Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we've got another live session for you from our Gogo Agent Academy earlier this year.
This time we're talking about the fifth element of our Listing Agent Lifestyle, finding buyers.
We had a really great conversation about the evolution of what worked 20 years ago to find buyers, and what are the most important thing to do right now to find the buyers that are going to help you build a listing centric business, and ensure your success going into the future.
This is a long one, an hour and a half for you, but lots of great stuff and I think you're gonna really enjoy it.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep032
We had a really great conversation about the evolution of what worked 20 years ago to find buyers, and what's the most important thing to do right now to find the buyers that are going to help you build a listing centric business and insure your success going into the future. So this is a long one, an hour and a half for you, but lots of great stuff, and I think you're really going to enjoy it, so here we go.
Okay, so let's talk about finding buyers now, as our fifth element of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. There's a lot of cool stuff now, you can see when we're talking about taking a listing centric approach to building your business, even our desire or our efforts to find buyers right now, the way I'm going to talk about it, should be in support of building the listing side of your business. So we mentioned this idea of being a market maker, of triangulating. This is where, I believe, that we have the edge right now. This is where that 10 year kind of like ahead of the curve stuff that we have, is in seeing where the market has gone and now being at the forefront of where it's going.
So, when you look at it, we talked about the idea of when everything was moving online, the winning appeal for buyers was to go online and search all the homes, that you could get all the homes online. And we used that message for 10 or more years really, as the differentiator. And then, as it became the norm, where of course we go online and get all the listings, search all the homes online, wasn't a unique message right, as it was when we started that message in 2000 or 1999.
But we had a nice, a really great 10 year run of that being the advantage that we had. And now, when we look at this as where I think we have a really great opportunity, is to control the inventory by getting and finding in advance people who are going to be selling their homes in every category, wherever we're looking there, and then finding buyers which are ultimately the catalyst for all of us. A listing isn't the catalyst, isn't the thing that finishes the transaction. Ultimately, the person coming with the checkbook is the person who is the catalyst in this. Even if you have listings, if few you focus on getting them, getting the listing isn't the end game, it's about somebody buying that listing, that's what creates the money that pays the commission. So ultimately it is about finding a buyer, but the reason that listings have been so appealing as a realtor, is that you get this perception that there's some security in that, or that there's other people who are out doing the work for you, that let other people go out show the homes and bring their buyer, and you're going to get paid when they find the thing.
But it's led to this idea that, well I'm a listing agent, and in a lot of ways people have taken that as an arrogant stance, in a way that, well I don't work with buyers, buyers are ... as if that's really the thing. But the reality is that now if you have a listing centric approach to the business, but you're finding strategically buyers that are going to buy the listings that you're able to create, or to buy in advance, one's you're nurturing the relationship with, until they are ready, you're able to be in that market maker position more often than not.
When we talked about with the lakefront homes that we've established that we can get you lakefront listings, you can get in front of people who are going to be selling their lakefront home, then the most valuable thing that you can have is a list of people who are looking to buy lakefront homes, that want to know about that one as soon as you list it. So we say going in, helping to get a listing, I would say to people that the most valuable accessory that you could bring to a listing appointment is your checkbook. If you came in, it's a listing presentation that beats all listing presentations. We could line everybody up, give their best listing presentation with their PowerPoints, and their color binders and all of their things, and their track record, and if I walk in, in the end with my checkbook and I say, "What a lovely home you have here, how much would you like for it?" And they say whatever the number is, and I say, "That sounds reasonable, when would you like to move?" And they say, "Well how about the end of next month." Sold. And I get the checkbook and I write the check. How many people think that the person with the best listing presentation is going to get that listing?
I call that, that's the mother beater, that's the thing that they would sell, they would throw their mother under the bus, their mother is counting on getting that listing, and all of a sudden, well mom, it's just business, it's just business, they had the buyer, right. I mean, but they had the money. And so you see that happening, and if that's true, then the next best thing that we could have from there for this situation, would be to have a buyer who has their checkbook ready to go.
And here's the thing, when you really look at fundamentally why people choose to list their house with somebody, is because they are listing with the person that they feel is closest to the goal line for them, the one who is most likely to get them that check faster than somebody else, that's why they look for things like your track record, and how many homes have you sold, and how much experience do you have, and all of these things to evaluate and to look for the one who they think is going to get them there faster. So if you go in and you are able to demonstrate and show how you over everybody else have a higher likelihood that the person is going to buy their house, is in your world than in somebody else's, that's a big advantage. Because most listing presentations are going to go in, and they're going to say and when we list your house, here's what our marketing plan is, here's what we're going to do. So they're starting here, and everything they're talking about is in the future. Once we list your house, we'll advertise it here, we'll start then trying to find a buyer for your house.
But if you're looking and you've been running a full page ad in the homes of magazines, or running Facebook ads, or generating this whole list of people who are looking for lakefront homes, and you're able to go in to somebody and say, "Listen, I started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago, and I have 1,132 people who have responded to this ad that we've been running, which is ideally exactly what their home would be." So if you're seeing that somebody's responded to the lakefront guide, that now you've got this list of people who are looking for lakefront homes, that's the big advantage. And of course it really is an advantage, because you are able to, once you find that person who's ready to start looking, now you've used that as a catalyst to get into the conversation with people who might be looking to getting ready to sell. Because you've identified them as a seller way ahead of time.
So we look at, we try in all of that the highest markets, like we do with Kenny with your Northshore magazine ad, which worked really well as a lead generator, but we weren't able to continue because of the Southeby effect of it. That it's not an ad that is branded for a company, but it worked. So we had real evidence of like what was the response difference? It was 29 responses to-
Audience: Your ad.
Dean: And then?
Audience: After it was…
Dean: Southeby-ized. Yeah. So really interesting, how that happens that more than three times the response, by just making it outwardly focused. But anyway, if you're able to do, to run an ad that is completely just offering information about a category, you can really dominate that whole category, that's what it becomes about. So whether it's golf course houses, whether it's lakefront homes, whether it's in-town condos with a view, or oceanfront properties, or we've done it in Paradise Valley with view properties, you could do it in the mountains, you could do ski chalets, you could do acreage, you can do whatever it is. Whatever your target is for your listings, we want to set up a system that finds that category of buyer.
It's as if we're going to work finding the buyers before we get the listing. And we're able to come in with that kind of confidence, that you're not saying, listen we don't need your listing to go out and find the buyer for this, we've already finding the buyers, and that gives you an advantage when you're communicating with your seller leads, the people, your seller prospects. If every outside of the monthly communication that you're sending them, with all the updates and giving them the valuable information, if the only time that you reach out to them is because you've got somebody's checkbook in your hand, you're going to condition them that whenever they're ready to get a check, we're going to call back Zac, we're going to call Tom, or whatever it is, because he's called me two or three times over the last 18 months with a buyer in hand. He's got all the buyers, and they're going to see that you're slowly starting to take over that neighborhood, because of the neighbors that you're trying to help, you've got all of the evidence that you are the person to call when I need to sell my house. My lakefront house, or my golf course house, or whatever it is.
So it makes a big difference to think strategically about the kinds of buyers that we find. And then even when we get the buyers, to both look at the people who have already responded to you getting listings campaigns, to see if any of those people are ready for that person, or to do like use that buyer to send into the neighborhood specifically where they want to be, to find listing leads. Do you have that postcard? This is one that we've done with Chuck. Ron has, yeah ... just when you're looking at this as a way of communicating with a neighborhood about a very specific buyer that you have, kind of telling the story about that buyer, it's a great lead generator. Because if they're thinking about selling, that's really a compelling message. But they're becoming jaded by, "Hey we've got a buyer messages.", and so that's why adding this detail of, that we really do have a buyer, like here's the real person in their voice, that makes a big difference in the authenticity of it really goes a long way.
And you only use it when you really do have a buyer. That way, you're able to maintain that, that it's not a bait and switch type of thing, that's the worst thing that you could do.
So the other things around buyers, you know, looking at those category buyers, sometimes the best way to find the category buyers too, is with your Infobox fliers and the things that you're doing to market the listings that you already have. It's all one big loop, you know, everything is a leading back to and centered on the listings, that's really everything that we're focused on here. So it's not just about finding buyers or building a big buyers business and run them around without supporting it with a listing effort. But when you're finding the buyers for the listings that you're trying to get, it goes a long way.
So, let's talk about some of the things that you guys are doing, some of the questions that you have about some of the things I've just been talking about, or implementing those things, let's just open it up for a conversation about them. Yeah?
Audience: I just had a question about the local area guides, would you then segment the guides? Would you do two or three, like historic, and then waterfront.
Dean: I would look at it as ghost restaurants, that you're looking like there's no reason that you can't have a guide for waterfront homes, and a guide for townhouses, and a guide for historical homes, and a guide for whatever. Yeah, all of that, it's not one size fits all, it's exactly what you’re looking for. Even if 80% of the guide is the same, but you've got it geared towards or leaning towards a particular market, it makes all the sense in the world.
Audience: Okay, thank you.
Dean: Janet, Zac? Let's go around there.
Zac: In reference to the Infobox flyers, do we follow up with them or just put them in the system?
Dean: So we've got it programmed, so that when they respond, when they come in and put in their name and email address, what we do is immediately they get a message that is here's the information about this property, plus then we'll have a super signature, it'd be kind of the best practices there, and then the next couple of days or within the next week, we might send out a message that says, "Hey Zac, I'm meeting some people to see the house this weekend, would you like to join us?" And that is a great thing, in that you only ever go out if somebody responds and says yes.
Zac: Okay. Yes. And what about the coming soon, we do a lot of coming soon, we even do the pre-coming soon. So I use the big yard arms, the wooden yard arms, and so most people have the arm facing the house across the street, and I have the arm facing the house, so it looks backwards, but it really isn't, all the others are backwards. And so we put that up for two weeks without a sign on it. So the sharp agents know it's mine. So just the sign post, so we'll get calls in the pre-coming soon.
Dean: You have your phone number on it you mean? Or what?
Zac: No, there's nothing, it's just the yard arm facing the house.
Dean: Okay, I gotcha.
Audience: He just marked his territory.
Zac: Yeah, I mean whatever works, works. So on the coming soon, do we deal with them the same way as actually for sale? We normally will ask the seller if they want, or how they feel about showings before it hits the market. Some of them don't want showings, so I'm okay with it.
Dean: Some of it you would be forbidden from showing, if you're going with the coming soon, if it's on the MLS, and you're saying they're showing, that would be a problem.
Zac: Well yes and no. Our MLS does not accept non-exclusive right to sell listings. So we start out with a non-exclusive right to sell listing, and then when we get it on the market, we let them know we have updated paperwork, which is then the exclusive listing. And so, when the seller doesn't allow them to be shown, no one sees it. When the seller allows it to be shown, anyone can see it. So we're just real fair, because we know that there are agents out there posing at buyers or a buyer will call and then the agent shows up with the buyer on purpose, so everything's done the right way, sort of. So we would just put those buyers into the system, just like that.
Dean: So here's the thing, it's just like a throughput system. They come in from an Infobox flyer, they get the information about that property, you engage with them to see if they want to come and see that property. If they respond, then we're engaged in the converting leads dialogue with them. Going and finding out if they're five star prospects, and having that conversation with them. But ultimately every buyer that comes in is sourced as a, not sourced but categorized as a buyer prospect, and all your buyer prospects get your market watch every week. So you've always got this whole safety net, there's always at the very least, your market watch is going out to every buyer in the system. And that's the foundation for where you can talk about your coming soon, where you can talk about your pre-coming soon, whatever you want to talk about, you're looking for the people who are ready.
And even if you don't see the house that you want on the market right now, just like we talk about the silent market for sellers, we may be able to find you the perfect house before it ever comes on the market. It's the same appeal as we have to the sellers. Because the buyers, they want access to, especially in markets where they're used to having to compete, or that they've lost out to a competitive situation, to be able to have access to homes that aren't yet on the market. That's like if I could get to the front of the line, kind of thing, that would be very valuable. And then you could even use those to go out and find exactly the house that they want, even if it's not for sale right now. Yeah, I like that, cool. What' going on, on this side here? Okay? It’s cupcake fever. Everybody's got cupcake fever. Okay, Barbara?
Barbara: So Zac, that was a little over my head. The non-exclusive right to sell, is that so that agents won't all converge and try to sell it, because they're not as interested in doing that? Or why would you do that, if I may ask?
Zac: Every state has different laws. So the non-exclusive right to sell in Georgia, means that the seller can sell it to someone else, or another agent can bring a buyer and not pay us a commission. So it's non-exclusive to the company that I work for. And it's just a way around the MLS, because our MLS is privately owned, it's not owned by the board. So our fees are like ten times higher, and so everybody hates the MLS. So that's just, I like coming soon signs. I want to say that I started the coming soon phenomenon and I can prove it. I have the receipt for the first coming soon rider. My office was next door to a movie theater, this was about 12 years ago, and they always had the coming soon out front. And we were like two storefronts down. So the seller said, well is there anything that we can do while we're getting the house ready? And I'm thinking, well we could do a coming soon. And so we went, from the listing we went, or the signing of the agreement, we went right to fast signs, and made a coming soon sign.
Dean: Let's just claim you as the creator of coming soon.
Zac: I do claim that.
Dean: Until somebody else, yeah, why not, that's great.
Zac: Thank you. I also started the larger than it looks rider. It's because in my market, we have these 1,200 square foot bungalows, next door to one's that 1,600 square feet, but they look the same. So on the bigger bungalows, we would do the larger than it looks rider, well every house had it stolen off of it, and we would just go through hundreds of coming soon riders.
Dean: I love that, that's the best.
Zac: I'm sorry, not coming soon, but larger than it looks.
Audience: But you never read both of them side by side I hope.
Dean: Larger than it looks coming soon, that would not be good.
Audience: That's larger than it looks man, everybody stole them, that was like a takeaway.
Zac: Largerthanitlooks.com. Shut up Kenny, shut up Kenny, shut up Kenny,
Dean: Zac never forgets a floor plan.
Zac: Yeah, that's right.
Audience: I'll take a picture of it.
Dean: He's getting there. He's got to pay the toll right here. That's funny. So what are you guys doing to find buyers right now? What's the thing.
Audience: Local ads.
Dean: So talk about that.
Audience: To drive people to the Cape Ann waterfront guide. In communities where I've already identified buyers, that are coming there. For example, Winchester, Massachusetts. So in their little weekly rag, their little weekly family newspaper, we run a small ad for the Cape Ann waterfront.
Dean: Oh good, so you're advertising upstream where people are, and so you're doing that. And you're generating buyer leads for that?
Audience: Correct.
Dean: For a category, the Cape Ann, like that's a known commodity, so people are looking for Cape Ann. So that was the same thing that I would do with the Guide to Halton Hills, is I'd run it in the areas where people would be coming from. Because they were coming from Toronto from the west end suburbs, they'd be coming out to Halton Hills.
Audience: From the listing end, we love to show that ad to folks that call us in, you know, what are you doing, what are you going to do that's different. Especially expireds, because we have an expired, somebody that's tried to be on the market, and then they didn't sell and they call us, because we went them an expired package. What are you going to do that's different? Well have you seen this? So we're already looking for your buyer, we've been looking for your buyer for a while.
Dean: That's awesome. Good, I like that. That's kind of a thing, thinking moving upstream and thinking where are these buyers coming from, I like that kind of stuff. Who else, what else is working for finding buyers right now? Where are your buyers coming from?
Audience: Yard sign automation.
Dean: Say that again?
Audience: Yard sign automation. They put the Go Go Agent phone number right on there with an extension. People call and you get capture from that, or put a URL on the yard sign and capture them from there.
Dean: That's a great thing for finding the right buyers, and you know what they're looking for, having that whole thing. I think listings and marketing around the listings is one of the most amazing resources that we have, they self-generate. Do you remember when we did the Zac hotline? And that was something... yeah, I mean that was I remember it was in Zac's office and we were working on the Zac hotline and a couple of the changes that we made when the phone ... Because Zac would put in and recorded messages and tell people to call or press this number to get the current price on this property.
And then what we did is, have the phone answered by somebody, the red phone was answered by somebody in Zac's office, but it was never transferred live to an agent. So they would answer, "Thanks for calling the Zac Team Hotline, how may I help you?" And they would say, I want to know the price of this property. And it would say, well certain, what's your number, I'll page an agent and have them call you right away? And they would say okay, and I just talk to an agent, yes, I'll have somebody call you right away. And after a couple of things, they would give the phone number and then they would hang up the phone, and say to Barb, literally that far away, here's somebody that wants to find out the thing.
So you've immediately gotten the thing that you were looking for was the phone number on the thing. Now when you're having that conversation, she shouldn't have to worry about getting their name and contact information because she's already got it, so she's there to serve, how may I help you? They wanted information on this, certainly, here it all is. And then the next step was to ask them, do you have an email address? For every listing, other listings that were just like it, we've got five other properties just like that one, I can email you all the information about this one plus there's five others, do you have an email address? So now you've got in a non-confrontational easy, breezy way, you've got their name and their phone number, and their email address and you know the price range and what they're looking in, and that's just the step by step easy thing.
Audience: We would say this is just the-
Dean: The microphone. Yeah, this is just the hotline.
Audience: This is just the hotline call center?
Dean: Yeah. Even though it's six feet away from who you're ultimately going to talk to.
Audience: And when it says call this 800 number, it said operators are standing by?
Dean: Yes, it's perfect right? That's kind of a fun thing. And that phone was always, that was always manned. Someone was manning the hotline, yeah. That was great, a cool thing. Do you still do that?
Zac: No.
Dean: It's still equally great. Again, it sounds like that's a really cool idea.
Zac: Well it worked so well, I don't know why we stopped.
Dean: I don't know. I see a pattern.
Zac: Well it's because I innovated, and it didn't work, so we stopped.
Dean: That's so funny.
Zac: I do have an extra cellphone, so maybe it's time to put it on the cellphone.
Dean: Paint it red, get some spray paint, yeah.
Zac: Or money green.
Dean: Money green, the money phone, that's right. What else, yeah?
Penny: As much as I hate to admit it, Zillow.
Dean: There's no problem in admitting it. It's a viable thing. I think that it's ... like listen, let's really think about this. I don't think that's a problem at all. Did you say that back to him? It was coming over to me, that never even got to me. Thank you, yes just ... Oh that's funny. So, talk about it, how much are you paying for the Zillow leads?
Penny: I'm paying $300.00 a month, and I know I'm a lot lower than a lot of people who are in different zip codes. For that I have actually three zip codes. I bought one and I talked them into throwing in a couple others. When I was negotiating with them, we were coming off of our Goggle AdWords. And my Google AdWords budget was $300.00 a month. So I said to them, this is how much I have to spend, what are you going to do, and if you can't do anything, bye-bye. So of course they need to deal with me. It does include where I am, a zip code is not a town, it actually includes an inner city area, pros and cons of it. We have a lot of historical, there's a lot of renovation which also have the real slums. So you have those houses that come on for like 20, 30 thousand dollars, and then of course everybody's ... a feeding frenzy on it. But what I piggyback my Zillow with, and I think I talked about this last year, is Riley. I don't know if everybody's familiar with Riley, but it's an awesome, awesome system, that the minute the lead comes in within 30 seconds, Riley is texting the lead.
So, if you have a Zillow account, you'll see sometimes you get a message that says concierge cannot work on this in queue for another agent, well Riley doesn't know about the other agent and Riley doesn't care. So, they get the text message. And it's a very high response rate on these text messages. You can see it real time, you can claim it, you can ignore it, you can do whatever you want. But that is how I've kept Zillow seen, because that whole thing where if you don't answer your phone or you don't call these people back within you know a minute and a half, somebody else is going to have the lead. I just always try to come from that place of abundance. So all right, so I didn't get that one, big deal. There are ten more behind it.
And Riley links to every lead source. It's not just Zillow, it'll link to everything you have.
Audience: Riley.com?
Penny: Getriley.com is the address, mention my name. I think I might get a free month or something. Yeah, maybe getrileynow.com. Yeah, Riley is great, because they're very, very responsive. If you have a complaint, they are on it, they're emailing, they're talking, it's these millennials that started it, that are just really cool guys, and they're really creating quite a system there.
Dean: How many leads do you get?
Penny: From Zillow? Well seasonal, whatever, probably running about 20 a week at this point. Some of them are guarded of course. But the cool thing about Riley, is Riley really uncovers those five star, because people are like vomiting, I got one this morning, vomiting their details. And they're telling the whole story in a text message, to this person that identifies himself as, "I'm Riley from Penny Alper's office." So, that's kind of like how I've been able to work, for me, without having that insanity that would come from that online environment. Because I don't do well with that crap, I want to be able to step in when it's ready for me to show. I don't wanna have to-
Dean: You want to be the realtor, be the gal.
Penny: Yeah, so at any time, I can do a set it and forget it, and you know hands off, I'm all about that. So that's how I found to make it work for me.
Dean: So roughly it's about eight to 10 dollars or so per lead, is that about what it seems like on the numbers? The lead is a name and email, or name and phone number, or a name, phone number and email?
Penny: Email is pretty much all the time, unless they've called in to Zillow, in which case it'll come through as a phone number, but it's also realtor.com, which I don't pay, and those leads come in I guess for free. Homes.com, I have a cheapy, cheapy and they'll come in sporadically. And then I also have a website that links to it, that the minute anybody does a search on the website, they get a Riley text.
Dean: So your IDX or whatever it is-
Penny: Yeah, however ... I don't want to know the back end, I don't care, all I know is I get the thing where they're engaging with somebody from all those sources.
Dean: Does anybody else find Zillow leads ... yes, Zac.
Zac: I spend $10,500.00 a month on Zillow leads. My buyer agents love Zillow leads. In my opinion, they are the best, only because I haven't been doing the getting buyers program yet. The Zillow leads chase us down. AdWords leads we chase down. A recent situation I had, is a woman's walking the dog and calls me through Zillow, and I said, "Well how did you find out about the property? It was not my listing?" She said, "I'm walking my dog, there's a sign in the yard." And I'm thinking, well why isn't she calling that agent? And I even asked her, well I didn't ask her that, I asked her well why is she coming through Zillow. And she said, "I have the Zillow app, I do everything through Zillow." And we sold the condo. And there was a sign in the yard from the listing agent, she did not call the sign in the yard. I thought that was amazing.
The thing about Zillow is, if you spend I think more than $5,000 a month, then you get 20% more. So that's always a good bonus. Zillow also no longer likes the small time agent, that does it for a couple months and says it doesn't work. They try to sell it to the big teams, and the big agents to buy more and more. And there are agents all over the country. If you're getting these calls from agents or from companies saying, we have leads in your market would you know be interested in leads at 25% or 30%. Those people are buying Zillow business in other markets, and then saying to their own call centers, which is interesting.
If you're the top three spender in the zip code, then if you click on find an agent, there's three agents across the top, and that's a great benefit. So even my guy said, "Well why don't you go down a little bit in this neighborhood, you're still a top three spender, but put that additional money into this other neighborhood or this other zip code.", where I was the fourth top spender. And so I became the third top spender, and then my name shows up on the top as well. If you have a great Zillow salesperson, they give you all these tips and hints and everything.
Dean: So how many leads do you get for your $10,000.00?
Zac: I probably get 10 or 12 a day. And I've pretty much cut back on a lot of the other leads that we have to chase down. My buyer agents know they need to jump on the Zillow lead like right away, they know it. And then those leads that Penny was talking about, that says Zillow is already working this lead, so if that lead has already come into Zillow and it's assigned to another premier agent, and every agent that advertises on Zillow is called a premier agent. So the only thing that name is good for, is when you tell the seller we are premier agents on Zillow.
So that's the only benefit of that. But if they're already working the lead with someone else, it's usually on leads that are my listings, and so we know we need to jump on those right away, because someone else ... That buyer that called on my lead, is also working with another agent with Zillow. So I do think that they're the best by far of anything out there.
Dean: So that's great. So you're getting 3,000 a month of them, about? Is that? Or does that sound high?
Zac: That's 300.
Dean: Oh, sorry, 300 a month.
Zac: And we probably sold 60.
Dean: That's 100 a day, times 30 would be 3,000. So 300, so you're in the-
Zac: I think we sold 60 properties last year.
Dean: So it's about the $30.00 range.
Zac: No my ranged anywhere from $60.00 to here's another ... mine average between $60.00 and $110.00 a lead.
Dean: So you might not be getting 10 a day, so if you're getting 250 or 300 of them for $10,000, that's about-
Zac: Right, but see, I get a lot of leads because I have a lot of reviews on Zillow. And so that's been a great thing, because I was saying at lunch that we had a seller who listed a 1.2 million dollar house, and he was downsizing to a 325 thousand dollar adult active community. He's 83 and his girlfriend is 62, and he had more money than he knew what to do with, because of real estate investments. He ended up downsizing from like a 3,000 square foot home into a 3,500 square foot condo, that costed the same. And he never asked me if I knew the neighborhood, he never asked me what I sold, it wasn't until they were no showings for a couple of weeks, that he started questioning my ability to get his home sold. But we did sell it. And that was off of the Zillow reviews. And we get a lot of leads, we probably get one or two leads a day because of ... so that's what changes that number.
Dean: I gotcha.
Zac: Those are what I call free Zillow leads.
Dean: Yeah, right I gotcha. So when you look at that, so when you look at those numbers, so when you're saying like 60 to 100 dollars per lead.
Zac: It's 120.00. That changes now. Plus with the Zillow dashboard, like we had a snow day, we actually had two snow days, but I was out of town for them. But on the snow day when the city closes in Atlanta, I went on the dashboard, and I quadrupled my spend for that day, thinking that people are not at work, and that worked. So you can really ... it's the same as AdWords. And there are people who change it all the time.
Dean: Sure exactly.
Zac: There are a lot of people who increase the spend overnight, because we'll call them early in the morning depending on what time they came in, whereas the average agent doesn't start doing their leads until two days later.
Dean: Love it. So when you look at that then, do you have a sense of what your conversion is on those, so you don't measure like the ROI on that?
Zac: Yes, but I didn't bring any of my numbers with me. It is the best investment.
Audience: You said 60, so you made about 60-
Zac: We had about 60 transactions.
Audience: So it's 60-
Dean: Oh okay, so five yeah, and the average 10,000?
Zac: Well we sold a million three condo.
Dean: The average, for the fees-
Zac: Probably maybe 500, I'm not even really sure.
Dean: Twelve or 15 thousand times 60 is seven... no, no. No, no, no, it'd be six or seven hundred thousand. Right yeah, overall, from the 100,000.00 investment.
Zac: Well the total GCI for the whole team was about 2.4 million.
Dean: I'm backing into the number from Zillow, that if it was 60 transactions, and let's call it $15,000.00 per transaction, that is $900,000.00 in commissions GCI from that source, which you spent $106,000.00 on. So nine times ROI on that.
Zac: Which is pretty good.
Dean: Which is great. That's better than your IRA did.
Zac: A lot better, but not as good as my 401k.
Dean: So your 401z, yeah. That's where they have to add a z, they put the money in. But when you think about that, that's a pretty good system, but what would be really fascinating to look at, is your before unit lead conversion process is really, there's so much there, that I think that were the real incredible ROI is, is on the long-term side of that. Which is probably what you’re missing out on right now. These are the now buyers, because that's what the buyer agents are interested in, and then if they're not ready to buy this weekend, you're dead to me. And they really are.
Zac: Our big thing is getting them in for a buyer consultation. So we're not worried about what they want, you know, we'll ask them when do you want to see the house.
Dean: We're not worried about what they want.
Audience: Did you Say that?
Zac: No I didn't quite say that.
Dean: It's all in the inflection, we're not worried about what they want yet.
Zac: We ask them when would you like to see that property. We don't ask them about being pre-qualified or anything. When would you like to see it, or let me share with you how we work, and then we talk about our three step process, and try to get them in for a consultation.
Dean: So when you look at this, I want to say, when you are hearing this described in the context of what we talked about with the five star prospects: willing to engage, friendly, cooperative, know what they want, know when they want it, would like us to help them, that whole is the bottom up approach right. When would you like to see the house, right to the prescription, it's on the bottom half of it, interesting. But you've also got all of these buyer leads that we could send an email to.
Zac: And we've done that before. So all of our leads go into BoomTown, which is CRM for leads only, and so there's the hot, the nurture, the watch, the archive and the trash categories. So we've gone to the archive, trash is bogus information, bogus phone number, bogus email address. You don't put someone you don't want to work in trash, you put them in archive. And so the archive leads we'll send out, we'll shake the tree, and send out some of those emails, but I'm going to go back and do it, the weekend I get back.
Dean: Do you know what's funny, the archive is such a like word, it's like you're not dead to me, but I'm putting you in formaldehyde over here right. I mean it's really, we're going to preserve you for posterity. It was so funny, because Churchill Mortgage, same thing. And I instituted with them, a swear jar, that if anybody... if I'm talking to the marketing team and they're referring to putting people in the archive, and so I instituted the swear jar, and said for anybody who uses the word archive, they have to put money in the swear jar. We're going to refer to it as the gold mine for right now. That's the new thing is because, that's what it is, this is the gold mine right now.
Zac: When a buyer gets 25 leads on average in a 24 hour period every 10 days, they want the now business.
Dean: Yeah of course they do, yeah. Got it. So yeah, Kenny?
Kenny: I love that Zillow now speaks to Go Go Agent. So we have our drip, because all my drips are set up on Go Go Agent, and up until the last couple of weeks, Zillow has a form of a drip program, but it wasn't as customizable.
Dean: You feed your Zillow leads right into Go Go Agent. Kenny, what's your situation with Zillow leads, I know you're doing it too?
Kenny: We spend about $3,000.00 a month on it. I don't know the numbers, I don't remember the numbers, I stopped tracking it, it just works, we get buyers and we get sellers out of it. We listed a house two days ago, before I came down here for a million and a half, and they came straight from Zillow. We called you because we saw your reviews on Zillow.
Dean: And In a lot of ways, Zillow is acting as your before, in a lot of ways. They're bringing those people to you and you're paying a premium price for it in a way. But an affordable price.
Kenny: We also know that so many people are going to Zillow and using Zillow and they think that ... we love Zillow, we love, and we tell people that. They're a data company, they're not a real estate company, they're a data company. They have 200 or 300 million listings and data points in there. So we say if you want great information, because they're pulling it from all the MLS, they're pulling it from assessor’s data. Go to Zillow, use Zillow. Use the heck out of it.
Dean: It's a shame that Realtor.com actually let that happen. They had the opportunity to be that, but they were so protective of the information, not letting it happen the way that everybody wants it to happen, and artificially and unnecessarily holding back the information, and now it's just like a shame that Zillow even exists, when they could have been Zillow, you know. And now they're trying to scramble to be like Zillow, in that they're trying to get everybody to go to realtor.com to search all the properties, but everybody already knows to go to Zillow. So it's interesting.
Barbara: My question is Zac, you were saying that Zillow doesn't like the small realtor, like if you're not on a big team. Kenny, how big is yours?
Dean: Three thousand a month they're spending.
Barbara: Okay, okay.
Dean: They want the budget. They want you to buy all of it.
Kenny: But Kenny, how big is? Okay. So they did take his money, yeah.
Dean: But $3,000.00, that's a different thing.
Audience: It's interesting, my experience with Zillow, it can vary on where you are. Because last year I paid them like 1,250 a month at the beaches, and didn't convert. Because a lot of people on a rainy day are just curious, and it was wasn't, I mean they're all in the database, but I'm just saying, so I decided to do the cheaper zip code, be a premium agent, so I could tell my sellers, because I don't work for a major brand where you get that, like Keller Williams you're going to show up on your listing or whatever. So I pay them $300 a month, and now I was just counting, I get like 10 leads a month, but I literally last year I made $7,500 on a closed sale, so I did about half way through. So 2:1, but this year probably closer to 6 or 7:1. I'm not saying it's great, but I'm paying that $300.000 for my own purposes, which is for the listing side, and I'm still getting people that I'm selling stuff to, so that's works for me.
We have a blog and some other stuff that we had done some revamping on, and going into season, I actually said yes to a company called housegather, which is people that came from Zillow, Realtor.com, whatever, and you have a zip code that you are exclusive, so there's no other agent, and once that lead comes in, if they look at any other area, it sticks with you. So I am getting 30 leads, but it's 1,700. But I picked.
Dean: So what is that, mathematicians, real quick.
Audience: It's higher, it's like.
Dean: I really want to establish this, like-
Audience: It's like 55, 60, it's back to like $60.00 a lead, right around $60.00 a lead. But for that, the geography, it was two beach towns, a 36,000 person town, and then two like bread and butter zip codes. So I had five codes, and that was a pretty big geography. What I'm finding in general, is that the lower, I'm going to call it, exactly what you were saying, in my market, the 250 average price point or a little bit above, is the easier, closable, real buyer. The other stuff, again, is a lot more hit or miss. So that's why I threw in, because I learned with Zillow, I have this cheap zip code, but I'm getting when people call, they really want to do business with somebody.
When you go to the beach, either they're just they're like curious or they've already got somebody and they just were trying to get it, you know whatever, just didn't for me work as well. We do have a 13,000 people in TigerLeads, from just all the stuff over time, and Jack does the nine word email engaging in that. It is, TigerLeads will be gone May 1st.
Zac: In reference to Zillow, their model is to have less agents with higher volume.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Zac: And you can go to your dashboard and see who your competition is, that are buying leads in the same zip code.
Dean: Marketplace.
Zac: And then the way Zillow works, is one agent can only buy one third of the total available spend. So they always say 100%, but you have to really dig a little deeper and it's really 100% of one third. And they know how much to charge based on-
Dean: So these leads that you're getting, are they exclusive leads, or they're going to all three.
Zac: If they are exclusive leads.
Dean: But you have to respond to them in order to keep that.
Zac: No, they're yours, but if you don't respond to them in a hurry, then they're clicking on another listing. And the one thing about BoomTown, is BoomTown knows that if someone goes to Zillow four months later, that lead is already in your account, because they came into through homes.com or something else, that lead always goes back to the agent who had the first contact or first lead.
But Zillow when you buy 100%, as more leads are available in that marketplace, your percent continues to go down. So that's how they get me, because they call, oh you dropped from 100% to 89%.
Dean: Oh boy, which is essentially saying we're raising your price by 10%. Am I going to get more leads? No, no.
Zac: I just got my first Brooks Brother's suit for my points from my Zillow spend.
Dean: There you go, nice. Oh Chris.
Audience: Chris, Chris. You were next? Yes.
Chris: I'm just saying I'm going against the grain. I'm leaving Zillow.
Dean: It's okay, like what I'm establishing here, is let's look at it, is that we're saying that on the one end, you can buy the leads from Zillow, or you can create the leads yourself, you can run an Infobox flyer for five dollars and generate leads that are worth 60 or 70 dollars, or you can buy the leads from AdWords or Facebook, or print ads, or doing it on your own, or you can buy them from Zillow for 60 or 70 dollars, or you Ramsey’s a part of Dave Ramsey’s ELP Program or something like that, where you're getting referrals right, and paying a 35% referral fee for it. But where do you feel like you're going against the grain here?
Chris: Well because now I have $1,200.00 a month, I'm a small ship in the sea, and they want me to spend more money. We had the concierge service, so they would actually forward the calls to us, so that was kind of nice. But it's that I don't want to be interrupted when I don't want to be interrupted. But when I look at last year's business, I closed 50 deals, 28 were buyers, 22 were sellers, but 33 were past clients or people that knew me.
Dean: Nice, that's great.
Chris: But now, here's the interesting part, the reason I did Zillow, is because I have two agents underneath me right now. I just added the second one. Last year Dave did a really good job of connecting with it. Oh, and by the way don't forget your lender can contribute to your marketing advertising. So Zac if you're not doing that, you should, okay, just try to help. Anyway, we had five closings and out of those five closings because of the way I'm set up with my buyer's agent-
Dean: This is from Zillow?
Chris: Mm-hmm (affirmative), this is from Zillow, five closings. Because we split the commission, because I'm very generous and I want to keep people longer than shorter, he made money, I broke even.
Audience: But how many actual leads did you get and close?
Chris: Well we closed five last year. To me that's not enough.
Audience: But how many did you have left?
How many leads?
Chris: A lot of them are these $200,000.00 houses, because with the zip code that I have, there's deed restriction housing being built up, so it's messing with the market. So we're getting a lot of the leads based on those.
Audience: Find a better zip code.
Chris: Well that's what they tried to convince me to do, and I was talking to my agent saying, well do you want to continue to do this. And I'm kind of watching him right now, because I think he's nervous, realizing that some of his leads are going away. Because I was saying, do you want to help split the cost with me on this?
Dean: Right, but if you did that, you could tell him you'll front the money.
Chris: Exactly.
Dean: You should be splitting what's left after it, rather than-
Chris: Yeah, so that's what I'll probably-
Dean: And you're paying for the leads. But anyway, that's an ideal situation for him.
Chris: Well it was.
Dean: Well it is. Because he only works with the people who are ready to go.
Chris: But it was interesting. So that's part of what I'm trying to figure out here, is where's the best use to put this $1,200 dollars a month to generate the business.
Dean: Okay.
Audience: Even if you break even-
Dean: And I look at that, and it's like, yeah, I've got a couple of ideas, but I want to hear who else has-
Audience: I was just going to layer on to Zac, like in terms of I stopped doing it because I kind of felt like, I just to joke with my reps, I'm like, "You guys are like crack dealers, like you're basically just trying to get everybody hooked, and then magically my zip code, the traffic or whatever, goes up and I went from having 100% to I had one of them drop like 40%, and at a time of year when I was like, dude I call BS, there's no way that the traffic more than doubled going into the holidays and the zip code. But I know other agents that it converts really well. So I think you kind of almost have to look at it like, just what's the ROI. And not so much like how many leads am I getting, it's more like does it pencil out in the end. If you did five deals, even at $200,000.000 price point, if you're spending a grand a month. But in your case it didn't pencil out, but the other agent that you gave leads to, it worked out fine for them.
Dean: I think what is safe to say in my observation of all of this, is that nobody is tracking this with the diligence that you would track a financial investment. Nobody is tracking this with any discipline or specificity. Like Jack, you must be like, to hear these kinds of things, that they're putting all this money in, and then not having a sense of what's actually happening with it. It just seems so-
Jack: Suboptimal.
Dean: Suboptimal. He's so kind, that's so great. Well that seems suboptimal.
Jack: Or even the discipline of the marketer, right. If you're a big company marketer, don't they know?
Dean: That's all, he said enough, mic drop, suboptimal. But you imagine that what I see happening, what I see is putting them in a bucket like to isolate everything in a clean slate, look at it all and see, these are all the people. Like I'm just thinking, when we did the 10 money getting ideas, number one was know your numbers right, that's the first thing. Then nobody, just in general, knows their numbers. It's very rare the people who do know their numbers, it's interesting, just to observe. That we kind of throw it all in there, and as long as there's the perception that there's more coming out, or there's activity or something's happening, and then everybody knows partial numbers. Well I did five transactions, but I don't know how many leads we got, or I don't know what the status of them are. But if you look at it, and we were to record every lead that comes in and assign a number to them, and see what happens to them over the course of the next 12 months, 20 months, going forward, and have a plan for beyond the first 30 days of them. Everybody's measuring their conversion rate on, I was able to connect with this many, we got appointments with this many, and we did transactions with this many, and nobody's talking about the long term following up with everybody, you know.
Zac: Well maybe next year when each person registers, you put them on a drip campaign, that says this is what you need to bring, because see, I do have all the numbers, I just don't know them. I mean we've sourced-
Dean: That's the whole thing, is you have them all, that's the great thing, is that it's all there.
Zac: And I have them on spreadsheets, I could have brought the spreadsheet, but I did not. But maybe if, you know, and I wasn't even thinking about bringing it, it just never crossed my mind. The other thing is, I do get all my Zillow leads on my phone. Because I'm a better converter than anyone on my team. And all I want to do is set the appointment. Because a lot of the leads are not my listings, even though they think they're mine. When they say I'm calling about your listing, I don't fess up that it's not my listing. So it's really all about how you work the lead. Because I think that all the Zillow leads are good leads, they just need to be called within five minutes.
Dean: Well if we look at the reality, if we did a class of this, like if you were doing ... how long have you been doing it, doing Zillow?
Zac: I used to have a hate relationship, then it was the love-hate relationship, and now it's just I love Zillow leads. So I had them because ... I always had them because I was an experimentalist, so I tried everything. But there were times where I wasn't getting any Zillow leads, I didn't need them. See, half my properties don't have signs on them. So I can't-
Dean: It's really interesting that if we took, if we looked at and did a did you buy survey, 24 months ago, took the class of February 2016, and just look at, itemized forensic investigation into 100 of the people who came in, in February of 2016, and just did a did you buy survey with those, nine word email, are you're still looking for a house, we can scratch people off. But follow them to a logical conclusion to see what happened, it would be astonishing, how many of them actually bought homes. Yeah, crazy.
Audience: I'd like to know about the drip campaign. I think Kenny, was it you? And I'm wondering if it's the same email drip campaign we had for money making websites?
Dean: Which drip campaign are you talking about?
Audience: I think you mentioned one on-
Kenny: Zillow?
Audience: Yeah.
Dean: So the thing about the drip campaign, we used to set up drip campaigns on money making websites when people would come in, and we were only sending market watch by subscription to people. And then we made the shift that when people came in, we started sending Marketwatch to everybody. So that became the drip now, is that every week we send Marketwatch, and then we have the cookies that are whenever you're ready here's three ways we can help you. So we had that situation going out there. So that replaced the kind of ... the drip campaigns were encouraging people to subscribe to Marketwatch. It would be hey, would you like us to send you updates of all the properties. But then we started doing, sending everybody that, and that was a win. We started bonding with everyone.
So I like that as really trying to continue building a relationship with people all the way through. Okay?
Kenny: I was going to say, I took the money making website drip, 13 emails, and I twisted it to fit the Zillow, what I'm trying to do is get them to talk to me. So I'm asking them, what's bringing you to Cape Ann, then number three is ... I think that's number three, that's one of my favorites. I call it the love letter. I get the love letter from people when I say, what's bringing you here, and that's often when they'll say, "Oh, I grew up there.", and blah, blah, blah, and I get to respond to them. I just want them to respond to an email.
Dean: Yeah, those are great, you know, that whole-
Kenny: You wrote them.
Dean: Yeah. That's funny. But that whole thing of just engaging in a dialogue. Those are the questions, what's bringing you, are you an investor, are you looking for a house to live in. Those are good.
Kenny: I changed that one, are you an investor or looking for a house to live in. None of them are investors. But I say, "What are you looking for? Beachfront, Riverfront or Harborfront?"
Dean: Yes, exactly, those kinds of things, sorting questions, this is all in the Finding Buyers area, all the email dialogue things that we talk about, are all in the Finding Buyers section on the member blog. It's all in there.
Okay. Is anybody doing anything else, buyer, lead generation or seller lead generation? But buyer specifically, aside from Zillow, to get those leads. Yes?
Kenny: We're trying to do Facebook. Haven't had a lot of success with it, because I'm doing it. I haven't put it out there yet. I'm trying to figure out how, instead of who. But basically doing the same thing, targeting zip codes, age, married or not married, because you can get really specific, which I love, I've got a segment that-
Dean: And I want to find out about this for sure, but I've actually seen some rumblings about using the targeting things for running ads on Facebook under your real estate license is discrimination practice, that you can't select only people with certain income or certain-
Kenny: They have kicked back a couple of my ads.
Dean: No not Facebook doesn't mind. I'm saying that RESPA or the realtor-
Kenny: Well Facebook has minded, a couple of different times, the same ad, and I haven't been able to figure out why, because I would then try it a day later, and the ad would be approved. But they said for those reasons, that it was discriminatory, Facebook said that.
Dean: I think the real estate commissions or whoever guides that, Respa or whoever, has gone to Facebook and said this is a problem-
Audience: Fair housing.
Dean: Fair housing, yeah, that's the thing.
Audience: I don't have a lot of experience in Facebook advertising-
Dean: He's got it right there.
Audience: I'm going to explore it, and I've heard that you can't create a custom audience based on phone numbers and emails. So if you have a good database of buyers, people that have responded to it in another way, you can create a custom audience, it goes right to the people, and it's almost like you're retargeting people that have already contacted you anyway. I'm not quite sure how to do that though, but that was just a suggestion.
Dean: The custom audience.
Audience: With emails and phone numbers.
We've had success, minimal, Facebook for buyers, but not Facebook for sellers. I could have just sat here with a match and kind of set that off, dollar bills, dollar bills.
Dean: We've had great actually success on the seller side with doing just getting listings postcard as delivering it. That's why I look at Facebook ads as really equivalent to running postcards. You're mailing the postcards, every time it shows up in somebody's newsfeed, that's like one impression, like that's the thing, and you get that kind of the same kind of impression rates, so I think we're going to be able to bring down your buyer lead cost. Go ahead Zac.
Zac: I've been doing geofencing, that so far has not been very successful. However, they're now telling me I'm not doing it right, even though they set up the campaigns. So I'm running three different geofencing campaigns where one campaign is 25 high-end apartment complexes, and you give them the full address, and then they geofence around the property, and anyone that opens an app with paid advertising, we'll see the ads. So they're going after renters. Then I have another one with 25 condo towers, looking for condo sellers. We've given them all the addresses and they geofence it. And then the third one was just one condo tower, to see if the ad mentioning the condo tower generates more business.
I thought I would be able to replace the yellow postcards, but no. And this company that does this is all over the country. They were telling me some examples of what they were doing is a medical equipment company geofence McCormick Center when they had 80,000 doctors at a convention. And then also, dealerships geofence each other. So if a Mercedes dealership is across the street from the BMW dealership, when you are in the BMW dealership and you open any kind of app, like a newspaper app with the ads in them, you'll see the Mercedes ads while you're in the BMW dealership.
Dean: That's amazing. Pizza places do that. The Papa Johns and the stuff.
Zac: Oh they do?
Dean: Oh yeah, all the-
Zac: And I'm also using AdWerx, which is something that RE/MAX provides two weeks of free advertising on AdWerx. But what I've done, is I've-
Dean: With an X.
Zac: Yeah, Adwerx. And I don't see any benefit to the two weeks free program that they offer. But what I did do, is I bought a Center of Influence package, where you give them all the email addresses, and they would see one add, just a personal promotion ad which now I call ego ads. But what I did, was I bought four packages, so all of my seller leads see my ad every week. But I also haven't heard anything about the effectiveness of that.
Dean: So it's really interesting, with the targeting, one of the things that we're experimenting with the Facebook targeting, with Churchill Mortgage for the reverse mortgages, is one of the targeting options are people that are in this town, but they're visiting from 125 kilometers away, 125 miles away, or more. So that's perfect for us in Florida, that you get people who are 62 and over, who are visiting Winterhaven, but they live more than 125 miles away, that gets us targeted for the snowbirds. So we know that they are the people who are the ideal target audience for that. That's one thing.
For buyers, we're working... now we've got a USDA, like one of the 90-minute books for the USDA zero down program. And we're working on campaigns where you can target granularly to a mile. And so, we're going into like the big rental apartment complex, the luxury ones, and putting the pin in the center of that, so you're getting all 800 units that live in there, and it's primarily people who are all the renters. So we can go in the six biggest rental areas, and we're doing the same thing with the active adult communities. So the planned communities, you can pick a gated community and pick within a one mile radius of that. It's pretty amazing the level of stuff that you can do. And I think we're going to be able to get those lead costs way down, to be able to get name and email for a very specific person on that.
Audience: Quick question, I need to get a poll, how many people here are doing buyer workshops currently?
Dean: How many people are doing buyer workshops? Nobody, nobody, nobody, Tom you are?
Tom: No, no. My plan was to add that lesson to my buyer workshop. I'm working on right now.
Dean: Yeah, it's going to be like a webinar.
Tom: It's not like a workshop where we're going to meet someplace.
Dean: We've had good luck doing the webinars for the reverse mortgage. So webinars are viable thing.
Tom: So I tried the webinar with my group,. advertising it to the 20,000 email addresses that I have, and I would get six or seven people to sign up, and maybe one or two to show up on the webinar, so it wasn't that-
Dean: But that was a staple of your business.
Tom: It was a million dollars a year in commission income. So it's a big loss.
Dean: Yeah. Chuck and Melisa do the home buyer workshops as a staple, and it works. I think workshops are still a great thing.
Tom: I think they're a super idea, but how do you attract the people to them, how do you notify people of it.
Dean: Just the consistency of it.
Tom: So maybe Facebook?
Dean: I mean you're finding the buyers.
Tom: I do all that all the time, so that's not a possibility. So it's got to be maybe a Facebook targeting for downtown condo tenants?
Dean: Yeah, it could be. Absolutely, renters.
Tom: So you said before, for buyers, here's the three ways I can help you, market experience tour, free home buyer workshop, free home loan report. So if you're not doing the workshops, as no one here is, what could be the substitute for that number two.
Dean: Yeah, find out how much your house is worth is one.
Tom: But we're talking buyers?
Dean: Yeah, we're generating buyers, we don't know which ones have a house to sell or which one's don't, so you can alternate that. Or we have the meet us at Starbucks.
Dean: All right, perfect. Just a strategy session. My favorite is still ever the Chuck Charlton experience. The meet at Starbucks email. What happened, okay, I'll tell you. Since you asked.
Audience: You can't tease us.
Dean: We talked about the nine word emails or sending out the short messages, and so Chuck sent out a message with the buyers name in the subject line, so it said, "Maria.", I think it was Maria, whatever her name was. And then the message just said, "Hi Maria, I set aside some time this week, if you'd like to meet at Starbucks and talk about your move. Chuck." That's it, right. That was the message that we send out, short, personal, expecting a reply. Broadcast to everybody. But Chuck got a phone call from this angry Italian man, saying, "You invited my wife to Starbucks! Nobody taking my wife to Starbucks. I take my wife to Starbucks! I meet you at Starbucks and kick your ass!" And he thought that Chuck was moving in on his Maria, you know. And it was just so funny that that whole thing, the way that happened you know. The wording? I set aside some time this week if you'd like to meet at Starbucks and talk about your move.
Audience: Maria.
Dean: Yeah, I'm Maria, I'm Maria, I set aside some time, yeah. So that's really, those messages, they put people in a trance, that whenever you are speaking to somebody like they're the only person you're speaking to, we go into a trance. I say that to people, that's why your mom has 100% open rate on her emails to you. It's because you know that they're only for you, there's no deliverability problem for your mom, or your best friend, or anybody that you are personally involved with. But the reason is because they're speaking to you like they're only speaking to you. And it's amazing.
It’s amazing I have people do the experiment of whenever I'm gathered, well actually I'm gathered with people right now, let's do an experiment. Who wants to play, good, okay. Pick up your phone, and look through your emails, and let's find an email that you know was only sent to you. Just from somebody that you know, tell me what's the subject line?
Audience: Well she's watching my business for me. Or HOA stuff.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Yes?
Audience: An appointment.
Dean: Hey, so you got one?
Audience: I got two. I want to sell my home.
Dean: Is that the subject line? No you're kidding, okay, that's great. Teaser.
Audience: I'll see you in Vegas.
Dean: I'll see you in Vegas, is that somebody that you? Is that a single message for you?
Audience: No, that's a RE/MAX-
Dean: Oh okay. Who else has-?
Audience: A pleasure meeting you.
Dean: A pleasure meeting you.
Audience: Deed restrictions.
Dean: Deed restrictions.
Audience: I got your letter in the mail today.
Dean: I got your letter in the mail today.
Audience: Supply is urgent.
Dean: Oh supply is urgent, yeah, yeah.
Audience: LeadGem website.
Dean: LeadGem website, okay, from an individual, from somebody you know. So what I'm looking at for these, is that the thing that you get here, when you're getting those personal emails, is compared to marketers, when marketers are sending you emails, they're thinking of the subject line as a headline. Trying to entice you to open the email, or to trick you into opening the email, or otherwise promote something, excite you into the opening it. When you get them from your friends and your mom, it's as if they've got a label maker and they are typing out the label that you would put on the file folder, that you would file this email away for later. So when you look at the things, what was yours again?
Audience: HOA stuff.
Dean: HOA stuff. That's what's inside. It's overtly referring to what is actually in the message. What was yours?
Audience: House, it was just House.
Dean: House? What was yours again? Deed, or I got your letter? What was yours?
Audience: I didn't say anything.
Dean: Oh, you didn't do it. You also had one that was-Hey, well that's good, he's the master of the method.
Audience: I would pick a different one, but it says mastermind.
Dean: Okay, but it's overtly clear what it is. What's inside? And that's the thing. That's why when we send like the nine word email and we say Georgetown in the subject line, or your name in the subject line, those are things that are just simple. We're not trying to trick people into opening the emails. Especially when you're trying to engage in a dialogue with them, that's really the big thing. Yeah?
Audience: Two things, first of all, in the nine word email, I guess I've been doing it wrong all along.
Dean: Oh, can we get the mic, sorry.
Audience: I guess I was kind of doing the nine word email wrong. Because my nine word email reads: Are you still looking for a home in Tampa? And then the body reads: Are you still looking for a home in Tampa.
Dean: Oh, gotcha.
Audience: So if it's just if they see the email, they see the nine word email in the subject line, but you're not doing it that way. You would just put Tampa?
Dean: Yep.
Audience: Okay, so I'll make that adjustment. I've been getting responses.
Dean: Of course.
Audience: And then my other thing was, my fear of email or doing it effectively, is my experience has been people who are attempting to email market to me, have trained me to just trash them or unsubscribe, because of their email. Either their subject lines or what's in them. For instance, GKIC, if I see anything that has got Nick Lois's ... I get rid of it. But if it says it's from Dan, then I open it.
Dean: That's funny.
Audience: If it's Nick Loise, I just, it's gone. But if it says it's Dan, then I read it. And I don't want to be the person to train my database to not read my stuff, so I'm always concerned about that.
Dean: That's why I never send anything that's not valuable. I get people, like I send three emails a week to our entrepreneur, some of you might be on that list, but not the real estate list, but I send three emails a week that are all very valuable, articles, and I get people emailing with almost the opposite of that. Saying, can you send these to my other email address too, I don't want to miss them, or I'm switching, can you change this, or other people saying hey, somebody forwarded this, can you put me on your list. You got that kind of thing, you want to be a welcome site in their inbox.
Audience: So your tip for me is anytime I'm composing an email with something valuable, let's say home fix-up tips, that I would think of a subject line, painting the living room, or something.
Dean: Sounds much better right? That's so overtly clear about what the thing is. Okay. Yeah? Go ahead.
Audience: Facebook ads. Sarah ran a Facebook ad recently and I just told her, just put on there the getting listing postcard. And she did that, we did it for 12 days, 60 dollars, five dollars a day, we got three responses.
Dean: There you go, that's great. So there's a ... you're getting listing leads for 20 dollars, right? You would do that all day right? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Got it.
Audience: Anti-money making question. Does anybody know of an autoresponder for text messages?
I don't know. I haven't Googled it for a while.
Dean: Autoresponder being, what do you want to have happen?
Audience: When I'm on vacation, if I want to take the weekend off, I can set an autoresponder email, I can do it on my voicemail, I can't do it on my text. If somebody texts me.
Dean: You can do it on your text.
Audience: So something that says I'm off for the weekend, I've never seen it on there?
Dean: Yeah.
Audience: Well, so you just change?
Dean: Yeah, I think you can do that with an Apple. You're talking about your real phone?
Audience: Yeah.
Dean: Certainly there's a way to do that. We can probably figure that out at the break.
Audience: What I would like to know about, if anybody knows about it, I was expecting to get Rileynow, to do this, is to be able to set up a drip campaign for text messages briefly or easily, that I could enter a person's name and phone number in, and then just kick off an autoresponder based on a property, yard sign, or based on whatever, and I don't know if I can do that.
Dean: We may be able to work that out with Go Go Agent.
Audience: That would be phenomenal. I had one, but they got really iffy about, they were worried that people were getting spammed.
Dean: Right, that's the whole thing, is that we have to be really, to balance that. But you can send a text to somebody who's responded by text.
Audience: That's the key. I haven't had much success with the Go Go Text, because they've got to opt in first, and so I haven't had much success driving people to that feature. But it would be phenomenal if when I got a new contact come in, that I could then kick off a five autoresponder text message about maybe a house that they inquired about, or other houses in the area, or something.
Dean: Gotcha. And there we have it, another great episode. If you want to continue the conversation, you can go to ListingAgentLifestyle.com, download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book. And if you'd like to be a guest on the show, where we can build a plan for your approach to the Listing Agent Lifestyle, just click on the Be A Guest link. If you'd like to help and join our community of people who are living this Listing Agent Lifestyle, and get access to all of the tools and all of the programs that we have, you can go to: GoGoAgent.com, and you can come on in, take a free trial 30 days, no credit card required, come on in, see everything that we're up to, say hi. Let's see how we can help you get established in your Listing Agent Lifestyle.
This is it for this week, I'll talk to you next time.