I want you to succeed

Times are tough right now, the economy is showing signs of hope and potential for upward movement but we aren’t quite there yet. Most of us don’t have to look farther than our own bank accounts to know that we need to be doing more to succeed in this market and then the bear market that will return. I know that you can do better business with lasso using proven strategies for permission based marketing. But don’t take my word for it, consider this case studies:

1) Amazon.com: Amazon has been collecting information on their users/customers for years now. They’ve been collecting information on what kinds of books you like to read and therefore what kind of books you will most likely read in the future. The “print” business as we know it is doomed to fail. But Amazon has the right outlook for success. They have slowly been sending email to subscribers that want to read what they send. They send you suggestions that actually match your interests. They haven’t made a killing yet, but in the next two years Amazon is getting into the publishing industry. They are going to pre-empt the market and only print books with pre-orders because they know what their customers are looking for and they have built a trust relationship with those customers. They are going to make selling books extremely profitable from investing in permission based marketing.

This can and will work for real estate. If you can give your customers the reward they are looking for (quality, focused information) they will reward you with business and even better, referrals. I want to help you establish this relationship with a no-cost investment that doesn’t take a lot of your time once you have it set up. Others in our business and in our office don’t use this strategy because its not as glamorous as blasting 10,000 random email addresses. When you blast a random list you feel accomplished, but what do you get out of it other than that? I guarantee if you take the time to set up your own permission based marketing campaign you will see results.

If you have any interest in getting your own campaign off of the ground lets set up a one-on-one meeting. Give me an hour and I can show you enough data to convince you to move forward.

Don’t wait too long, somebody has the motivation to do better business, if its not you today, you’re a step behind.

You want fries with that?

Questions of the day: How do you treat your new clients? What kind of relationship do you work to build with them?

A lot of people in our industry don’t put a lot of value to new leads. They treat new leads like McDonald’s treats a new customer. The gauge interest and try to make the sale on the spot. If the prospect doesn’t show interest, they move on to the next prospect and forget about those leads who came in not ready to make a decision.

We need make sure that we value our new leads and prospects. During the initial contacts you should work to get valuable information out of them. Then take this information and plug it into lasso. Once you know things like timeline, pricing, and location preference, you can start working to nurture that prospect into a sale. You have to follow-up regularly with these prospects with personal, relevant, and anticipated messaging.

What is personal, relevant, and anticipated messaging?

I’m sure that you are on a lot of email lists. I get tons of stuff of title companies, lenders, other agents. I haven’t opted-in to any of this messaging (not anticipated), most of the time the email isn’t valuable to me (not relevant), and on top of that I know this email is being sent to thousands of other people (not personal).

But what if they asked me what I was interested in learning about? What if there was a lender who only sent me email about condo loans? I’d probably look forward to receiving that email on a regular basis. Then maybe when I was ready to purchase a condo or make a referral to a buyer, I’d be much more likely to use that lender.

You need to find out what your prospects are intrested in learning more about. Then ask them if you can send them the information. Finally, send it on an anticipated (regular) schedule. Send one email to prospects interested in downtown condo living. Send another to your group of people (or just that one person) who are interested in living at TOD stations. You get the point.

Just don’t be the McDonald’s employee of the month. We aren’t serving billions of customers, each prospect is extremely valuable.

Permission based marketing with lasso

Its time to stop and consider how your marketing pieces are received (or not) by the groups of people that you send them to. If you blindly mail your whole database you probably aren’t getting the positive results that you had hoped for, in fact you may be turning people off for good. There are some great articles and blogs about the benefits of permission based marketing. I’ve dug up a few for you to enjoy here:

Article 1: “Email campaign case studies (one good, one bad)”

In one week, I heard from two companies in the same industry. The comparison is instructive, I think.

Every month, I get a great email from Paul McGowan, founder of PS Audio. His newsletter is anticipated, personal and relevant. I signed up for it and I look forward to it.

I also got two identical emails (with different subject lines) from a speaker company called Thiel Audio. I never signed up to hear from this company, and judging from the email addresses they used, they harvested my address either from an attendee list at a conference at which I spoke or from an old business card. The problem with believing that just because you have access to an address you have the right to mail is that there is no friction with email. It’s free. You can email a million people in a heartbeat, costing the recipients time (and thus money) and you not much of either. The recipient knows this, and feels exploited or cheated. It’s not fair, and so the lack of friction backfires. The very ease of interruption makes the interruption more annoying.

Read more…

Article 2: “Permission Marketing”

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.

Real permission is different from presumed or legalistic permission. Just because you somehow get my email address doesn’t mean you have permission. Just because I don’t complain doesn’t mean you have permission. Just because it’s in the fine print of your privacy policy doesn’t mean it’s permission either.

Real permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, they ask where you went. I got a note from a Daily Candy reader the other day. He was upset because for three days in a row, his Daily Candy newsletter hadn’t come. That’s permission.

Read more…