While a dripping faucet may be a hassle in the kitchen, drip marketing is actually a wonderful thing for your real estate business! Do you keep in touch with your database on a regular basis, reminding your contacts that you’re available when they’re ready to buy or sell a home? One of the easiest and most effective ways to keep in touch and build relationships with your leads is through drip email marketing (also known as Email Activity Plans).
What is Drip Marketing?
Much like the regular “tap, tap, tap” of a faucet, drip marketing is a communication strategy where you send relevant pre-written messages to your contacts on a regular basis. The most popular form of drip marketing is emails, but the same notion applies to direct mail.
The best drip marketing initiatives include a combination of emails, direct mail and phone calls. Regular communication like this is made easy when you use a system that automatically sends emails, and prompts you with reminders when it’s time to make a phone call.
Communicating regularly with your real estate leads is a way of nurturing them. You can guide a lead who is still not sure about selling their home through a series of emails until the lead finally warms up and is ready to make a move with you as their Agent.
With drip email campaigns/ Activity Plans in place, you’ll automatically send emails and correspondence to your contacts, making it easy to follow up with new leads and current contacts. You’ll also be reminded when it’s time to reach out to your contacts with a friendly phone call.
You can use several different real estate drip campaigns depending on what kind of message you’d like to communicate to your contact. The best real estate CRMs give you several campaigns written specifically for buyer leads, seller leads, and past clients, simultaneously sharing relevant information with the variety of contacts in your database.
Why Use Real Estate Drip Campaigns?
Staying top of mind with hot prospects and keeping in touch with past clients can be daunting for some real estate agents, but drip marketing makes it easy! This method of communicating keeps a well-timed stream of highly-relevant information flowing to your contacts, without you doing a thing.
Effective Agents strive to stay top of mind with past clients and new leads, so when those contacts are in need of a real estate agent, one name jumps to mind – yours! Keep in touch with all your contacts in a way that feels personalized and unique to them, without taking time away from your busy real estate business.
Aside from the terrific benefits of keeping in touch, one of the most loved features of drip email marketing is the ease of use. It’s truly a “set it and forget it” function that does the work for you. When a contact enters your CRM, like IXACT Contact, it can be automatically enrolled into an activity plan that sends drip emails based on that contact’s specific criteria. More communication with less work for you, drip email marketing is win/win.
Real Estate Drip Email Campaign Examples
If you’re not using real estate drip campaigns yet, start by choosing real estate contact management software that has the campaigns pre-loaded into your account, like IXACT Contact. You should also be able to create your own custom plans and customize the pre-loaded ones. Keep in mind that the drip campaigns can be composed of emails, letters, to-do’s or a combination of all three. Here are a few examples of real estate drip email campaigns:
A four month high touch buyer prospecting plan is ideal to use with a seller who you believe will be purchasing a home within the next four months. It keeps you “top of mind” with a hot lead which increases the chance that they’ll choose you as their agent when purchasing a home. For IXACT Contact users, the real estate CRM will remind you when it’s time to reach out to this contact with a phone call. The most effective drip email campaigns are complemented by timely phone calls.
A two year seller prospecting plan helps you keep in touch with a prospect that has expressed interest in selling their home, but is not yet ready to make a commitment. Empty nesters thinking about downsizing to a smaller home or condo over the next year or two come to mind. You’ll keep in touch on a regular basis over the course of two years, reminding prospects that your real estate services are available when they’re ready to sell their home.
A six month after purchase nurturing plan is used to keep in touch with a client you just helped find and buy a new home. After six months, you would transition the contact to the five year sphere of influence nurturing plan (discussed below). Although this plan runs for six months, each email or letter is perfectly timed so you don’t come across as a pest but your client knows you haven’t disappeared! It’s a powerful way to show your past clients that you care about how they’re doing, and you’re available to help.
A five year sphere of influence nurturing plan would be used to keep in touch with past clients and other close contacts (friends, neighbors, family members, etc.) that will likely do business with you and refer you, if you stay in touch effectively. As well, this plan is for all the contacts that have just come off your six month after purchase nurturing campaign. This is the plan you’ll want to assign to most of the contacts in your database as it’s a long-term campaign that will help you stay in touch with most of the people in your database in just the right ways.
How Does IXACT Contact Help?
Are you looking for an easy-to-use system that can provide you with the powerful keep in touch features of drip marketing? IXACT Contact is pre-loaded with a number of drip email campaigns and activity plans and emails that are appropriate for renters, buyers, sellers, FSBOs, and expired listings. Each is professionally written and designed by real estate experts. You have control and are able to customize the template to represent your brand.
In addition to the pre-loaded activity plans and drip email campaigns, you can use IXACT Contact to create your own unique emails and activity plans from scratch. Once your activity plans are set, simply assign your contacts to the appropriate plan and get back to what you do best—buying and selling real estate.
With drip marketing in IXACT Contact, you can “set it and forget it,” which means all the emails in your Activity Plans will be sent automatically on the day they are due without any work on your part. What a huge time saver!
Take Away Point
Real estate drip Email Marketing and Activity Plans are a powerful way to stay in touch with relevant information that appeals to your contact’s varied interests. You’ll love the way drip Email Campaigns maximize your marketing while minimizing your time commitment.