Are you struggling turning website leads into sales, or listing visitors into buyers? We can help. Whether you have a property you’re trying to move, or a client you want to help find a home, below you’ll find a five step process with everything from a marketing tech stack that is easy to set up, professional tips you can use to convert website visitors into leads, and real estate leads into conversions.
- Technology Setup
- Create Your Templates
- Data Entry
- Winback Email Series
- Remarketing
Technology Setup
There are a ton of free tools that can help you track a lead to a sale, and determine where you have drop off. By knowing where the drop off occurs, you can add or remove a touch point for your potential client’s journey, and convert more sales. You can also automate following up with people that toured an open house, in a very customized and personal feeling way.
You also have paid tools with reasonable prices including Salesforce, Zoho and Pipeline Deals. We don’t recommend any one in particular, which is why we’re not linking to them. Choose whichever one is right for your business, budget and size. The tools can do essentially the same things, it is how easily you can use them that matters.
The goal with a technology set up is to be able to track both buyer and seller leads, the process of the sale, and who falls off on which step. It could be potential sellers, buyers that reach out from listing sites, referrals from your network, or open house guests.
To do this you’ll need a:
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) like the three mentioned above.
- Website to gather information, display your listings, collect leads and set tracking pixels (This is easy to do. It is copy and paste code into the website and tracking is set.)
- Email tool to send campaigns and keep yourself in front of leads. Most CRM systems have them built in, but you could go more advanced.
- Tools like Drip, Klaviyo, Contact Contact or any system that has a winback and a funnel feature will work. Just like CRMs, you have free options too.
Now that you know the technology you need, lets jump into setting it up.
Create Your Templates
Templates make your life easy. By writing a standard template you can use dynamic inserts to customize the email and webpage for the user. And you won’t need to know code!
There are a few templates you’ll need:
Listing Page For Your Properties
We’re all familiar with what goes on a listing page, so we won’t go into detail on that. What is important here is to create a unique email list for the listing pages.
By having a unique email list for each listing page, you can send reminders about open houses to your leads without having to bother people that are not interested. You can also send new and similar listings to this group to increase interest in other properties you’re selling.
Emails for Potential Sellers
When you get a seller lead that is not from a referral, you’re competing with all other agents. If you have an email template that is prewritten and emphasizes what they filled out, you can give an immediate and customized response.
Pro-tip: Build a couple of follow up emails and stop the series from sending once you’ve signed the contract. You’ll save time that can be focused on other tasks, or to enjoy your life.
For example, when a person fills out your form, don’t just say thank you for contacting me, I’ll get right back to you. Instead, have an email responder ready that includes:
- Thanking them for reaching out
- A mention of their price range, need to purchase by date, the areas they’re interested in, and their first name after the word “Hi”
- You’ll need to collect these on the contact form
- If you get the price range and you have a listing in that price range, see if your email system can pull the listing in and ask the person to check it out
- Ways to contact you including your email, cell phone and a link to your social media profiles so they can reach out there
Now you can sync your seller email series to your CRM. By doing this you create a follow up series (we get more into this later) that automatically shuts off once the lead converts into a client or sale.
By automating this process with customized emails you can keep yourself in front of your listing leads without spending time writing individual emails. You now have time to focus on active clients while your technology does your busy work for you.
Emails for Potential Buyers (two types)
Template 2: Follow up from open houses.
Buyer templates are the easiest to create.
- Have a series of emails that goes out the same day or day after an open house
- Create a follow up 48 hours later
- Have another follow up 1 week after the 2 days after email
- If the property is still on the market, send a “Visit us a again”
In the email template thank the person for visiting the property and include your contact information in the top if they have any questions. Make sure to clearly say how to make an offer if they’re interested.
It can also be good to have dynamic inserts that can be used for all future listing emails so you don’t have to recreate the same email template over and over. Your CRM and website may be able to sync and dynamically insert:
- The price and address of the listing
- Featured photos
- First name
- The date they toured the property (open house date)
- Notes about what they said so the person knows you listened to their likes and concerns
Pro-tip: Take notes with the person’s name and write them down. Then add them into a custom field inside your CRM. This can likely be inserted into the email automatically which adds that extra touch.
i.e. You asked about X and Y while touring the property on XX/XX/XXXX and I’d love to connect and talk more about this. Â
By having this you can automate the follow up series and have the person feel special that you remembered what they thought and their concerns.
Data Entry
Hire a real estate VA. Whether you hire local, in the US, or overseas, having someone do the busy work lets you focus on what you’re good at, growing your business. And you don’t have to spend a ton of money.
VAs can be hired:
- Hourly
- Part time
- Full time
- By days of the week
- Half days
- etc…
And you can find real estate VAs that know the MLS, email systems, website builders like wordpress, etc… Many of your day to day tasks can be done by a VA, and the price points won’t break you. You’ll be surprised as to how much time and money you save, and then how much more you can make by being able to focus on your business and self-care.
Winback Email Series
A winback email series is similar to the follow ups. Your goal is to bring people back that did not buy immediately, or once shopped with you and then stopped.
Winbacks may not work with home buyers, because once they find a home there is a good chance they’ll be there for a while. But they do work for real estate agents, investors, wholesalers, title companies, HR professionals that send you leads from executives moving, and more. The trick is knowing who to send to and when.
To start, try sending “Just checking in” emails when you haven’t gotten a referral in 6 or 12 months. You can also plan a networking happy hour, or small event and invite the people that haven’t engaged with you in the last couple years. It’s a great way to invite them to re-engage without having to do a sales pitch.
Remarketing
Just like the winback email series, remarketing is your friend. Remarketing is showing an ad for your services, a property, or attending an event to B2B partnerships. The cost is much cheaper than running an ad because the audience is smaller and highly targeted. You can use Google, Facebook, TikTok, and lots of other platforms.
Best of all, most of them let you copy and paste a small bit of code into your website. From there you pick a budget, how many times to show your ads to the person, create the ad (many times they’ll have ad builders for you), and run them.
Pro-tip: By knowing which ad words and images brough people back to you and converted them, you can use this information to bring in new agents. Maybe the words struck a chord, or a different color and style ad made the difference. Remarketing is an affordable way to test and update your marketing plans using actual data that makes you money.
And that’s it! Now you’re ready to turn more visitors into real estate leads, and more real estate leads into clients and partnerships. Subscribe to our blog below for more tips like these. And if you need a title company, we’re ready to help in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
