Top Producer Reveals Secret to Direct Response Farm Marketing with RPR

The following is an article from Trang Dunlap, a REALTOR from the San Francisco Bay Area. She uses RPR to market herself and to farm for new prospects, all while saving herself time and money. Read on to learn exactly how Trang leverages RPR to gain new clients.

Systematic Farming Using RPR and Direct Response

Our marketing campaigns deal with hyper local neighborhood farms, and we use direct response mail to find homeowners that are most likely to sell in the near future.

We do this by sending out small 4" x 6", minimally branded postcards. (Be sure to comply with your state's rules on any branded contact info that is required.) We can print out a lower quantity and each postcard has very specific copy for that neighborhood. There's a much higher response rate when the homeowner drops the fear of being hounded by a real estate agent. The postcard offers an answer to the number one question that homeowners have: How much is my home worth?

We target many neighborhoods all over the Bay Area. Unlike traditional farming, where the agent has to build up brand recognition in a neighborhood over months, we quickly get leads from homeowners that want information about their home value. 

It's Much Smarter to Farm Than Fish

We get started by picking a small farm. This can be a neighborhood, condo building, or property type. We then buy a domain name for that farm. The website is just a simple landing page, but we make sure that there is an identifiable picture of the neighborhood so the website visitor feels like this is the best source for their property. The website offers reports on neighborhood home values and the homeowner's property, in exchange for the homeowner's information. The website does not have any branding other than the agent's name and license number.

Every month, we mail out the simple 4" x 6" unbranded postcards to the neighborhood. It's much cheaper than mailing out larger postcards and even EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail). We can print out a lower quantity and each postcard has very specific copy for that neighborhood. There's a much higher response rate when the homeowner drops the fear of being hounded by a real estate agent. The homeowner simply wants the home value and they're not ready for a listing presentation.

The RPR Results

For example, in one neighborhood we sent out 200 postcards and we were able to get seven responses in the first month. These seven homeowners are now going to receive well-branded, valuable information every month. RPR is the tool we use to deliver the valuable information quickly. Along with the RPR report and market trends, we send them a newsletter, and previous property flyers with an update on the success we had selling the home. It's a very impressive package.

Before we discovered RPR, a home value report took us a very long time to complete. We had to go on the MLS and map out the neighborhood, search for the homes, export the CMA and then format in Excel. The report was not pretty and we felt it didn't represent our brand well. When you have to mail out several reports, this can take all day.

However, we are amazed by the reports that are generated from RPR in a matter of seconds. We print out the RPR report and put in a report binder, add our other printouts, stuff it all in a large envelope and off it goes in the mail.

Every month, we send an updated RPR report along with other recent information about the real estate market and our team. We want our team to have a reputation for providing highly valuable information. RPR is perfect for this and great for our brand.

It's a fact that postcards get looked at for about 10 seconds before they are thrown away, so if you're trying to build brand recognition from a postcard, it's a waste of money. I guarantee that our monthly RPR property reports do not get thrown away until after the homeowner reads it.

Save Time, Save Money, and Build Your Brand

Bottom line, RPR saves us time, saves us money, and helps us build our brand amongst homeowners that are likely to sell in the near future.

We've been so impressed with RPR that we are now using it to capture leads at conventions and seminars, too. We use the RPR app on an iPad Pro 12.9". The app looks great and is also very user friendly. We simply give the iPad to the person that wants a report, they enter their address and email, and by the time they leave the event, they have the report in their inbox.

This is just the start. We are looking forward to all the ways we can use RPR to get leads and provide value.

To view the original article, visit the RPR blog.