Hello everyone! Can you believe that it’s 2022? Welcome back to Farm Friday. Today is all about automated text marketing for real estate agents! As real estate professionals, you know that the real estate market is a significant player in the world economy. You also understand that working as a real estate professional can be competitive.
Many Realtors assume that they have to outspend their competitors with ads and billboards to stay ahead of them. If more real estate agents only knew about real estate text marketing!
Real estate text marketing is the next big thing for Realtors. It’s a great way to market and an excellent tool for lead nurturing and lead generation. In this article, we’ll go over real estate text messaging basics and real estate text marketing strategies.
What Is Automated Text Marketing?
Automated text marketing is all about using automated texts to build your real estate business. These texts deliver real-time information that’s highly personalized and highly relevant for consumers on the go. Real estate agents can use real estate text messaging for lead generation and lead nurturing right out of the gate.
No real estate text marketing is complete without real estate autoresponders and real estate drip campaigns.
What Are Autoresponders?
Real-time text messages are now possible with autoresponders! These allow you to respond to incoming real-time texts from interested clients quickly.
Autoresponders are great if you need to send out information quickly. You can use autoresponders for all kinds of real estate services, like scheduling showings with interested clients and providing listing photos.
What Are Drip Campaigns?
Drip campaigns are one of the most advanced automated text message marketing features. They allow you to build campaigns and deliver messages based on real estate activities, like when your clients search for available properties with keywords you’ve preselected.
Real estate drip campaigns also let realtors automatically send follow-up texts with time intervals that you’ve determined.
What Can I Do With Text Marketing?
There are many ways that automated text marketing can make your life easier as a busy real estate professional. Most people prefer to communicate through text rather than phone calls or emails, making text message marketing an effective way to reach any target audience. Did you know that more than 90% of people open a text message within three minutes of receiving it? With automated text messaging, you can improve your communication with current and potential clients by:
- Following up with new leads quickly.
- Organizing phone calls, viewings, or other meetings.
- Automatically sending new social media leads a text message.
- Placing a keyword that customers can text to a number to receive more information on a specific property.
When building your real estate marketing strategy for 2022, I highly recommend using automated texts as one of your marketing channels. With a text message marketing campaign, many pain points of the job can be relieved.
The Benefits of Real Estate Text Message Marketing
The real estate industry is one of the most competitive industries in the United States, especially over the last few years with the rise in demand and lack of housing inventory in most major markets. I’m sure you’ve noticed, as many business owners and marketers have, that despite the increase in ways to reach people, people have never been harder to reach. Phone calls go unanswered, emails unopened. Yet text messages have a 98% open rate, which benefits Realtors in the following ways:
- lead nurturing by staying in front of clients
- improved response rates to campaigns
- more leads
- find buyers faster
Only 5% of current real estate agents communicate by text, so it’s an excellent opportunity to get ahead of your competition, delight your clients, and stand out as a leader in your niche!
Get Started with Real Estate Text Marketing
My guess is that most of you are very familiar with text messaging. One of the best things about text marketing is that many platforms are straightforward to use. No filters, no algorithms, just you and your contacts.
1. Pick a Platform and Get Familiar
The first thing you need to do to start a real estate text marketing campaign is choose a text marketing platform. There are a ton out there, and which one you use will depend on your budget and preferences. You should check out a couple of platforms: EZTexting, slyText, and Textedly.
2. Upload Contacts
The next thing you need to do, no matter which text messaging platform you choose, is to connect your CRM or upload your contacts to the text messaging platform. Some text message marketing platforms allow you to segment your contacts based on whether they are current clients, past clients, buyers, sellers, investors, etc. Ensure that your contacts are tagged and segmented appropriately for your campaigns to have the best effects.
3. Choose Keywords
With most text message marketing platforms, you need to choose a campaign keyword. This is the word or phrase that your real estate leads will use to opt-in to your SMS marketing contact list. Keep it simple. You don’t want a keyword that is too long or easily misspelled. For example, if I was a real estate agent, I might use ML as my keyword or MLREALESTATE. In my example, my leads would only need to text ML to my number and receive my listing information instantly.
After choosing your keyword, you need to communicate it to your clients. Promote your keyword by posting on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with a “Text to Join” graphic or message. You’ll also want to make sure that your clients can sign up for your text messaging campaigns on your website. Send an email to your email list and communicate this new option verbally to your clients.
4. Create Message Templates
Once you’re ready to create your message templates, you’ll want to think about what you’d like your clients to see when they respond to your texts. Would you like them to be able to reply to your messages? If so, you’ll need to include a link to your website where they can find more information about your services. Or, would you rather they call you directly? If so, you may want to include a phone number at the bottom of your text message.
5. Set Up Automation
Now that you’ve got all your keywords, client base, and message templates set up, it’s time to automate your text messaging campaigns. With most text messaging platforms, you can create automated messages that send to your clients automatically, such as “We’ve sold another home in your neighborhood!” or “It’s been six months since we last spoke! Are you still looking for a house?” These types of messages can help keep your business top of mind with your real estate leads and provide value at the same time.
With real estate text marketing, timing is everything. Clients who missed a house-hunting opportunity might be interested in selling their home ten months later; thus, real-time messaging becomes critical to real estate lead generation efforts.
Tips for a Higher Response Rate
Long texts, irrelevant texts, or improperly targeted mass texts can result in a low response rate and a higher average response time. To make sure that your future campaigns are as successful as possible, make sure to follow these tips:
Schedule your real estate text messages to go out during business hours or when real estate leads are most likely to be thinking of real estate.
- Make sure you always include a call to action in your real estate text marketing message; for example, ask them explicitly to reply with their contact information (or lack thereof) or tell you what they’re looking for in a realtor.
- Make your real estate text messages valuable; don’t just send real estate updates without giving your realtor leads something of value, whether it’s local housing market information or new listings that might interest them.
- Give real estate leads an incentive to reply to your texts with their contact information. Some real estate text message marketing platforms allow realtors to offer real estate discounts or new listing alerts upon opting into the realtor’s SMS campaign.
- Always include your real estate text marketing keyword in your real estate lead generation messages. Remember, realtors’ clients use that keyword phrase to opt-in to Realtor text chatter.
Ultimately, real estate text messaging offers realtors the opportunity to communicate regularly with their real estate leads when clients are thinking of real estate, either for purchasing or selling. It’s no wonder realtor text marketing is becoming an essential realtor lead generation tool to find both prospective buyers and sellers.
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