past buyers and sellers, friends and family. The larger the list, the more successful you will be. You really need to sit down and put this lists into a workable database.

Utilize Postcards to Market Yourself

Announce your success! Since referrals are the largest part of your business and you want to build up your contact list, these are the second most effective tool at your disposal. You should mail the entire neighborhood and also your current contact list. Our Just Listed/ Just Sold, Market Updates and Open House postcards are a great way to showcase the strength of your business. If your budget is limited, these could be part of your planned monthly marketing, but for maximum results, you should be doing these mailings in addition to the ones you send out to your Current Contacts.

Track Your Results

The beauty of direct marketing is that is affordable and track able. If you have 400 contacts, you could be mailing them twelve times per year for as little as 47 cents each or $188 per month. One sale and you’ve paid for the entire year!

Become Known as the Specialist of Your Farm

A business with no prospects will die. You need a reliable, consistent source of leads. Since most consumers perceive all real estate professionals to be pretty much the same you must find ways to differentiate yourself. I get calls every day from past customers offering thanks for orders placed two years ago. These agents and brokers tell me they now get 50% plus of all listings in their neighborhood because of our marketing materials!

Walk your neighborhood twice per year, create compelling online content, submit articles to local publications, and/or advertise in neighborhood newspapers, send out newsletters and be the one to consistently educate your community on the local real estate market.

I feel great about sharing these strategies with you for a very simple reason: if we can help you become more successful in your business then ReaMark will be more successful in our business. Call one of our Marketing Specialists today at 1-800-932-2957 and we will work with you to create a real estate marketing plan to help you meet your budgets and sales goals!

I hope this letter has been helpful, confirmed the efforts you are already making or inspired you to call us. If I can help, please don’t hesitate to call me directly.

Regards,

Richard J. Brown
President
ReaMark

Photo credit: by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

Traditional mail and email may seem like opposites, but in the real estate world, they go together like peanut butter and jelly. You can use these tools to target different audiences, build authority, nurture leads or reinforce your current message, so there’s no lack of strategic outreach options. Here are some reasons realtors love combining traditional mail and email.

How Realtors Can Use Direct Mail and Email Together

The Value of Direct Marketing in the Digital Age

Think you’ll win the most hearts by enabling your farms’ addictions to email and social media? These marketing channels have notoriously low response rates, so you’ll need to work extra hard if you restrict yourself to digital opportunities.

Direct marketing statistics for 2018 and 2019 seem to reinforce this concept. Only about 1 percent of people respond to emails, social media and paid search, but 9 percent will reach out to brands that send them mailers, such as sports schedules or postcards. Even if you catch someone’s attention via email, your time in the spotlight is fleeting — About 78 percent of inbox marketing gets diverted to spam folders or deleted instead of being read.

Understanding Outreach Response Behaviors

The persistence of direct mail may have something to do with neuroscience. Research by Canada Post Corporation used eye-tracking and electroencephalography, or EEG testing, to survey people’s brain responses to promotional media. They determined that direct mail was associated with lower cognitive loading, or the amount of mental effort needed to understand the material. They also found that it was more persuasive and likely to drive behavior than emails were.

While some digital ads leave deeper impressions than others, they’re generally not as good at keeping people engaged for the long haul. Direct mail takes less time for people’s brains to process, so they may be more willing to interact with the brands it promotes.

How Direct Mail Makes up for Email’s Flaws

Data from 2017 suggested that combined outreach approaches drove success rates 35 percent higher than what might be expected from direct mail or email alone. There may be a few reasons for this trend, including the fact that you’re reinforcing the message by giving people the chance to view it from numerous angles.

Other research showed that people were more likely to spend when businesses used both tools together — Patrons sunk about 25 percent more money into these companies. More pressing for realtors, 75 percent of one study’s subjects could remember brands after seeing direct mail as compared to only 44 percent for email.

People also said that they felt like they were being treated with increased regard when receiving physical mail. Such sentiments could prove key to establishing respectful, profitable relationships with consumers. Even if email blitzes are faster routes to certain customers, they don’t always send the right messages.

Implement a Hybrid Approach

Neither direct mails nor emails can solve all of your marketing problems. There’s no anticipating which of your ads a potential client might be staring at the instant your branding clicks with them, so cover all of your bases.

Emails and direct mail serve distinct purposes, so be discerning about which branding objectives you use them to achieve. For instance, Every Door Direct Mail, or EDDM, postcards capture the attention of entire neighborhoods economically, and you can follow up with those who respond via email. Mailers like branded sports schedules and market updates get people to associate your name with useful information, but emails may be helpful for those doing their own in-depth market research.

Quality marketing materials are the keys to a perfect real estate advertising approach. Unify your digital and physical marketing campaigns by talking to a Reamark expert today.