Communicating with clients (part 1)

This is the first of a three part series on communication with clients and prospects. Today we will focus on frequency and type of communication. In the coming week we’ll take a look at messaging and focus (part 2) and then finish up with moving people through a sales funnel (part 3). Hopefully at the end of this series you will be able to evaluate your communication plan and make it better.

Frequency and types of communication:

Messaging is the most important aspect of communicating with clients and prospects, unless you either aren’t reaching them with your message or you aren’t reaching them at the right times. There are a lot of ways to communicate these days and you can do all of them for free. So why not decide the best frequency and ways to communicate? I would break down a good communication plan in to three types of communication:

1) Personal email: This should be saved for people who you know the most about. The idea being that you can send highly personalized and relevant messaging to people who want/need to receive it. This type of communication is also the most time consuming which doesn’t make it very scalable. You should save this for your most valued clients who will give you the best return on your time investment.

2) Newsletters: These are one of the oldest means for communicating with prospects that we will discuss currently in use by the real estate community. They are great for reaching a large audience with a much smaller per prospect time investment. But, you need to be careful to test your messaging and formatting options when you send. Check to see how many people read your letter each time you send it out. If you aren’t getting a great response rate, then mix it up and see if it gets better. The most important thing to know about your typical real estate newsletter is that its not as effective at getting people to act than you have been told. You will need to couple other means with it.

3) Blogging: Blogs are a relatively new medium for real estate. But they are a great way to get timely information updates to your prospects and clients. Unlike newsletters, you can (and should), update these regularly. In most cases the updates would be several per week as opposed to once a month.

In my mind, newsletters are a thing of the past. The only redeeming quality that I see from them is that you can get the attention of a larger amount of people by “forcing” your message into their inbox. But, if you could couple blogging with a newsletter I think you will get better results with less effort. For instance, you could update your blog several times a week, then once a month take your favorite posts and send them to your database as features. This accomplishes two things: 1) You get your monthly communication which keeps your name in front of people who might do business with you and 2) More importantly, you promote your blog while not having to create more new content for a newsletter.

If you can successfully create a good communication plan you should be able to move more prospects to serious clients and then really get a reward for your hard work. In the next part of this series we will talk about messaging and focus. We will be looking at ways to create exciting, rewarding content for your readers that will lead to repeat readers and business.

Can you make more money by firing half of your database?

Most of us have huge lists of people. We collect names, sometimes just email addresses, like its a hobby. Then we take those names and we write them down and we write all of those people everytime we have something to say. We write everybody regardless of their preference to hear our message, and this effects our messaging.

Today I was reading Seth Godin’s blog post titled, “Infinity – they keep making more of it”. He talks about this very issue and the almost innate desire to grow our businesses and our reach exponentially. If we can reach fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand more people then why not?

When you sit down to create your newsletter or your weekly marketing piece you probably salivate when you think about all the people that are going to “read” your message. But I think somewhere in that creative process you dilute your messaging. You go for broad appeal because you’re sending to a large, varied audience.

But we work in a niche market. We are specialists in our product type. Our messaging should never be broad, and it certainly isn’t meant for the masses. We need to deliver specific information to a very targeted group of people.

So, I ask you to consider getting rid of the parts of your database that you know nothing about. The names that haven’t responded to your emails, or the addresses that bounce-back everytime. If you’re not ready to do this just yet, try this little test. Take a look at the content in your last newsletter and then look at the content to the last email you sent to less than 30 people. You’ll see what i’m talking about and then maybe you’ll be ready to start cutting.