Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're closing in on the end of the year and not only the end of the year, we're closing in on the end of a decade.
We're quickly heading into the future, and we had an event in Toronto this October to talk about exactly that. The future of real estate, the immediate future, the things that are here today, and the things that are going to shape this next decade of the '20s.
Where are the trends already in motion? The trends that are going to work in our favor and, what are the things that are really going to give us an advantage if we embrace them to move forward on each of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle.
So these next few episodes will be some of the sessions talking about the future of getting listings, the future of multiplying our listings, of getting referrals, and of converting leads and finding buyers.
You're really going to enjoy this as you direct your thinking now, not just to a new year, but to a new decade. What is it really going to mean to go into the '20s, and how can we equip you to be completely prepared to embrace all of these opportunities and make things as easy as we can so we're experiencing the other elements of a Listing Agent Lifestyle; Daily Joy, Abundant Time and Financial Peace.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep096
Dean: Hello. Welcome to the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast. My name is Dean Jackson, and today we are closing in on the end of the year. Not only the end of the year, we are closing in on the end of a decade, and the first real decade of the new millennium here, the '20s, so I'm very excited about that.
We had an event in Toronto, this October, to talk about exactly that, the future of real estate, the immediate future, the things that are here now and the things that are going to shape this decade of the '20s. Where are the moving sidewalks? Where are the things that are trends, that are already in motion that are going to work in our favor? What are the things that are really going to give us an advantage if we embrace them and move forward on each of the elements of the listing agent lifestyle?
We had a Mastermind, and I recorded some of the sessions for us, so these next few episodes will be different sessions that we did talking about getting listings, the future of getting listings. What does that look like? The future of multiplying our listings, of getting referrals, of converting leads and finding buyers. I think you're really going to enjoy this as you kind of direct your thinking now, not just to a new year, but to a new decade. What's this really going to mean going into the '20s, and how can we equip you to be completely prepared to embrace all these and make things as easy as we can possibly make them so that we're experiencing daily joy, an abundant time, and financial peace? All of the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. I think you're going to enjoy this series, and I will let you enjoy it, and we will go through all ... I think there's four episodes in this series, so here we go.
Okay, so let's talk about the future of getting listings. If we look at all ... We're going to go through the five elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle. Of course, if we're going to live a Listing Agent Lifestyle, the first thing that we have to focus on is have a listing-centric approach. We have to have a way for getting listings. Now, one of the greatest things to kind of look forward to the future is to look back at the past and see where we are, establish like how we've come. My listing, getting listings story, like any real estate agent, the moment you get your real estate license, it's embedded in our minds that you've got to list to last, that that's the thing that you quickly see that your ego is attached to being a listing agent that ...
I remember, starting out that you feel like that's the question that people, "How many listings do you have?" If you don't have a lot of listings, then you feel like embarrassed by that, or you feel like you're not as strong. Then you look longingly at the agents that have all the listings and it's like this term of honor that, "Oh, they're a strong listing agent." It's almost, "Oh, they don't mess with ... They don't have to deal with the buyers," even though they do, but the fact that they're a listing agent, that's, I remember just taking it all in and getting the lay of the land and realizing that, that's what I ... I need to be a listing agent.
I remember thinking, "Okay, so what am I going to do to get listings?" I started out, I was just showing Tom a picture of one of the ads that I did when I was young. I started out 22, and I realized that just, I can focus on the people who are younger, like my age. I thought, "Okay, well, I'll specialize in townhouses and first-time buyers," and kind of like, I'd be able to definitely relate to those people. I made a choice that I would be a specialist in townhouses in Halton Hills and I had all of my, got all my ducks in a row. You have, there's a period of time between when you take your license, your exam, and you pass and everything, and then when you actually get your license, you're ready to go.
I made up flyers to kind of introduce myself to the townhouses, because you've got to, when you're young and you don't know, the thing that you also know that people say is, "Well, you got to get your name out there." That's the thing, so I'm thinking, "Okay, well, I'll do these flyers, and I'll declare myself the townhouse specialist, and I'll do all of the things that you're supposed to do."
I did have a sense that data was important, because it was at a time, 1988, November 1988, leading up ... It was that first, my first kind of year in real estate was like just this rocket. The prices were going high, the interests rates were, went from 10% to 13% while I was in that first year there. I got my license, had my flyers already done up, and I went out and delivered my flyers by hand to all the townhouses, and I was meeting people.
I wasn't that excited about door knocking per se, so I thought it'd be more efficient just to leave the flyers, but I did meet a lady who, while I was delivering the flyers, was bringing her groceries in from the car. I helped her with that, introduced myself. She said they were looking for a house, a detached house, and we had done our agent caravan, the agent open houses that Tuesday morning. I said, "Oh, I saw one this morning that sounds perfect," because it was on ... If you know Georgetown, it was on Airedale, which is a little court. This was a house that was literally the smallest house on a great street, and it was priced well. It was just like a, almost like a double-wide trailer size house. I told her all about it and she said, "Wow, that sounds perfect." I said, "When does your husband get home?" She, "He gets home at 5:30." We set up an appointment for 6:00 to go and look at that house.
I kept on then looking, delivering all my flyers. They went and saw this house, and loved it, and put in an offer on that house, so my first day in real estate, I had my first sale, conditional on selling their townhouse. I listed their townhouse that night. The next day, I'm doing my "Just Listed" flyers to the townhouses, and to the real estate offices to let them know about my new listing. I walk into the RE/MAX office and Doug Meal, who's still in real estate there in Georgetown, he saw that, he goes, "I've got someone for that." Because this was like a hot market, things were selling quickly. He makes an appointment, he brings them in right away and sold ... They brought an offer, and it sold that day.
My first 24 hours in real estate, I had my first listing and sale, and I then had delivered three flyers to the entire, all of the townhouses. I'm thinking, "This is a great business." Yeah, I mean, it was so funny, but I did a ... Because now we had set, like that was a record for the townhouses. I was showing this little graph that showed the sale prices of going up. I delivered the things, and then I got a call from the daughter of a couple who had another townhouse. They were Vietnamese. They didn't speak English, but their daughter spoke ... Their son, sorry, son spoke English. They invited me over, and they wanted, because they saw the things that the prices were going up, they wanted to sell their townhouse.
It was so funny because I realized then, they were talking to their daughter, they're talking in Vietnamese, but they were talking Vietnamese, and their mortgage, and the only, the one word that was coming through, and it was so funny, that we had laughed about that. Anyway, got that one on the market. Then I kind of made this foothold in the townhouses by becoming the one who had all these townhouses. Thinking about that as a narrowing of focus like that, then when a new development came, the King's Mill townhouses were all started, that was like, that was doubling the number of townhouses in Georgetown.
It was, when they were all built a couple of years later, there's really only one street in and out of the whole thing. It had been probably in development for two years or more, so people who bought new construction, two years later ... Like any new development, as soon as it comes in, their whole situations have changed, and whenever they take occupancy, some of them come back on the market.
I ended up listing three of the townhouses on that street, and I was outside with one of my sellers, and a guy came across the street and introduced me to the neighbor as Dean Jackson. "Oh," he said, "I didn't know whether you were a real estate agent, or whether you were running for Mayor, all these signs on the street." You start by narrowing a focus like that, really kind of once you get established in a territory like that or in a category, you start to, it builds its own momentum, that you're the one that people should call. I've thought about this idea of brand, because everybody talks about that you got to build a brand. I've never heard a definition of brand that I was really completely sold on.
Then I came up with an acronym, which is really what we're trying to establish is, and we're trying establish, and "establish" is the right word, we want to like get it in there, that a Buying Reflex Affecting Now Decisions. That is a good definition of brand in that it's the only thing that matters is that you can't usurp somebody like Coca-Cola, or somebody en masse, who's got the largest number of people that they've established that brand by reflex that when people say, "What would you like to drink?" That they say, "Coke." That that's the reflex reaction when people are asked that, but you can if you go into certain areas.
If you think about microbreweries, or you go, certain things, if you say, "Budweiser is like the king of beers," that they have the biggest brand. In a lot of the world that means if somebody says, "Would you like a beer?" "I'll have a Bud," but if you go into, in Guelph maybe, somewhere that people are going to say, "I'll have a Sleeman's." Or they'll go somewhere to a microbrew and they've established this buying reflex that, "I'd like this," as the beer. It's that same mindset that we're trying to establish among people who are going to be making a decision to sell their house.
When we focus, the way that the Getting Listings program kind of evolved is getting to the point where the most valuable thing that we could have is to know, who are the people who are going to sell their house in the next 12 months? When we think about what's really going on, if we choose an area of 1,000 homes with a 5% turnover rate, or a 6% turnover rate, or whatever the turnover rate is, that means that there's going to be 50 people in the next 12 months that are going to sell their house. If you get an area that's like a high turnover rate of 10%, that means there's going to 100 people that are going to sell their house, and they're the only 100 people that are the most important, that when it's time for them to list their house that they think of you. We don't need to establish that brand in 1,000 people. We need to establish it in the people who are going to sell their house.
Now, when we look at the idea of being able to generate that type of lead, what would be an advantage for us is if we had some way of identifying like a special, if there were a special pair of glasses that we could fly over the neighborhood, and all the houses that are going to sell in the next 12 months light up for us, that would be super. That was my intention with the way that we did the postcards, was to think, "What would be the thing, the genesis thought, that somebody who's going to be selling their house would want to know?" The thought was that it's going to be about, "Well, how much is my house worth?" That's, every, that's the context of all of it.
Nobody's waking up thinking, "Let's put our house on the market." That's not the way it goes. People have this context of, "We want a bigger house." Or, "I might get this job transfer." Or, "We want to build a house." Or, "We want to downsize." Or whatever the context of what they're doing, the thing that's going to make it real for them is, "How much is my house worth?" When we look at the opportunity that we have of offering somebody the information about the report on Georgetown townhouse prices, that that's going to be something that somebody can feel like they're getting that information, and raising ... Asking for that without committing that they're going to sell their house.
See, a lot of times, we take this perspective or the greatest thinking about getting listings is to make offers that are going to get people to list their house now, so we do things like, "Sell your house in 90 days, guaranteed," which was something that we did as a thing, which and it works, but it's like getting the people who are ready to sell their house in 90 days, but even then they're kind of reluctant about that. Or the specifically pinpointing them and saying, "Find out how much your house is worth," where people can go and leave their info, leave their address to get that information, but it's very revealing, it's very like you're pinpointing on there.
Instead, what we've been focused on is, what's the softest way that we could get the people who are having that thought to respond, without having them feel like they're committing to anything, or that a real estate agent is going to hound them, or try and wrestle them to the ground to list their house now? That offering the free report on Georgetown townhouse prices feels like market data. That feels like, "This is the facts." It doesn't feel like, "I'm inviting somebody over to give me their opinion of what my house is worth. I'm getting the data, so I can see what that is. I would rather have the raw data than have their opinion of some inflated number to get me excited about listing my house or to low-ball me if they're an investor or something. I want to get my hands on the information."
Nobody's going to feel bad about having access to data. It feels more like you've got the opportunity to have access to that. I say, it's the different, it's a subtle thing, but it's a profound difference. It's like the difference ... I haven't articulated it like this, but just on the most recent Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast, I was talking with Ruben Colorado and I was saying that it's the difference between somebody asking for a quote on something, if you think about like a price quote, if you're going to get a pool or get some work done at your house. It's the difference between getting a quote or getting a price list. Do you see the difference, energetically?
If I'm getting a quote from somebody, that that feels like they're going out of their way to do this for me, and I'm going to feel bound, psychically, some way to this person because they went out of their way and did this. Whereas, if I can get the price list, that's like, "Oh, I don't want to bother ... I'll peruse the catalog and look at the price list," and that makes, everybody's much more ... There's less resistance to that than there is to getting a quote. That's been the focus that we've had now, and knowing that they're going to sell their house at some point.
What we did with Tony, now six years we've been monitoring the case study with this. What was really fascinating was this year, we went back and looked at everybody who responded to the postcards in the first year that we mailed. He generated 160 leads in the first year, and since that time, has sold 23 of those, over the next five years after that first year, so six year total. There were, out of the 160, 44 people who actually sold their house in this, so far, in this timeframe. He's gotten over 50% of them for almost a 15% conversion on the total number of leads, which is phenomenal when you start to think about that. That gives you this idea that we're on the right track in terms of identifying those people early on. It happens in every way. Chuck told me, just recently, that somebody had responded ... Was it 13 years ago? Or ...
Chuck: Yeah. They were the first few mailings.
Dean: The first few mailings. I mean, that's amazing, so I love to see that. As I'm positioning it right now, the state of the union, kind of like best practice, the best thing that I know to get listings overall right now is still that approach of offering the report on the house prices, following up with those people every single month by mail. I think there's still, something physical in their mailbox is an amazing thing because we've had it now where people will call.
It's kind of become a thing in our GoGo Agent Academy, where people will save the voicemail that they get from somebody responding, saying, "You've been corresponding with us" or, "You've been sending us the newsletters" or, "We've been getting all your information, and can you come over? We're ready to get our house on the market." That, over the long-term ... Now in the last little year, we've gotten to the point where we were supplementing the mailings with Facebook ads, micro-targeted to the specific communities, which you can still do here but we can't do in the States now. You look at, you've got to ride with what's available. I was shouting loudly for everybody to do that, and a lot of people now have lost that opportunity, but we're already figuring out what the next thing is to do on that.
I'd love to hear kind of what, where you think that the getting listings opportunity is for the next 10 years, if you think there's something different. You look like you've got ...
Speaker: I just wanted to-
Dean: Can you pass that down?
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Just to add to what you said about the market reports. That's something that when I was selling I did, but taking it the next step and still kind of keeping it along the line of it still being a price list, but not quite a quote is, I remember we had a corner listing once, this is Milton as well, which we sold.
Then the idea just came about, there's a bunch of the same model, and there's a bunch of like corner homes in this area, so we prepared a special report, and compared it directly, like apples-to-apples comparison, rather than it just being ... I remember, there was only a handful of ... It was a mail too, but it was packaged quite like, we went into detail with like lesser and whatnot, and what we did for that particular listing, and why we're reaching out is because it's the exact same model and home that we sold right now. That, only from like it was a handful, we got one listing out of it very fast, but it was so low, like it-
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, this still definitely works because it's not just a market list, or not just like homes in the area. You kind of go deeper into, "This is the specific home that you own." Opportunities like that are still so valuable.
Dean: What I discovered, so one of the things where I lived in Georgetown, was the builder in our homes. What I realized was, when we started out, Georgetown South was all being developed, so Mattamy and all those were in there, but you could go into the models and they had the model centers with the, like the big table like this with the topographic map and where the lots were and with the sold stickers on which ones were available. Then around the perimeter of the room, they had the elevations, the floor plans and stuff that were available so you could see. I thought that was the coolest thing because I hadn't been exposed to that.
Then there was a lady in my office who'd been in real estate for 30 years, who was retiring, and she gave me this big stack of all of the new home packages from all of the 20-year-old ones that were 20 years ago kind of thing. The Skopit ones all had models, so we lived in a Cardinal model, and there was like the Flamingo model and the Greenfield, and all of these, the Country Squire. It dawned on me, that's where I got the idea for the guide to house prices, but I went through and I had a recipe box with index cards. I had one of the maps from the, the plat maps that had the ... I went to the town and I photocopied the maps that had the lots on the things, and I had my highlighters and I would show where ...
I had this little thing of where all the Skopit homes were. I'd show that as like another farm area, and I had every one, just like you're saying of what, all the Country Squires and all the Cambridge models and all the Cardinal models, and would do that same thing, so when you know you have somebody that was looking ... Country Squire was like, that was the most popular. It was the back-split, if you had a Country Squire special with the two-car garage on a ravine, that was gone overnight. I mean it was just like ... With a pool, I mean, forget about it. It was just interesting to see that same thing and how easy it is now to do all of that stuff that you can't kind of algorithm, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I just wanted to make one point, because I speak, throughout my trainings, one of the things I'm hearing a lot in terms of getting listings and market reports that agents are finding, and I don't know if it's true for this room too, but is that when an agent walks into a listing presentation, that the homeowners ... I was already seeing that too. They are sitting with an idea already of what their home is worth.
With access to information and with access to, obviously, all of the data that's out there, they're just a few clicks away from determining their own ... Especially with sold data coming to the surface and everything. I think that's where ... I love the idea of it still being a price list, and not moving towards a quote, so there's no, they don't feel obligated towards working with you. I think that's where I see a little bit of a challenge moving forward or even today is, how do you still stay along those lines and still be more valuable without offering, without putting any pressure on people to ... Or obligation?
Dean: I think that's part of the thing where why, when we look at it, that the people, overall, people are not going to respond and list their house right away. That's just, generally, they're going to be a longer period of time, so being able to be good with that and not ... Because a lot of times, people respond to things like that, but they're kind of like keeping their eyes open that if you show up at their doorstep with the package, or you call them right away, that there's this tendency to ... Especially if it's going to be next year, or someone that's just kind of getting their ducks in a row, it's much easier to tell you, "Oh, no, no, no. We're never going to sell, we were just curious about ... Oh, no. You can take us off your list. You don't need to keep sending us." They're all, "Sorry for ..." Yeah.
I mean, that kind of thing, it's easier to do that, but it's so much more valuable to just serve and to just give them the information and do the things, and then focus on, "Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you." [crosstalk 00:31:00] Know that people are, the things that's going to trigger people are still going to be, they're either going to want to know, specifically, what their house is worth. They're going to want to know what to do to fix it up, or if you have a buyer, maybe they'll decide to move. Can we hand it over to [Marian] ? Yeah.
Marian: My concern is in the delivery. I do deliver them by hand, and I want to keep that option because if I see them, I see them. If I don't, I don't. I just put it in their mailbox. It's never a conversation. If I do see them about, "Are you going to sell," or anything, it's just, "Hi, how are you?" It's able to put a face to a name, and because I'm very much a relationship-based person. I do have people saying, "Can we get an email report?" I'm considering, do I send them all by email? Which I don't-
Dean: I think you supplement, to do both. I think there's something, like what Chuck is doing is ... This is, I think, what you could do is like to do a Sold Watch. To start to be their kind of purveyor of the information, but put together a monthly anchor report that goes along with it by mail too.
Chuck: We have the Milton Price Report, which people can sign-up for, and so we have the Sold Watch weekly email. We do that once a week, just to kind of keep top-of-mind and fresh. Yeah, so there's about 2,000 people who get that. That's just getting listings that we've collected over the years. Then, we've just started to do a Milton Condo Report very specific for condos.
I think the right frequency by email, for us, has been when the stats, when we compile them from the previous month, so we're not doing the second Monday of the month for, "Here's the updated report." Then on the fourth Monday, so it's like two weeks apart pretty much, we're just doing something like news related, or something else we can share with them. Just because I think that's the right ... If I was a condo owner, it's like, "You have permission to touch base with me every two weeks."
Dean: That's the thing, I think more than that-
Chuck: Like that feels like the right ... It try to put myself on their end and go, "What's the right amount?"
Dean: Right. I think that that's part of the thing, as long as it's valuable information. That sort of frequency, especially, and supplementing that with a short, personal email, if something in their building, specifically, lists. If you're able to flag people or something on their street comes up, to be able to notice and say to them, "Hey, just saw this one came up right beside you. Here's the info on that one." That's a valuable thing, but you're establishing that in your mind. Yeah?
Devel: Chuck is that what you do? Do you flag people in specific buildings then? In terms of sending it out to, information, that specific building?
Chuck: Long arms is good for this.
Dean: Yeah, right.
Chuck: I haven't. We've got a part that's optional for address. All I care about ... Because we know that the more form fields they have to fill out, the less likely they are. The only mandatory is the name and email, because that's been my focus. We've gone away from physical mail, but I do recognize the benefit. Even our past clients get stuff twice a month through the mail. They get the [Buyer Frill] Newsletter. Hello there. Yeah, and then the World's Most Interesting Postcard. I do believe in the mail, but for this, I just wanted to have it be a little bit more email-based, really focused on like, "Here's what you can do next." Yeah.
Speaker: So helpful for the real estate agents.
Devel: Oh, so you're just doing email. You're not even doing mail. Because I'm doing mail, and then I've had some people come up to say, "Hey, you know what? I don't want mail, I want email," so we'll email those people.
Chuck: I think you need to see them as channels.
Dean: Yes.
Devel: Yeah.
Chuck: Right? Like, it's like what are you doing, is this email only? Then have the mail act on its own or in conjunction with email.
Devel: What's the content in the World's Most Interesting Postcard?
Speaker: The most interesting stuff.
Dean: Yeah. We'll talk about that when we talk about getting referrals.
Devel: Okay.
Dean: The thing that has happened and we see it more and more and more, is people calling up and it's the physical mounting evidence that you are acting as their advisor or as their real estate agent. When they've got something that you've been mailing them for months or years that they've stacked up all of these things, and you've been faithful and not missed. Even, especially when there's an incumbent realtor who maybe helped them buy the house seven years ago, but they haven't heard from them since and you're, every month, mailing them the Get Top-Dollar newsletter and the updates of what's been going on and your Helping People On the Move and yeah, all of that stuff.
When you're fully engaged in this, you are, we're establishing that brand, that buying reflex. That buying reflex is going to be that that package is going to arrive in the mail. We always use, we pimp the envelope to look nice. It's the most exciting thing they'll get in the mailbox that day, and they see it, and that will spur them, "You know what? It is time." Then we see that the three, "Whenever you're ready, here's three ways we can help you." We, even those, we make seem like that they're getting something that's already done, in a way. A pinpoint price analysis, we've got that process. Or a room-by-room review, or the silent market, "We may be able to sell your house in as little as 24 hours without even putting it on the market."
All of those triggers all lead to the same place. It's just three different motivations that people may have. They either want to know about specifically what their house is worth. "Hi. Can I get a pinpoint price analysis?" "Perfect. Let me pop by, we'll take a look at your house. I'll bring all the information, and we can determine exactly what your house would be worth." Or, "I'd like to get a room-by-room review." "Perfect. Let me pop by. We'll take a look at your house. I'll bring a room-by-room review booklet with the checklist and we'll go from the curb to the closets and see what you should and shouldn't do to get the most money when you sell." Or, "What's this silent market about? Do you have buyer for our house?" "Perfect. Let me pop by. We'll take a look at your house. We're always working with ..."
I mean, it's all the same of getting into the ... This is an interesting thing. Because I get to work with a lot of different businesses outside of real estate, that I've learned that there's so many similarities in things. What I look for is, what's the mechanical outcome that we're looking for? The mechanical outcome. What I mean by that is, what are we trying to position here? The outcome that I want when I'm mailing the postcards is that I want somebody on a ... I want to know the address and the name. I just want somebody to identify themselves, to raise their hand. That's the outcome that I'm looking for here. When I'm mailing them these newsletters that I'm mailing them the updates, the mechanical outcome that I want is I want to be in the kitchen, with somebody who's thinking about selling their house, talking about a pinpoint price analysis, or a room-by-room review, or our silent market. Those are the three kind of ways for us to get there, but the mechanical outcome is I want to be in the kitchen with them having a conversation.
It was funny, we had, I have the podcast called More Cheese, Less Whiskers. It's all about making things by focusing on cheese. That's what mice really want is cheese, is by focusing on cheese things become effortless. As soon as they see whiskers, which is you, your self-interest, it becomes disinterested. One of the ladies in our program, her little daughter, granddaughter was having problems at bath time, chasing her around the house saying, "Alexa, time for your bath, it's bath time," and she would run the other way. Then she decided one day, "I'm going to try the more cheese approach here," and she started saying, "Alexa, want to go splash in the tub?"
Alexa started running to the bathroom, taking off her clothes and hopping in the tub. When you realize it, what she really wanted was the mechanical outcome of the two-year-old in the tub, in the water. "Want to go splash in the tub?" That sounds so much more fun than, "Alexa, it's time for your bath." That kind of focus, when you think about the words, making it be outwardly focused on what do people really want? That's why when we talk about the finding buyers, the same things, the daily tour of homes and the home buyer workshop, and the home loan report. All those things sound like splashing in the tub, compared to bath time. It's just a matter of knowing that that's what's happening, and having the discipline to execute on that deliverable. Yeah. What else? Yeah, let's see. Let's, tell us the story about your first experience here of the, you just got your listing now. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. That was, we started mailing in May. I think I spoke to you maybe shortly after on the podcast, we had just started mailing. Dean and I help ... We picked an area, basically, we did coastal homes because we're up in Maine, and Maine has a lot of Coast, probably more water than any other state.
Dean: That's the iconic thing, right?
Speaker: Yeah, it's the Maine coast. Yeah.
Dean: I always like to start with there's two things, either the front side of the bell curve, if you're in a traditional market, and then the iconic thing. The thing that is like what you're known for. That, oceanfront, and we've had that same experience with Kenny in Cape Ann.
Speaker: Sure, Cape Ann, yeah. We picked an area called Falmouth Foreside, which is, just runs right on up the Coast, just north of Portland. It's a town just north of Portland, it's Falmouth, Maine. They call it Foreside. Foreside Road runs right along there. The homes there range from, I think the highest sale would be like double-digit millions, 10 million. The average price point is probably about 800,000, in that range. We narrowed about 600 homes, I think, we picked in that area. We were able to target it fairly easily, because where it was, it's a basic little strip. We started mailing to that in May and did pretty good with ... I think the person that just listed was the first mailing. She responded right away, and responded with like a ... I have the email if anybody wants to see it. Like a page in that email of all of our plans.
Dean: Right, the love letter. That's what I call it. Right.
Speaker: The love letter. She wasn't so happy living there and why, and they were having trouble with their kid, and it was like ... It was a pretty long response. Of course, I followed up with her because she was really asking to be spoken with, and was able to speak with her continuing on. Then we continued to mail to that same area. I think I missed a month in there. I mean, it was like just getting started and things are ... All of a sudden, the month is gone. "Where did the month go?" and the postcards haven't gone out yet. That's just the way things were happening.
Facebook was still working well then. We still did the micro-targeting using all the circles. We can get down to ... I had it down to like 700 homes, 800 homes. It was great. They just pulled our Facebook ads. I got the notice last week that, "You are now ... It seems your policy's in violation. Your ad's in violation of our policy. If we're wrong, let us know." It's like, so that's been stopped, but it was getting-
Dean: The good news is on oceanfront, we've been doing oceanfront, dropping the pins in the ocean and done the sliver of the coast.
Speaker: Yeah, right. I've done that now because Casco Bay is basically this ... It ends up being about a 15 mile circle, so you drop the pin seven miles off-shore, so now I have about, probably, it's a large mailing, so just been making a lot of little circles off-shore. I pulled it in, so we just expanded the area to get ... That's starting to pull on Facebook now. We were generating leads. Probably four or so per mailing out of 600, and the same on Facebook. We get four or five on Facebook. We're up to-
Dean: What's the turnover rate?
Speaker: In that area, it's at 5, 5%.
Dean: 5%.
Speaker: Yeah. It's really low.
Dean: When I do the math on that, like how we look at it that ... This is the thing where people, where you wonder, like, "Okay. Am I missing ... What's going on? We're not ..." Like [Devel 00:45:22] might be in this kind of situation, where you start to think, "Okay. I haven't gotten anything from it yet," but you only have what is actually happening. If you think about 600 homes with a 5% turnover rate, it's going to be 30 homes, and you're generating four or eight a month-
Speaker: Well, yeah. Now, let's see-
Dean: ... for four months now, so you've generated 30-
Speaker: Yeah, it's about 30. It's about 30 in there, exactly.
Dean: You've got 30 people who've raised their hand, which they could be the ones, but the oldest of them is just 90 days old now, right?
Speaker: Mm-hmm (affirmative), that's right.
Dean: When you think about that, no matter what, when you're doing the mailing, even if you've been doing it for six months, there's still only, the very first person that responded is six months old. This is one thing that I've really discovered, is that there's no rhyme or reason to when ... Has anybody ever had a buyer or a seller kind of not be accurate in their assessment of when they were going to buy or sell? Like tell you something and then it not be on that timeline. A buyer said, "No, we're going to wait until next year," and then all of a sudden, they decide it's time.
What I've really resigned to or come to, the most delightfully relaxing conclusion is that there are only two timeframes. It's either now, or not now. There's no point in even trying to time the market or time them or put them in a bucket of 90 days or six months or follow up with that. I don't even try that. What I look at is to, is imagine, the visual that I have of this now is that on day one, when we mail in ... Here's how I would be looking at this. That on day one, you mailed out, you got four responses the first time.
I look at them as little round, little LED lights kind of thing that we can stack up. You've got four people on right now. Then you mail the next month, and there's four more, so now our tower is eight leads high. Then the next is 12, and 6, you're up to 30 high now. At each month, when you go by, each week that goes by, if you get to like push the circuit button, and the ones that are ready now will light up.
If we march them along, everybody that is going to sell is going to, at some point, light up over the next 12, 24, 36 months. The idea of being in front of them with the, "Whenever you're ready, here's three ways we can help you," that's checking-in on it. When it's now they are triggered, and call you. That's why I like this three-dimensional approach of actually, physical, something in their hand, plus the email, which is easy to reply to.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: Andrew-
Speaker: Finish up. She actually responded, she loved the email, she loved the thing though. I was going to mention, this might help Devel also, when she was talking about how to sort of ramp-up the response, and your thoughts on it, but we've been, with the email, and Chuck had mentioned he sends out the emails. Every time we send out a new ... We get a new response in, we do a BombBomb video to them. The BombBomb video is like, I take a little whiteboard and I would write like, I would say, "Hi, Dean." You got to wait for the first five seconds because it makes a little JIF.
They get a little custom-made video. It says, "Hi, Dean." Or, "Here's a ... Your report's on the way. Here it is, it's going out. Keep an eye for it." She loved that. I've probably, 20-some of the listings I've taken, I've heard from seven, eight people, they loved that. Just because, you're talking about connecting a face and Marian was saying making a face. That's a great way you can do it right off the bat, so I think there was a lot of power in doing that, with the BombBomb video.
We're toying with doing it also when we mail it each month, not individual anymore, but just like ... Because you can't do, we used to do the Facebook where, "They're on the way." Since you really can't do that now, you're telling too many people, 15 miles, but you can still do it through a BombBomb and say, "The report's on the way," and send them out and email them out, right?
Dean: Yeah.
Speaker: Then the other thing I think, we're just starting to toy with right now, and this, Dan was talking about it last night and Friday when we got together. Facebook custom audiences. You can take every email that's come in from you getting listings and upload them. Facebook won't tell you who they are, but for a few dollars, they'll put something in front of them, so you can continue to market to those people.
Dean: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: Maybe not give them a hard ad, but make sure they're seeing your videos, they're seeing the content. Now, that same 30 people, you're showing up in their feed, so it just ... I think Facebook custom audiences and playing with that, and using that to be a sort of replacement for us in the States, especially, will make a difference.
Dean: Awesome. Let's go down to Andrew.
Andrew: Actually, just like on the custom audience thing, that's our way around for some, is like we just find a piece of content and then micro-target it to that area, that we know they're going to find super interesting. Then when we do the lead-gen ad, it's re-targeted, the 15 mile minimum radius, but it's only re-targeting the people who saw a micro-targeted ad, and now there's no way they won't opt-in. Now, that's how we target like one building, is the initial content ad that builds that custom audience, and then we just ... Especially with videos, it's a great one. Anyone who watched 50% of this video that was micro-targeted to this building, now we're going to lead-gen to them, and doesn't matter now if it's in a 15 mile radius.
Dean: Yes, perfect. Good. With this idea of knowing that there's something going to trigger people, being in communication with them, and knowing that the value ... When you look at the ROI of the investment of continuing to keep in touch with those people, is an amazing thing. If we did the math on the ROI, on just the year ... If Tony had only mailed for one year and then just continued to stay in touch with just those 160 people, it's 23 transactions that came from that. It's, where I was going with the you can only deal with what is actually happening is, out of those 600 homes with the 5% turnover rate, there's only 30 of them that are going to sell, so the numbers aren't going to be big in terms of the number of people that respond anyway, because 550 of them or 570 of them have no interest in it at all anyway.
Knowing that, and knowing the way that you keep that kind of in front of them, and being the source for the information, like supplementing the newsletters and the monthly video reports with specific things that are ... Whenever something gets listed on their street, or their model, or something like that. Saying, say, "This one just came on the street." Just a short, personal, expecting a reply email to them, makes a big difference. Sure.
Chuck: I'll chime-in quickly. Even with the Columbia report, I think there's 4,000 condos in Milton, and I have 90 of them and I'm like, "Aw, that sucks." I'd have a pretty good life if all 90 of those people worked with me.
Dean: Absolutely, right.
Chuck: It's like the ego wants the number to be big.
Dean: I know.
Chuck: It's, but if you think about them as individual ... If I had 90 people in this room right now, and I had a chance to kind of talk to them about condo prices, it would be a pretty fun day.
Dean: Yes.
Chuck: Yeah.
Dean: That's what I say to people, that's one of the things is to imagine when you start generating like a buyer list or a seller list, when you start thinking about, you get a couple hundred people in a thing, that's like a good size church congregation. 90 people is like a full college theater, economics class, and you start to realize, that's the attention that you have. It's, yeah, it's pretty amazing when you personify it, you put it, look what a group of 90 people actually looks like. It's a big barbecue or a medium-sized wedding. Yeah?
Marian: My question is, sending out the postcards themselves, are they sent in perpetuity?
Dean: Yeah.
Marian: Forever, and ever, and ever.
Dean: Every month, yeah.
Marian: Never to end?
Dean: Never.
Marian: Okay.
Dean: It's really interesting that that on its own becomes a thing that people know that that's coming. That yellow postcard that arrives in their inbox ... I mean, I'm a student of direct response mail and I never get anything in my mailbox that looks anything like that. I mean, it's just, it's funny. I often say to people, if you had to ... If direct response advertising was on trial and we had to prove that it existed, and all you could do was look in the wild for it, it would be very difficult to prove that it even existed, if you look in magazines and newspapers and your mailbox. It's been around for so long, and it works so well, it's crazy. Yeah, that whole thing, you're only going to respond to it when it makes sense to you.
Marian: Right. The reason I ask is I started them, I said, a few years ago, and I had a pretty good list going. Then I dropped it for a few years, and when I sent it back again, the first month I had 15 responses, the next month 15 responses. Now, throughout the year, it's just dropping off, which is what expected, so I don't know whether my efforts are better spent leaving that postcard again for another year and starting over, or continuing to get fewer, and fewer, and fewer every month.
Dean: What you get to is a point of stability, where you get in a small band, a variation, that you'll get the same number month, after month, after month. I look at it, is I look at it as the rolling of it. That you're ... I'll say to people, it'd be so much better off if we could put a black box over everything, and you didn't get emotionally attached to the volatility of it. It's like buying a stock that you get excited that, "Oh, it went up, it went up, it went up." Then, "Oh, it went down," then it's back. You're still ahead, but it's down. It's not going up as much as it was. "Maybe I should get out and get into another one." The reality is, over the long-term, you're establishing more, and more, and more people that are the future listings. Yeah?
Chuck: Anyone that closes you just put back on the list and email over again.
Speaker: I've hit someone three times, they see that postcard, and the fourth one, they respond.
Dean: That's it.
Speaker: The fourth one doesn't come-
Dean: I just realized, I had something, I mean, this was the ... I saw in our, right in our GoGo Agent forum, somebody asked, "Does anybody know where I can get same-day carpet? We have a closing tomorrow, and the painters spilled paint on the carpet and it's ruined." I just recognized my mind went immediately, without my permission, to the "800-588-2300-Empire." I mean, as though that had been smuggled into my brain and living there for 20-plus years without me even thinking about it, but there it was. The moment that somebody said that, and you start to see now, where all the things that's happening.
Like Safelite has been smuggling things into my brain now for all that time, so there's so much, just this patient realization that it's like a portfolio that you're managing for a yield over a long period of time. It's funny that it's not ... I have the caveat with people that I'm not saying that I'm not interested in "now" business because you will get "now" business. I mean, I look at what happened with Michael, I look at ... Plenty of people will mail and get a listing pretty quickly, and they feel good about that, but it's not ... I'm not doing anything, or you're not doing anything that's going to sacrifice that.
The clue is in what's actually happening. Like when you look back, if you've generated 30 people and there's been one that has come on the market, and you've got it, you've got 100% of the market share of that timeframe, of everything that has come on. When you look at what's actually happening, if all, if everybody who's responded has listed their house and they didn't list it with you, then you'd think, "Okay. There's something up here," but you could only persuade the persuadables, as they call them.
I was fascinated by that Cambridge Analytica movie to see all the things that they had done with the Donald Trump campaign, but breaking it down into the personality types and the people that they would consider to be the persuadables, and focusing all their attention on those. What I think is happening is once somebody raises their hand that they're interested in knowing about the market activity in there, that those people are persuadable over a period of time.
Speaker: At Go, today, yesterday, Seth mentioned that.
Dean: Did he?
Speaker: Yeah. He said, "You want the person that's ready," he said.
Dean: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly what he said.
Dean: There you go. Now, that's it. There's only now. That's, we all come to that conclusion here too. Devel, I want to talk about some of your, what's the facts about the area here. What are we talking about? Because you had mentioned that you've been doing, getting listings for ...
Devel: Over a year.
Dean: Okay. Tell me about the area, the numbers.
Devel: It's condos, so it's the Davisville Village Condo Report is what it's called, but it's condos specifically on Davisville, Balliol and Merton Street. It's Yonge and Davisville, Midtown Toronto. There's probably over 3,000 units but, basically, that was sort of really the smallest area that I could define it on Canada Post, Postal walk. Because to get into houses, okay, yeah, you could hire someone to deliver flyers, but to get into condos, you got to go through Canada Post. That was, basically, what I could do there.
There isn't any one agent that's dominant in that area. There's just lots of different agents that sell in that area. My office is specifically on Merton Street, so my office is on one of those streets as well too. I had already been marketing to that neighborhood by sending out, like I said, it's called the Morrison Report. I send out the newsletter once a month to that neighborhood, and extended neighborhood around that too.
Dean: When you mail them, you're mailing 3,000, or how many?
Devel: Yes, I can't remember the exact number, but it's over 3,000. It's those three streets, all the condos. You end up with some of the rental apartment buildings on-
Dean: That's what I was just going to say, is you don't ...
Devel: You can't specify whether it's condos or apartments, so you end up going to some of the apartment buildings as well too, just because they're on those three streets.
Dean: Okay. Then you also go to some of the tenants, because you're not mailing specifically to the-
Devel: Right.
Dean: ... owners and stuff. What kind of ... How many actual condo-
Devel: Owners?
Dean: ... owners do you think you're actually getting to?
Devel: A lot. Most of those, some of those condo ... Actually, not some, most of those condo buildings aren't new buildings. They've been around for a long time, and so in Toronto, if it's an older building, it means it's more owner-occupied than it is rentals. The newer buildings tend to be more rentals.
Dean: Sure, yeah.
Devel: It's definitely a lot of owners, for sure.
Dean: Okay. How many have you generated so far?
Devel: I couldn't tell you, because I've got a marketing assistant-
Dean: Oh, I got you.
Devel: ... So he's the one that's sort of tracking all the numbers.
Dean: I got you.
Devel: When I first started it, then yeah, there were a couple of people that would send an email saying, "Hey, add me on your list." Then it just, for a while it just, there's nothing. Then recently, I've gotten one or two. I had changed the postcard design. It's funny, I was talking to Chuck about that.
Dean: Okay, there we go. I mean that ... I want to look at these things. This is why I always like, let's get to the facts, like the thing is that part of having a stable system is having a system that ... Like if we were to put the postcards in a lineup beside each other. If we said like, my, the off-the-shelf, the Getting Listings postcard, and what you're sending, what would be different about it? You're saying you changed up the ...
Devel: Well, I've changed it back now that I talked to Chuck.
Chuck: Do you remember, [Terry Manafeld 01:04:50] Used to say, "It's like adding barbecue sauce to a cake recipe."
Dean: I used to, so I would tell the thing, I would tell the story that, imagine that you are driving down the road at night, and you're alone on the road, and you see some blue lights coming up in your rear-view mirror. As they get up behind you, they flash the lights, and you know that you're supposed to pull over.
You pull over and the door opens, and as it comes, you can see that the person approaching, they put on their hat, and they've got the epaulets, and they've got the badge, and they've got the walkie-talkie, and they've got the pressed pants. As they get closer, you see that they're wearing clown shoes. It changes the whole dynamic. It's almost exactly, but there's the clown shoes. When we sort of look, whenever we're doing things like that, like forensically looking at what's happening, is we look for the clown shoes. What's the difference in these two things? Tell me about what the model is, or what the thing that you're sending is.
Devel: It's the, just the Davisville Condo Report, so it's just the prices on who condos have sold.
Dean: You're giving them that information.
Devel: Yeah. Once they put up their hand to say that they're interested in that, they get mailed that information. Then the people who send-
Dean: I'm asking about the card.
Devel: Oh, the card. Sorry.
Dean: Yeah.
Devel: Yeah, so the card is basically, it's a beautiful picture of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Like I sort of looked at your thing, because obviously, I don't have waterfront, but sort of the gold standard view in our neighborhood is over the cemetery.
Dean: Yes, yes.
Devel: I know it sounds morbid to people who don't live in the neighborhood.
Dean: Peaceful.
Devel: To everybody in that neighborhood, it's a park.
Dean: Yeah.
Devel: It means that no condos are going to get built.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Devel: It's like your gold standard view. Everybody wants a south-facing condo on Merton Street, where they've got an incredible view.
Dean: Sure.
Devel: I've got a picture of that beautiful view, just to catch people's eyes, really. My colors are sort of red, so I changed the postcard to red. After talking to Chuck, I changed it back to yellow. "Ah, this color. It's killing me."
Dean: Right, right. "It's killing me," yeah, yeah.
Devel: Yeah. I use sort of that picture, and it's flowers, beautiful view, like trees, that kind of thing. It just says all the same verbiage as your thing.
Dean: Okay. Is there any other stuff changed? Like any, I mean-
Devel: No, it's all the same verbiage, basically, that we were using. Now I've just changed it back to the yellow, and exactly what your thing is now. Whereas before, it wasn't exact.
Dean: I got you.
Chuck: You had some stuff on the back.
Devel: Oh, that's right. I did. That's right. Chuck remembers.
Dean: "Oh, there was that too. I had the clown shoes."
Devel: He made me email it to him. I'm like, "I don't even remember what it looks like."
Dean: "And the angel wings, but those are just in the back. Nobody sees the angel wings in the front." Clown shoes and angel wings.
Devel: Chuck's got a good memory.
Dean: Yeah, but listen, so that's the thing. I sit here, I'm so like, I get ... I look at this, and I want you guys to know that everything that I'm saying, like when, if you're saying, like doing a hard line on things like that, it's not at all because my ego's involved in this, or when somebody says, "Yeah, I tried that. That didn't work." I look at it and when you say that, it's like that, my first instinct is to think like, "Maybe it's not going to work anymore," but for every person that's said that to me, when we do the forensic thing, when we look at it, then it's like, "Well, I did change this, and I did change this. Yeah, I've changed it back now though." Or, "It's, basically, the same words."
It's, that's the whole thing, and I just want you guys to know, when I look at this, I look at this as a scientist. I'm just the lead scientist for our group here, setting up this scientific community of experimentation, and let's see what works and what's the consensus gold standard. That's why this conversation, I want to say, going into it, we're still at the point where this little information only looking card, followed by 12 monthly newsletters, cover letter, market data, Helping People On the Move insert with telling people the stories, your new listing insert.
Bumping out that package to include all those things, followed by a monthly, or a video report, hopefully, with you doing the reporting, so they're seeing you and timing it so that the thing is coming out with supplemental emails of, "Hey, this model just like yours just listed. Here's the information on it. I'll let you know when it sells." Or just everything that you're acting as their realtor, we're bonding with the people who've responded.
You're being their advocate, and being, acting as if you're their real estate agent, but not pressuring them in any way that they need to list their house with you. You're, it's like you've got it. Then when we couple it on our finding buyers side, when we couple it with the categories, that's really like a, the big thing. If you can send somebody an email saying, "Hey, Marian. I'm showing houses this week, and we're looking at the couple right down the street." Sending the Market-Maker email there is a big opportunity. Yeah?
Chuck: If you ever have a chance to see what Tony's set up, it's really amazing. I mean, it's by postal walk, so he'll actually draw like ... It's not even a report for an area like Davisville Condos, it's like if you live between number 34 and 72 on this street. I mean it's ...
Dean: It looks like all the electoral college territories in the States.
Chuck: Yeah. What I started thinking about, even when you do it ... Yeah, like it's just, it's like exactly that mail walk and the way everything happens, it's all lined up around that. That's why when Canada Post does stuff to change, it really pisses you off. My point is, is that the light bulbs went off there, because even when you do it just listed, where do you focus on? It's like the people that can see the for sale sign, it's like that's people's world. You ever go on a listing appointment, they're like, "Yeah, what about the one, just the one street over." I'm like, "That was eight months ago," but they still remember that because it was in their scope of awareness.
I was thinking about, Tony even does something where it's on a sheet of paper. The postcard, I used to print it on card stock, and then it was like, it's cheaper to print on paper. I started thinking about, what's the least expensive option to get the messages in front of them? That was, and it's like the minute we even went to paper versus card stock, I think, it's like I could do the whole year for the price of three months before. It's so much cheaper. The only reason our name's even on it is for regulation purposes.
Dean: Right.
Chuck: Right? It's like, it's just, how can I get a message under their nose-
Dean: Yeah, it's not required that you have your picture, or your logo, or any of that stuff. We use just the-
Chuck: Yeah. That was ... I always knew that about the brand versus not-brand thing, but it was like, how can the message appear for the cheapest amount possible? That was my only focus.
Devel: You're sending out paper.
Chuck: Yeah, like plain-
Devel: Not postcards.
Chuck: Yeah, like yellow paper.
Devel: Wow.
Chuck: Right? Like-
Marian: Postcard size?
Chuck: Yeah, yeah.
Marian: Postcard size?
Chuck: Like a half a sheet of paper, so eight and a half by eleven, cut in half, and we've got like two per page. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad to show it to you guys if you want.
Dean: By the way-
Chuck: It was really-
Dean: Yeah.
Chuck: I saw Tony's and I went, "Oh my god, that's it." I tried to ... If you know the history of what we did, we started with the Hawthorn Village Reports, and then started to ease-off on that, so we said, "Well, let's try and do Milton, because then we can do newspaper ads. We can do things on a bigger scale," but you were on me for years about this. People care about what they can see in their immediate vicinity, and that's what it is. Your report, Tony, may not be as graphically fancy as mine, but you tell someone what that home three doors down went for, it's like it's hyper-focused. It makes a big difference.
Dean: Absolutely.
Devel: I was just ...
Dean: Thanks for that, Chuck. Is there any value to giving them a greater context, like in your area? In my area, it would be the Markham area or even the GTA area, what's been happening in the last month.
Chuck: I don't know. I mean, it's a good question.
Dean: I think that it's the horoscope effect. It's the thing that you can, the narrowest thing is when you look at the horoscopes, the first thing your eye goes to is yours. Then it might go to your significant other's one, and that's it. Really, that's it. You don't care about the other signs, you don't care. That's what, I said that to, Chuck is saying I got on him about that. Switching from Hawthorne Village to Milton is a different, it's not the same. It doesn't feel like, "I'm going to get this specific thing."
We recognize things that are specific to us. Like there's been studies where they'll flash on a screen a list of words, list of things or names even, and when they see, when your name is flashed on the screen, your pupils dilate, even when you don't recognize that you saw your name on there. That's like, the goal is that people will flash, they'll flash the cards and then, or the screens, and you're supposed to push the button when you see your name. They would be doing this and flashing it up, and people, their name would be on there. Their pupils would dilate, and could recognize that it was attached to that card, but they didn't push the button because they didn't even recognize it. I mean, yeah, it's funny.
Chuck: I've started to see that people need to see themselves in your ad, right?
Dean: Yes, yes.
Chuck: That's a big thing.
Dean: Yeah.
Chuck: That's my 2019 awareness.
Dean: Because it's for them. That's it.
Chuck: Tony, I think wants to-
Dean: Yeah.
Tony: Those, yeah, it was done on, I shared that with you, Chuck, I think, what? In the beginning of the year. We just made polygons of their exact style of home because it's not as cookie cutter, our area. That was the biggest problem, so relating to the horoscope effect, we kind of just looked at what Canada Post does. Canada Post had their walk system. We would say, I mean, each of those walk systems would have about three different areas when we send the reports out, so I would break up their walk system into three areas, so when they-
Dean: This is how we're getting around now in Winter Haven. This is a Facebook carousel ad with the polygon, like with the map territories, so people can see their ... We're going in the 15 mile radius, but there's, we're getting the quadrant Southeast. What are Southeast homes selling for, Southwest, Northeast, Northwest? That's, so in the seven days, so seven days, so far we've generated 36 leads for $6.34, $200 spend for the thing, but that's pretty consistent across the board compared to what we were able to get, narrow.
Chuck: The Condo Report is another final proof for this. The Sold Watch, like the Milton Price Report gets a 30% open rate, roughly 30 to 35. The Condo Report is getting 85%.
Devel: Why is that, do you think?
Chuck: There's probably a newness factor, but I think it's also like the Sold Watch or Price Report is about Milton. You're a microcosm of that, but you are very much a condo owner by nature. I think it's like when that arrives you go, "Oh, okay. That's me." Right?
Dean: Yeah.
Devel: It's interesting. What I'm thinking of is that, because right now, I call it the Davisville Condo Report, but based on what you're just talking about, the horoscope effect, I'm calling it the Davisville Condo Report, but most of the condos are on Merton Street. I think what I'm going to do is actually-
Dean: Merton Street Condo Report.
Devel: Yeah, I'm going to change the name.
Dean: See, now that's the thing, yeah.
Chuck: Anything on Merton Street. Like we actually list all the condos on [inaudible 01:18:58]
Devel: Mm-hmm (affirmative), but it just, yeah, I think I need to change the name to the Merton Condo Report because that way it will get the people. It's the horoscope thing, right?
Dean: Yeah, that's it.
Devel: Just the report that you're sending out, that one, so what specifically is in the one that you're sending for a specific neighborhood? Because you're saying you're doing it based on the Canada Post walks.
Tony: Yeah. Then we break it up by like a report. We break it up by like a report, so if that Canada Post walk has like one ... In that Canada Post walk, there may be townhomes, condos or freeholds, so I have to, in our Google map, we have to break it up in three different reports, so it'd be, they call it R1, R2, R3. Once that lead comes in from that ... By the way, the goal ... The most narrowest horoscope effect that I did was by intersections. Because that was what people talk in our area. They say, "I live on Main and Danforth." Or, "[Bertrand]” St. Clair."
The whole key with this is about start really small so you get the confidence and you understand it, because it gets overwhelming, like what I'm talking about, but it's really, really simple if you do it small. Dean always suggests that. Just start with 500 homes, or start with ... I'm at like 20,000 now. It gets kind of ridiculous at that level, but I didn't do that overnight. It took three, four years for it to get to that. I just kept building along once I started understanding more of that horoscope effect. I hope that answered your question. Did that ...
Devel: It did.
Tony: Okay. That's how I broke up the Canada Post walks.
Dean: Yeah.
Andrew: Like the Condo Report, is like we do this with Chuck too, or we actually got them to go and film a video in front of each condo talking about the report, and then the ad is targeted just to that building. Like they can't do that in the U.S., but we can still do it here. Like you have to do an extra step-
Dean: We did, that's where we started it.
Andrew: Yeah, like literally stand in front, or we have another client who was trying to, like she had a buyer who wanted to buy in Lake Couchiching, so but what we got her to do was stand on Lake Couchiching at the recognizable entry point, where if you have a house there, the second you see that, you know that's Lake Couchiching. She literally said, "Hey, I have a buyer looking to buy a place here." It was like that simple, but it's that recognizable background.
We've seen some where someone will go and ... Like the video, it's cut a lot, but what he does is he went and repeated the same thing in front of every street sign in the neighborhood, and just is pointing at it. Then it's cut into one thing, but he keeps standing under the different street signs so people can keep seeing theirs. That works pretty well.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it does because-
Diane: Hey, this is Diane-
Speaker: That's okay. I've done this with using recognizable images of like schools in the area, or intersection, like the actual street signs, intersections, and just those-
Dean: Yes. That's what we've been using is street signs too.
Speaker: Yeah, and the-
Dean: I'll show you one of these videos. This is the, Diane video. This was the original one that we-
Diane: Hey, this is Diane Lightsey reporting live from Ruby Lake. You may have seen this postcard come through the mail, or you may have seen this sign come ...
Dean: Let's see. How did we get cut-off there?
Diane: Hey, this is Diane Lightsey reporting live from Ruby Lake. You may have seen this postcard come through the mail, or you may have seen this sign come across your Facebook newsfeed talking about how you can get this report on what your property's worth. A lot has been going on in your neighborhood for the last 30 days, and let me share that with you. Right now, did you know there are no listings on the market for sale. Anyone's looking for a house on Ruby Lake, there's nothing for sale, so for the last 30 days-
Dean: You can't get one.
Diane: ... under contract. Six days and 13 days, and one ...
Dean: I don't know what's going on. You get the idea. That, so in front of each of the communities like that, and the mindset of this, we've been using it to supplement the postcard mailing in that, the postcards arrive and you can see people get their mail, they're walking in the door. They've got their groceries, and the kids, and the dog and everything. They see it and they think, "Oh, I want that," but then they've got to put it aside and get ready for dinner, and get homework done, and get the kids in bed.
Then it's 10:00, and they're watching CSI or something, and a commercial comes on, which is the international symbol to pick up your phone and scroll through Facebook. They pick it up, and then it looks like there's a news crew out in front of Cypress or Ruby Lake, and you start ... You watch this video and you're like, "Oh, yeah. I wanted to get that," and now you just push the button and it's so easy.
That was something, that was the whole hypothesis behind it, and it worked out amazingly. I mean, it worked as a really nice supplement because we would view it as postcard drops, because we're only going ... Ruby Lake, there's 380 homes in Ruby Lake, so it was a micro-targeted thing, but we would mail and just watch the impressions and we'd only run it for 30 hours. We'd start it at like 5:00 on the day the postcards are hitting, and we'd run it until, through the next night. The impressions got up to 1.5 or something like that, but we would just look at the CPM of it, of the cost. Essentially, we're mailing those digital postcards for four cents each, is what it ultimately costs, and you get the same kind of percentage response as you would from mailing the regular postcards, so it's a nice little supplement there.
Speaker: You build your cost of mailings off that too- [crosstalk 01:25:41]
Dean: Yes, exactly, because you pixel who those-
Tony: People who watch it for 30 seconds, you know they probably live there.
Dean: That's it.
Tony: Then they become-
Dean: Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Tony: ... Your own audience.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. Okay, yes? Have you started yet doing- [crosstalk 01:25:56]
Speaker: Yes, so I've done one mailing. I kind of cheated because I'd already been farming these four areas for a year, so they at least ... Now, I'm just continuing it.
Dean: Right, sure.
Speaker: 15 responses. Three other realtors in the area, so I knew it was good because they were trying to figure it out.
Dean: Ah, "What's going on here?"
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. With fake names and everything.
Dean: Oh, love it. That's the best.
Speaker: Had to go figure it out through the backend, so I know it's working. I have a listing presentation tomorrow night, because of it.
Dean: Nice.
Speaker: I like how it's kind of difficult to sign-up. I can't tell you how many Facebook leads I've had over the years, because it's too easy, it auto-fills their stuff. They have to, like you said, sit down, put their kids to bed, go to my URL, which only they would know if they got that postcard. Type it in, fill out all the information, that's a lead.
Dean: Yes. That is a lead. You're absolutely right.
Speaker: That's a real lead, not just like an auto-populate-
Dean: They didn't accidentally pick that up. Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Speaker: They had to go out of their way, and I really like the fact that they have to do that. Yeah, the response has been great. We started putting it on the back of all of our Just Listed postcards and sale postcards as well as just-
Dean: Of course.
Speaker: ... the regular postcard.
Dean: Perfect.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes, but the traction already has been, been really excited.
Dean: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Dean: Giovanni, everybody. This is Giovanni Marsico. It'll fun for you to talk about a little bit, if you got a second, while your here is ... Grab a chair. Come up and sit with me.
Giovanni: Just so you guys know, I've been dying for the past 20 years to attend a Dean Jackson event.
Dean: Gio, this event was spectacular, I mean, really amazing. What I'd be interested, I think everybody would love to hear is about the, how you're using nine-word emails in these, because that's, it's quite a thing that you've been able to pull off here.
Giovanni: I ... This is it recording?
Dean: It's just recording, it's not amplifying it.
Giovanni: I first ... Or you taught it to me, I think in 2013 when I was doing real estate. I was ... Is everyone ... Where's everyone from?
Dean: They're all over the place. All in real estate. Gio, yeah, you got on my real estate list in like 2000-
Giovanni: 19 ...
Dean: '01 or '02?
Giovanni: 1999.
Dean: Whatever, the first one I started.
Giovanni: That was way before I was even in real estate. I had just, I'm a marketing nerd, and I've always been. I've been following, I had been following Dean since back then. Then we met at Genius Network, and learned the nine-word email. I thought, "Okay, let's see how this works," so we had a ... We were really good online. We sold pre-construction condos to investors in Toronto.
I would email different fun stuff. A lot of stuff worked, but then the first time we did a nine-word email, it resulted in half a million in commissions from the email. I actually got my whole team frustrated, because we had no idea what the response would be, and we were overwhelmed with how many people said, "Yes." Like, "Oh, shit." It was like, "Are you still interested in a pre-construction condo investment?" That was the first foray into that. Now, we've used it ever since in every iteration. We use it for this event, "Are you still interested in attending Archangel Summit?" I use it in my ... I have a coaching business. We use it, "Are you still interested in coaching?" Then different variations. Then, I think, after I was overwhelmed with the first response, you taught me how to actually ... What to do after.
Dean: Right. Just, yeah, be prepared.
Giovanni: Because, well, I didn't even know how to ... Once someone says, "Yes," then what do you do? It's like, "Oh, crap." Yeah, that was insanely valuable.
Dean: That's awesome. These guys, we've been talking about the future of real estate.
Giovanni: Oh, wow.
Dean: This whole part of the ... Actually, I'll do this while we're loading up. Part of the thing that is an important through-line of all of it is email. I look back now, since 1999, the email has been the thing that has not changed, we still have that. I always laugh when people, I see these ads come through my newsfeed, and I've clipped them because they all start out, "Email is dead. SMS and texting is the thing." Then you click to learn more, and without a hint of irony, the first thing is, "Hey, what's your best email address?" I mean, it's just so ironic to me that that is what's going on.
Anything that people talk about as, "Well, nobody uses email anymore. It's all Instagram or all social media stuff." You go to join any one of those, and what's the first thing you need to join any of them? An email address, so they can send you important information about your account. Email's not going anywhere, it's not. There's always going to be a place for it, and it's the most impactful way that we have of communicating and sharing information. I will say that there's not a ... It's interesting. You're saying 85% open rates on the specific things. Your mom has a 100% open rate on her emails. It's not a deliverability problem. It's an interest problem, that that's really the thing.
Giovanni: Yeah, and attention and ... Some people, another debate is long copy versus short copy. I love this because people say, "Well, everyone has a shorter attention span or they don't ... It has to be in 10 words or less or it doesn't work." What you teach in terms of short, personal, expecting a result, is completely true and it works. That's been game changing for us. On the other side, it's more about being interesting, because boring is bullshit. When people say people have ... Or when people tell me, or use the comment, "People have a short attention span," my next thing is, "Netflix."
Dean: Yes. Right?
Giovanni: They binge. They'll spend eight hours binging one show. Does that sound like a short attention span?
Dean: Right.
Giovanni: No. Because it's captivating and interesting, so be interesting.
Chuck: It's like-
Giovanni: That's it.
Dean: Yeah. I think that's the thing. Podcasts are another example of that. The long, consuming information. The fact, the reason that these short emails now, and supplementing them, like so I'm saying all the people who are responding to the postcards, to have this list of people who are thinking about selling, to be able to send to somebody a nine-word email, or a Market-Maker email saying, "Hey, I'm showing houses this week, and I remember looking up your house online. When I sent them, I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought I'd check-in and see if maybe I could tell them about your house."
That's so much better of an email than calling somebody and saying, "Hey, Chuck. Just checking-in. Are you getting the newsletters? Are you enjoying them? Is there anything we can do for you?" That's so weak, but to be able to be completely self ... To be focused on them, and bringing value to them, that if the only communication they get from you is providing them valuable updates or that you've got a buyer, when it is time to sell, they're going to think of you.
Chuck: That's their mechanical outcome.
Dean: Right. That's exactly right. What they want. This is part of the thing. We've premised this whole thing of what's going to change in the next 10 years, but the reality is, the things that are not going to change in the next 10 years are that they're going to want to get as much money as they can for their house. They're going to want to get it in the least amount of time, and they're going to want to get it with the least amount of hassle. That's really the three things that we can hang our hat on, and really focus in service of those. Luckily, technology's helping us out and even when you see the i-Buyers and the things, that's really, I look at that as opportunity.
That people, they're saying that there's downward pressure on commissions, but the reality is, what consumers are actually saying, if we just reframe and take that word "commission" out of it, what we're really seeing is that consumers, some are indicating a desire for speed and convenience, that they're willing to pay the highest amount for. If we take net dollar as the mechanical outcome of whatever commission or whatever arrangement it is, when you look at an iBuyer, or you look at what they're doing, there's market value, which would be like the highest amount you could get, exposing it to the open market with a real estate agent for whatever the right amount of time is.
If that's 100% of market value, an iBuyer is going to offer something less than that. In addition to that, 6% right off the top, plus a holding fee, risk fee, all of that stuff for an additional 3 to 5% on top of that, so the net that sellers are willing to accept is, I think, the biggest opportunity for us, that they're willing to net less if we're able to be a Market-Maker and set up those opportunities for yourself. Yeah, I'm really excited about that. Let's do this. Let's take a quick break right now. Then we'll come back, and we'll transition into multiplying our listings, and have a whole conversation around that, so 12 minutes.
There we have it. Another great episode. If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can go to ListingAgentLifestyle.com. You can download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book, the manifesto that shares everything that we're talking about here, and you can be a guest on the show if you'd like to talk about how we can build a Listing Agent Lifestyle plan for your business. Just click on the "be a guest" link at ListingAgentLifestyle.com. If you'd like to join our community of people who are applying all of the things we talk about in the Listing Agent Lifestyle, come on over to GoGoAgent.com. We've got all the programs, all the tools, everything you need to get listing, to multiply your listings, to get referrals, convert leads, and to find buyers. You can get a free, truly free, no credit card required trial for 30 days at GoGoAgent.com. Come on over, and I will see you there.