Staying in Touch vs. Spamming Too Much

I do love Father's Day. These days, one of the greatest treats is spending time with family. I also got a few text messages from close friends--I sent a few, too. But this morning, my inbox was littered with "Happy Father's Day" greetings from CRMs. What do you think happened next?

As I went through them, I noticed a few things. First of all, it seems like the most popular CRMs used by agents either only have one Father's Day greeting in the drip system, or it was just the most popular choice among agents. I had lots of duplicates of the same greeting; honestly, it made the entire thing seem insincere.

I also noticed that there was nothing personal about it. None of the agents took the time to share anything about themselves – like a child's graduation or maybe summer activities that they are enjoying, etc. The greeting was nothing more than a form letter. Moreover, I am certain that I did not subscribe to their marketing campaign.

After deleting a few emails, I changed my behavior and started hitting the unsubscribe button. I am sure that agents across America found a bunch of unsubscribe notices in their inbox this morning – depleted databases.

The great unsolved challenge for real estate professionals is cracking the code to staying in touch with the people in their database. Every year, the National Association of REALTORS® publishes research that indicates that over 90% of consumers would use their Realtor in a future transaction. Only about 20% of consumers actually use their Realtor again. In addition, agents claim that about 50% of transactions comes from past clients and referrals.

All of that research points to the leaky bucket of client retention.

Here are a few areas of opportunity that may plug some of the holes:

• Use tags in CRM to indicate as many things as you know about this person. Develop customer personas. It is a lot of work, but it will make a difference because it will allow the right message to go to the right person, at the right time.
• Match and append the CRM database to keep it up to date. Services like Aidentified not only complete customer contact records, but they also monitor for life events.
• Send sincere messages to people that you know. The average agent has 397 people in their database. Sending a real note to 50 or 100 of them would be far better than spamming them all. If you do not know the person that well, tell them about what Father's day means to you and the traditions you have in your family – or favorite places to go in your community and things to do on Father's day.
• Do good. Give money to a charity in your local community that helps children who are fatherless.
• Use humor. Top 10 Father's Day disasters – you can easily find that stuff with a Google search. One friend sent me a text of a dad in a canoe with his young son. The dad was paddling, and the son was playing in the water. Then the son fell in the water and dad scooped him up and put him back in the boat and continued paddling as though it never happened. It was awesome. Another one showed a dad at the zoo with his son and daughter. The son was giving food to a giraffe who then picked the son up in the air because the boy did not let go of the leaf. The dad grabbed the son – amazing.
• Don't send the email. If you do not have the time or inspiration to send an email that is good enough, don't send it at all. All the agents who have me in their database that made this decision did not get their email address blocked. Sometimes that is a win.

Happy Father's Day

I had a great Father's Day weekend and I hope you did as well. Marilyn, Alexandra and I went to Lake Nacimiento. It is a reservoir and campground in northern San Luis Obispo County where we keep our boat. Alexandra invited a few friends up to join us. It reminded me that Father's Day is not so great for some kids; but in some way, I think they enjoyed joining our family. We had a good time and some of us got a little too much sun. Alexandra's wake surfing skills are getting pretty good. The water situation in California is real. The lake is down below 30% capacity and drops a foot or two every day. July 4th may be the last weekend on the boat this year – which is pretty sad. The boat and the camper were the things that allowed us all to keep our sanity during the COVID lockdown.

We are going to need to find some new fun-filled family activities for late summer. Maybe an agent will send me a few inspiring ideas.

To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.