In my last blog post, I talked about effective email communication and made the statement that the focus of every email should be on getting the lead on the phone. This may have been a little confusing as it was understood by a few of you to mean not to call until you have emailed. NOT THE CASE. Email is a measure taken as a means of contact when a number isn’t provided in the lead info or as a follow up after a call or voicemail. Email is also a way to supplement the amount of attempted contacts without inundating your lead with a large amount of phone calls. With that said, an email should never be considered a replacement for a good sales call. Calling web leads is vitally important to the success of the conversion process.

Be the First to Call Your Lead

Over 65% of leads that have been successfully converted are done on the first call. Why is this? Simple, homebuyers visit several websites when searching for a home. On average, a real estate web consumer will submit lead form on 3-5 of your competitor’s websites. The real estate consumer will more than likely respond to the first (sometimes the second) call put into them by agents responding to the inquiry. As for the third, fourth or fifth . . . they are simply out of luck as the consumer is tires of receiving calls relatively quickly and become non-responsive.

Call As Soon as Humanly Possible!

Waiting longer than 5 minutes to call a lead after a lead form/registration has been submitted has a 46% lower rate of qualification than those called in UNDER 5 minutes. In fact, the under 5 minute response vs. the over 30 minute response drops your chances of converting the lead 100 times! In addition to increasing your conversion ratio, it helps build rapport with the customer generating the idea that you will be responsive to their needs.

Weekends and After Hours Calling

The contact rate increases by almost 20% and the qualification rate increases by 30% when calling after hours. No big surprise here as most people that can afford to buy homes usually have jobs and are more often than not working from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. Even if you were lucky enough to make contact with a lead during business hours there is frequently less focus and less time for a successful sales call as your lead is probably in the middle of something.

Here is why:

1. Making voice contact humanizes the process and begins the rapport building. Prior to the lead hearing your voice, you are a faceless email address or a headshot on a website.
2. Making voice contact gives you a better shot at qualifying the lead. A better understanding of a lead’s needs are communicated via voice.
3. Lastly, the most important reason to make voice contact is so that it creates a better opportunity for you to demonstrate your sales skills. Good emails are one thing, but a good sales call has a much better impact.

If phone calls are so great then why email?

Sometimes the web lead info contains bad numbers or we end up getting voicemail. In addition, too many phone calls may seem overly aggressive and set a bad tone. Using email keeps a lead in contact with you and provides a form of communication that is received at a time that the lead is ready to receive it (opposed to a phone call during dinner).

What you should say in your email

I used to send out 100% unique custom emails to every lead. After doing a lot of follow up, I found that I was sending the same 10-12 emails over and over and it was taking a ton of time. As I went back over these emails, I discovered that there were really only about 12 different types and that regardless of the situation, I could choose one of these 12 types and have them match the current sales situation almost perfectly. So I searched back through all the emails I sent to my customers and found 12 of the best emails and rewrote them as perfectly as I could. I dissected each email word for word creating what I thought to be the 12 best sales email templates possible.

Don’t send out templates as is

Even though I have what I thought to be the 12 of the best email templates around, I merely use them as a starting point. I find it very important to still right a 100% custom subject line and opening paragraph PER LEAD. In the subject line and opening paragraph I try to use some information from the submitted lead information to make it look even more custom and unique.

The subject line

The subject line is arguably the most important part of the email. If the prospect doesn’t open the email your efforts are in vain. The key to a good subject line is to keep it short and unique. Try to stay away from subject lines that are look like spam or are vague. Use language that speaks to their specific needs as a real estate consumer e.g. “The farmhouse information you requested” or “New Paltz Farmhouse”. A subject line that uses words like “Great Deal” or “Low Price” will be flagged for spam in a lot of cases and may never reach the prospect.

The opening paragraph

The opening sentence of your first paragraph should never be about you rather it should be about addressing the needs of the prospect. Use your opening sentence to confirm that you understand the needs of the customer by repeating the request back to them in your own words. The following sentence should be a full and complete answer to the customer’s inquiry. If you can, incorporate a personal experience in effort to create a connection with the prospect while demonstrating expertise and knowledge.
Here is an example of a good opening paragraph in response to a customer that inquired about a listing that is in a certain area:
Opening Paragraph: I received your inquiry about the farmhouse in New Paltz and wanted to get back to you as soon as possible.  To answer your question, The median home price in New Paltz is $265,000 and has a New York State Thruway exit making commuting to NYC easy.  New Paltz is a great little village, me and my family often hike there.

The second paragraph

This is where the template mumbo jumbo comes in. If the email is in response to a land customer I have a couple of quick (previously written) sentences about our land sales expertise as a company and my qualifications specifically. I also have templates for new construction, investment property, luxury, first time home buyer, foreclosures, short sales, etc. As I used them I found that I sometimes needed variations in for each of my original 12 expanding my library even more.

The third and last paragraph

The last paragraph is designed to create a call to action. Always use language focused on setting up a meeting or asking when would be a good time to call. I sometimes used the phrase that “I can show you any Ulster County listing usually within 24 hours”.

The signature

The signature should contain as much information as you are willing to give, including name, desk phone, office phone and website. Try to stay away from extra formatting like bold, italics and hyperlinks. Some email programs interpret formatting differently and can sometimes show up as gibberish on the receiving end. If you spell out full website names, good email programs will sometimes convert them to hyperlinks automatically.

More email tips

• Focus more on the need of the prospect and less on how good you are as a REALTOR
• Keep it short and simple.
• Even though we are dealing with the most sophisticated real estate consumers in history, avoid using industry terms and acronyms like MLS, DOM or Pending.
• Use a relaxed but professional tone
• Double check it for spelling
• Try not to use images or graphics in the body of the email (spam blockers/junk mail filters sometimes mistake them for malicious content).  Attachments usually work best.

The Greatest Area of Opportunity

Because many agents won’t work with leads that are initially non-responsive, the ones that do have less competition for the attention of the lead.  The trick is to develop rapport and get the lead to interact with you before they are ready to go out and see homes.  The timing here is very important, because once the lead turns the corner and decides to make an appointment, he/she will go with the first agent they get on the phone and it then becomes a free-for-all.  I have found that it is at this very stage in the sales cycle that the lead starts jumping website to website and will sometimes be in contact with several agents at once, shrinking your window of opportunity.  If steps have been taken by you to develop rapport, this is less likely to happen.

How to know when they are ready

The reason I keep referring to the 90 to 120 period is because the greatest amount of leads become responsive soon after.  This doesn’t mean all leads will automatically become ready on day 121 as the non-response period can sometimes be up to a year or more (see graph above).  So how do you know when they are ready?  The short answer is, until they are in the car, you don’t.  With that said, there are some things that begin to surface in the lead profile that will help you make the best guess.

In the same way I analyze lead data at time of registration, I analyze my returning leads for readiness (buyer behavior).  The only real difference is that now the lead has some accumulated history I can look at.

• The first thing I consider is log in history.  If the lead initially has a login history of once or twice a month then jumps to several times a week or daily, it is time to step up the heat and apply a high-touch level of follow up (more about high-touch vs. low-touch in a later post).
• Secondly, I look at the “Saved Favorites” of the lead.  If the lead has recently begun to save home listings to their favorites, implement high-touch.  If the lead has been saving favorites all along, try to look at the types of homes the lead has been saving to see if a trend is developing.  Usually as a lead becomes more serious (demonstrating buyer behavior), he or she will go from saving all types homes (all areas and price ranges) to saving homes that are more specific to a set of criteria (tighter price ranges and areas within a certain vicinity).

There are lots of other little things that will start to throw up ‘buyer behavior’ flags as you become more familar with analyzing lead data.  I didn’t want to get into them because most of them are completely obvious (lead makes a call into the office, lead asks about taxes on a property, lead submits a mortgage requal form, etc.).  The key is to get to them before the more obvious indicators surface, because if it is painfully obvious to you, it is equally as obvious to the 5 other realtors who’s site they have been on.  Get to them fast and develop the rapport before your competitor does.

Hybrid Registration

There are a few versions of registration that I have seen to be effective. The most effective hybrid registration strategy (IMHO) allows the user to do unlimited searches without ever having to register. The searches of the unregistered user return the complete amount of listings making the results the same as if the user was registered. What makes unregistered search different is that each listing returned has a limited amount of detail. The limited amount of detail usually includes a single picture, price, bedrooms, bathrooms and acreage. Once the user registers, the full detail of the listing is revealed, displaying several pictures, virtual tours, school district, taxes, etc.

Why is this effective?

It is effective for a couple of reason. First off, it is good to develop trust and rapport with your users. A relationship of give and take is always the most effective (I give you something, you give me something). Giving the user nothing prior to registration usually ends up with the user hitting the back button and going to a different website. Secondly, allowing the user to do unlimited searches before asking them to register creates an investment made by the user. The user will sometimes search 3 and 4 times before getting the desired results. Once the user finds the perfect set of results (and looks to research the details of the listings), it is then when asking the user to register becomes most effective. The user is less likely to abandon the website at this point because he or she has dialed in the perfect search and would have to recreate the search at another website (it is easier to simply register at this point).

What to require in the registration form.

I found it to work best when the email address is the only thing that is required. The registration form should have other fields giving the user the opportunity to provide more but the email address is all I need. Any information given beyond the email address further qualifies the user as a lead but most of the information I need to know about the user is gathered by documenting the activity of the user. Knowing the detailed activity of your website users is the best way to learn about your prospective customer and increases the chance of converting the user to a lead. I will talk about user activity and tracking in a later blog.

It would be great if we as real estate agents didn’t have to require registration at all, unfortunately, we can’t afford to do that. The best thing we can do is treat our users with respect, protect their privacy and provide the best customer service we can.