Real Estate Newsletter – Email Marketing | Tools For Real Estate
Think you need to spend a lot to market yourself effectively online? Think again!
This video shows how one smart agent, Yuno Marioni, is using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Biznik and Active Rain to create a strong online presence. (Without a fancy website, and virtually for free!)
Important Social Media Links from the Video:
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Here’s a short video showing how to search for FHA-approved condominium complexes on the HUD list, with some tips that will help you pull up the correct search results.
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The number of U.S. Twitter users more than doubled in March 2009, jumping to 9.3 million users. What’s really interesting is this demographic tidbit reported by the internet measurement firm comScore in the Puget Sound Business Journal:
“…45- to 54-year-olds are the most likely to use the service at 36 percent above the average. They are followed by 25- to 34-year-olds, who are 30 percent more likely.”
In other words, these are your past and current clients, and their first time buyer aged children.
If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it’s a micro-blogging service that lets you instantly create a free page and post short blurbs of 140 characters or less. This makes it easy to quickly share a link or fact, without having to compose an entire article (like this one.)
Check out our Twitter feed here, and be sure follow us too. 
Bottom line? Twitter can work well for business because it’s highly functional. Don’t get distracted by the people who feel the need to Tweet every time their dog sneezes, there are plenty of others using it to share useful information about real estate.
Tip: If you often feel like sharing a quick bit of information with your clients but you’re intimidated by the time and energy it takes to blog, you might be surprised – Twitter could be right up your alley.
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Just a reminder that if you have condominium buyer clients using FHA financing, the condo building will need to be FHA-approved in order for the loan to go through.
You can look up condo complexes on the HUD website using their FHA-approved condominium complex search tool.
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I found a good recent post on how to prevent your WordPress blog from being hackedover on the Velvet Blues blog. It’s worth taking a look, and/or passing the info on to your web designer if they’re managing a WordPress blog for you.
Just a note, for the table prefix rename I like a WordPress plugin by SEO Eggheads that is really easy to use, called, well, the Table Prefix Rename Plugin.
We like to keep things simple…
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Well I’m happy to say after my outraged post about Google Street Views that it really IS a joke, as was kindly pointed out to me by Kim Brown on Active Rain. Phew!
I could just delete the post, but since I’m always making a big deal about double-checking sources to make sure information is correct before you publish it I’ll just leave it up as a reminder to myself and anyone else to actually do that.
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Oops – this WAS a joke, fortunately, as graciously pointed out by the nice people on Active Rain. I left it up as a reminder to always double-check info before you publish!
This morning I ended up on the Diverse Solutions dsListingExpress website and saw something that seriously made me think I was reading a joke – except apparently it’s for real.
Diverse Solutions was explaining how for their new dsListingExpress service they’ve been working with Google on providing Google Street View and Google Interior Views. Here’s how they describe Google Interior View:
They (Google) have been “cataloging photos of property interior views from various sources and associating them with a particular parcel.”
Fine. So far I’m assuming that the interior photos come from previous listings of the properties.
“In some locations they have started to employ companies to discreetly take photos of the interiors without disturbing the occupants.”
Say what? Is it possible that Google, or one of their henchmen, might actually take photos of the interior of my home while I live there, without my knowledge?
Can you see why I thought this was a joke?
When you Google “Google Street View” (in quotation marks) you get over 5 million search results.
When you Google “Google Interior View” you currently get 2 (yes, just two) search results. Same for “Google Interior Views”, although they’re different results.
So either no one knows about this yet, or it’s a joke. Please tell me it’s a joke.
Your thoughts? Am I missing something here, or is this as intensely creepy as I think it is?
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The Freakonomics blog at the New York Times made an interesting point this morning about why Zillow’s housing price-index numbers show less decline in home prices than do the widely circulated Case-Shiller numbers.
The reason is that Zillow’s numbers don’t include the sales of foreclosed homes, and in some markets those make up a huge proportion of the market. For example, in December 60% of all transactions in the San Francisco metro area were foreclosures.
This is important because the median price of a home that sells in foreclosure is typically lower than one that is not in foreclosure, as shown by the first graph in this Zillow article. (Clicking on the graph in the article brings up a more clear image.)
What strikes me is that they’re assuming that the red line consists of homes that were previously not in foreclosure and then were sold in foreclosure.
Here’s what Zillow says:
“By including foreclosure transactions in such a measure (as Case-Shiller does), you’re also looking at the depreciation of homes that were previously in the set of homes making up the black line, but went into foreclosure, thus becoming part of the set of homes making up the red line.”
In other words, the assumption is that they are comparing apples to apples, with the only difference being that the home went into foreclosure, which caused it to sell at a lower price.
They appear to not address the question of whether homes in lower price ranges are more likely in general to go into foreclosure to start out with. If this is the case, then the foreclosed homes are selling at lower prices ranges not because of the stigma of being in foreclosure (which would skew the implied results of the data) but simply because these are lower priced homes to begin with.
Granted, there is a stigma involved in a foreclosure sale. But is it enough to explain all of the difference in sales price?
Thoughts? If you think I missed something I’d like to hear about it.
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Have you ever gotten a call from a strange number that you suspected was a marketing call, but when the call went to voice mail no one ever left a message? It can be annoying, especially when you’re in real estate. (After all, don’t we secretly always wonder if this was some great referral from an out of state real estate agent that we missed by not answering?)
Next time that happens there are two things you can do to end the mystery. One is to simply Google the phone number, which often brings up information about the caller. The other is to run the number through the search feature on the Who Calls Me website.
I used Who Calls Me for a number I received a call from yesterday evening and found a long stream of complaints from the public, as well as directions for getting off of their call list. (It was from a marketing firm that supposedly engages only in research, so they are apparently exempt from the Do Not Call regulations.)
Hey, anything we can do to make life simpler for real estate agents these days…
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Are you sending out real estate marketing via email to your prospects and clients? Email can be a powerful tool for you and an incredibly useful medium for your readers, as long as you remember… real estate email marketing needs to be approached CAREFULLY.
Here’s a recent graph from the marketing research firm Marketing Sherpa that shows the top reasons why people unsubscribe from business emails.
A whopping 58% of people unsubscribe because the emails they get are not relevant to them, and 44% unsubscribe because they receive too many emails from the sender. Notice that those top two issues are completely under the control of you, the sender.
1. Real estate email marketing needs to be primarily about the reader.
When we write content for the ready-to-send email newsletter service we provide for real estate agents, we structure the entire newsletter around fulfilling needs in the life of the reader, not the agent. If you’re writing your own newsletters, so should you.
(Ultimately, this also fulfills a need in your life by developing trust and positioning you as the expert.)
2. People are even more protective of their time when it comes to email than they are with direct mail.
It can be very tempting to overdo it when you use a marketing medium like email. But opening an email to find an article that reads like it was written on the fly, or that contains just superficial information, feels like a betrayal of trust.
(Worse, how often will people keep opening your emails if they get an email blast every time you put a new listing on the market, or you feel like reminding them that it’s time to move?)
Bottom line? Email is an ‘abuse it and lose it’ marketing medium. Unlike direct mail, which you know people are at least going to have in their hands at some point, with email people can completely tune you out.
Whatever you do, don’t send ‘fluffy’ emails to your clients! This will get easier and easier to do as more companies try to adapt to online marketing, and it’s potentially disastrous. Things like cute postcards that work for direct mail eventually make people blow a gasket when they receive it in their inbox.
Remember, always focus on your readers’ needs in your emails, and make sure they’re immediately better off because they clicked ‘Open’.
Better yet, leave it to us! I value my own time so highly (and have unsubscribed from so many email lists just recently myself) that it’s our personal mission to not waste your clients’ time, and to always make them feel like you provided value with the newsletter we sent to them for you.
The proof is that agents love our email newsletter service, and they get great feedback from their readers. Click here to find out how you can get started with our done-for-you email newsletter service completely risk-free.
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