Automate your email marketing and increase sales

    Developing and managing your contact database is a crucial part of any salespersons career and needs to be at the top of your priorities. It continues to amaze me that many of the agents I interview do not have a contact database or if they do it is not updated and current. Think of all the lost opportunities those agents missed out on and how that business could have helped grow their careers. The National Association of REALTORS conducted a survey a few years ago asking home buyers and sellers if they would work with their agent again and 80% responded yes, they would. However, when they asked experienced consumers who were buying their next home if they worked with the same agent as their last transaction 75% said no, they did not. The #1 reason they gave for this change was that the agent never stayed in touch with them after the transaction.


Think about how much business those agents would have earned if they just stayed in touch. Not just direct sales but all the referrals of friends, family members, co-workers and so on. If your database needs work get it fixed now! It’s never too late to get started and the rewards will more than offset the work. Once you have it up to date and start managing it every week by adding your new clients then you can start automating your contacts by putting in place a drip email campaign.

What is a drip campaign? It is having an email sent every month featuring or highlighting a service or product that you provide that may be of interest to your clients. This needs to be branded with your photo, email and phone number along with any other contact information. The best systems are automatic in that once you upload your contacts and select your mailing campaign you are done. It just goes out each month automatically for a predetermined number of months. There are others that require you to select the message you are sending each month and therefore require more involvement on your part. I like the automatic systems best, the less maintenance involved the better.

There are several companies that offer excellent email drip marketing products for low or no cost. Constant Contact - www.constantcontact.com is very popular and many companies have developed custom templates for their sales agents to use on this site. Sharper Agent - www.sharperagent.com is another company that offers monthly drip marketing campaigns. Search around and do your homework before committing to a service that has a cost involved. Some companies offer drip email campaigns for free to their agents such as William Raveis Real Estate – www.raveis.com which sends information out monthly on their company products and services and brands it to the individual agent.

Getting control of your contact list and automating the process of staying in touch will strengthen your relationships and help you achieve the level of success that your business deserves.