Could you imagine a business that doesn’t work on generating leads? Probably no. Even if you could, the imaginary business in your mind wouldn’t last too long before shutting down. Companies can’t wait for customers to come on their own, without any interference. They need to continually strive to spread the word about themselves and generate leads, which later turn into customers.
Lead generation is particularly important for real estate businesses. As opposed to other industries, even a few clients here can bring a considerable part of the revenue. Besides this, people typically need real estate services once in five, ten or twenty years. Therefore, a few leads are relatively more important for real estate businesses than for any other ones.
One of the most effective ways to generate leads in this business is through direct communication with people. Nowadays, nearly all of them always have their phones on them. Therefore, it is better to reach out to them through their mobile devices, preferably through text messages or emails.
But which one is the best channel to generate leads for real estate businesses? We will find that out below by discussing the ways that real estate businesses can use each one of them and by comparing them using specific criteria.
Email Marketing for Real Estate Businesses
Email marketing is a bit tricky because people receive tons of different emails daily, most of which are spam. Real estate businesses must pay attention to every single detail to avoid appearing as spam (remember that a single lead is critical for them). Following the best practices and presenting necessary information is the best way to turn a prospect into a lead.
Introduction
The introduction is the first step to letting the person know who you are and what you do. The introductory email must contain all of this information but within a strict size limit. If the message is too long, it will be yet another item in the spam folder. Therefore, consider a short, concise and catchy email that can make the person spend a minute to read it.
Offer
Now it is the time to get into more details about the offers that you have. You can periodically send new updates about real estate in multiple locations with their list prices. A good tip here is to leave contact information so that interested clients can get back to you. This increases the chances of them responding back to discuss the offers.
Follow-Up
After you’ve presented an offer, it is absolutely normal that some remain unanswered. Send a short follow-up email reminding them about your previous letter, preferably including some new and exciting offers.
Review
Asking customers for a review is a sign that you value their opinion. It can help identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business, which is entirely in your interests. Besides, a genuine review written by a customer after a successful deal creates a bond between you and your client.
SMS Marketing for Real Estate Businesses
A text message is a great way to establish formal business relationships between a company and its clients. SMS marketing is the best way to create the most direct connection with your clients. In order to start with SMS marketing for your real estate business, you’ll need to follow these steps.
Keywords
Utilizing the right keyword is critical for your business. Many real estate agencies skip this part and set a random keyword without giving much thought to it. The keyword must be associated with your business, be short, and memorable. In the case of real estate, it can be a short version of an apartment address or simply a company’s name.
Autoreply
Some SMS marketing platforms offer autoreply functions that make your job a lot easier. Automated replies help the customers receive the required information about the property without any hassle. All they need to do is text the keyword to the mentioned number and they can receive any information that you had set.
Update
Once the possible leads have sent the keyword and received the autoreply, you can send them new updates about their previous inquiries. These can be short text messages with links to your website, where they can find the rest of the information. As opposed to emails, you can be sure that the majority of the recipients will open and see the updates.
Review
Reminding a customer to review your services is always a delicate touch. Sending notifications through text messages is even better, considering that it creates a closer connection with clients. It is considerably simple and requires only a message with a link to the review page.
Which One Is the Best?
In order to decide which one of these two channels is objectively best for lead generation, we’ve picked three categories to compare them by.
Cost
Text message prices depend on the country and the telecom operator. Typically providers have packages ranging between $20 to $80 per 1000 messages. This is not too expensive, considering the benefit that those messages can bring.
Sending an email, on the other hand, is obviously free. However, email marketing is not exclusive to sending and receiving emails. Marketers need special programs to run automated emails, sort them out, and keep track of statistical data. All of those programs cost something but they are cheaper in the long run, which gives email an edge here.
Open Rate
Email is a convenient and free tool of communication for work, studies, promotional campaigns, and so on. However, the fact that everything is combined in a single email decreases its importance. Eventually, people run out of patience from receiving all kinds of emails daily and don’t give importance to them anymore.
Although people receive promotional messages through SMS as well, they still don’t overload the inbox. Perhaps this is the reason that text messages have a much higher open rate compared to emails. On the other hand, an average email open rate is around 20-40%, whereas SMS open rate is as high as 98%. Therefore, SMS gets a huge advantage here.
Click-Through Rate
Both the cost and open rate are essential when considering email or SMS marketing. However, at the end of the day, it all comes down to the click-through rate (CTR). CTR is what measures how effective a campaign is. It is the ultimate indicator of how many people are interested in the content of the message.
The average CTR for a promotional text message is around 19%. The same measure for an email is about 3.2%. This number is logical considering the massive gap between the SMS and email open rates.
As we could see, SMS has more advantages over email with its higher open and click-through rates. Although email marketing is a little more affordable, SMS is more effective for lead generation in the real estate business.
This article has been contributed by Azat Eloyan.