Modern Real Estate Marketing: Marketing Automation Examples

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When you hear “real estate agent uses marketing automation” what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Is it a Terminator-style real estate agent from the future who systematically tracks down leads and provides them with high quality real estate opportunities?

Or is it a savvy realtor who’s decided to automate simple things like email delivery and consultation requests?

Well actually, it’s a little bit of both…

Marketing Automation might sound like a bit of a scary futuristic term, but at its core it’s about cutting out repetitive tasks in order to allow you to do more of what you’re good at: selling real estate.

In this article I’ll break down four marketing automation use cases designed specifically for real estate agents and tell you how you can start applying them today.

Realtor Marketing Automation Use Case #1: Ebook Delivery


Ebooks are one of the most effective and popular ways of attracting leads. But don’t get caught up on the ebook itself – you could use a variety of different offers to get a user’s email address and contact information. If you need ideas on what to offer, check out my article on 9 Lead Magnets Users Actually Want, alternatively, check out 40 Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies.

Once you have an offer though, you’ll be faced with a decision about how you’re going to deliver that offer to your audience after they convert on your landing page, popup, or form. If you’re like me and you don’t want to be holding down the fort on a Saturday night waiting for a new ebook request to come in, then you’ll be eager to find an automated delivery option.

This is where marketing automation comes in.

Using marketing automation enables you to set a condition or a trigger then choose what action will occur as a result.

For instance, once a prospective customer has converted on your ebook landing form, you can choose to trigger an email containing the ebook.

Here’s an example of what that would look like using a simple automation workflow:

Using a basic workflow like this, you can start to see how marketing automation can start to help you cut down on all that “busy” work that used to keep you tied up before.

Realtor Marketing Automation Use Case #2: Know what properties your leads have looked at before your meeting


There’s nothing better than a ton of buyer consultation requests to keep you and your team busy.

Well actually, maybe there is…

What if along with these consultation requests, you had specific data on the exact properties they were looking at prior to you ever seeing them?

How would that impact the effectiveness of your first client meeting?

This is another cool example where marketing automation can help. Using a tracking pixel which you can place on your website, you’ll be able to get a detailed breakdown of the exact pages and properties your leads have looked at prior to you ever meeting.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Take the tracking code from Wishpond and install it on your website.

By “install” I just mean paste that HTML code into either the header or anywhere into the HTML of your web page.

Once the code is installed on your different listing pages, every time one of your users views any one of your properties you’ll be able to see a complete breakdown of their viewing data inside of Wishpond.

For Example:

And once you have that information you can start to look for trends that indicate which specific properties your leads might be the most interested in.

Now wouldn’t that be useful when coming up with “potential” listings to show your client?

Realtor Marketing Automation Use Case #3: Automate a homebuyer email series


In much of the same way you’d deliver your ebook to your users after they convert on one of your landing pages, popups, or forms, you can also choose to automate a series of emails using marketing automation.

But why would you want to automate a series of emails?

Let’s face it, most of your leads won’t be ready to purchase when they first contact you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be ready sometime in the future.

In the meantime, sending users a series of emails, based on topics such as buying a new home, can go a long way in terms of keeping you on top of their mind when they finally decide to pull the trigger and engage with a realtor or real estate agent.

Putting together a drip campaign like this (as it’s called in the marketing world), is almost identical to the ebook autoresponder we looked at earlier. The only difference is that there will be a delay between each email sent. This creates an automated email campaign that can span across days, weeks and even months.

Take a look at the first condition that will trigger this workflow:

Now based on this condition, take a look at the actions that will follow. Notice how we separate the different emails using a delay action.

Pretty simple eh?

Now think about what you could be doing in the meantime while a computer automatically nurtures your leads…

Realtor Marketing Automation Use Case #4: Create a list of hot leads


This last example is a little bit more advanced, but if used effectively can be an awesome way of drilling down to see which leads are the most engaged.

The strategy is to create a list of “hot leads”.

Hot lead is a term used to describe someone deemed to have a high level of purchase intent.

You can use a marketing automation workflow to categorize what conditions will define a hot lead. When creating a list of your own hot leads, take into account page visits, if opening a specific email is important, and characteristics you might know about them from data collected. This can include budget, neighborhood, and expected move in date.

For this example, I’ll set my conditions of my hot lead to be anyone who has viewed a specific property more than three times and is expecting to move in less than 1 month.

Based on these two conditions, I’ll add this user to my hot leads list.

Now I’ll have a segmented list of users who are very interested in a specific property and ready to move in less than one month.

Not a bad piece of information to have, especially when you need to prioritize your personal sales calls and appointments!

Conclusion


There you have it, four use case examples for realtors and real estate agents using marketing automation. Hopefully I’ve been able to demystify the idea of marketing automation and show you some of the value that it can bring to the real estate world.

While marketing automation isn’t necessarily a new thing, individual entrepreneurs and small businesses are just getting access to affordable technology that allows them to implement some of these techniques.

That’s why if you’re reading this in 2016, you’re still ahead of the pack in the real estate market and can still benefit from the spoils of being an early adopter.

But you have to get rolling!

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out in the comment section below.

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