SMS Marketing is Tops for Real Estate Pros

Guest contributor Properties Online says:

Real estate agents rely on a lot of traditional marketing tools, such as signage, to promote their properties for rent or sale. The rise of the internet brought email marketing to the fore, but it is being rapidly trumped by SMS (text messaging) marketing. And SMS marketing is a great thing for real estate professionals.

Over 5 million of the world's 6.8 million people own a cell phone, and Americans send more than 193 billion SMS and MMS messages every month. Morgan Stanley tells us that 91% of all smart phone users keep their phones within arms' reach 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And one of the first rules of marketing is what? That's right: go where your customers are.

Marketing via text message is one of the smartest, most effective and inexpensive options available. More than 73% of cell phone users already use their phones to send and receive text messages, and the positives only carry on from there.

Text response times trump email response times nearly every time. Take this statistic from CITA.org – It take the average person 90 minutes to respond to an email, but just 90 seconds to respond to a text message.

Too many emails end up unopened and unread, lost to the spam or trash folder – some 88%, in fact. But over 97% of SMS messages are opened, 93% of which are read within three minutes of receipt.

Conversion rates and clickthrough rates (CTRs) are also much higher for text than email. The average CTR for text messaging is 14.06%, with an average conversion rate of 8.22%. But email only brings an average CTR of 6.64%, with an average conversion rate of 1.73%.

And research by Search Engine Land reveals that online computer searches typically produce an action (an inquiry, sale, etc.) within a month. However, the same search on a smartphone produces an action within just one hour, says Mobile Marketer.

Handy tools like Smart Lead Capture take all the guesswork out of how to create an effective SMS marketing plan. Smart Lead Capture links mobile friendly property websites with SMS and QR Capture Codes and a backend CMS to provide a comprehensive solution for the smart, busy real estate agent. Prospective buyers gain immediate access to property information while the agent lands a viable lead simultaneously. Text marketing is the easy answer to great leads.

To view the original article, visit the Properties Online blog.