I always advise agents to use more than one marketing mode in order to reach all of their clients, and those different tools can build upon each other as well.  Here at Tools For Real Estate we find that the agents using our real estate email newsletter service who have the best email open rates are often the ones who touch base with their clients in other ways as well, whether it’s through an occasional phone call or by supplementing with a gift like the magnets we’re mentioning here.

By the way, we’re not an affiliate of House of Magnets, just a fan based on what we know about them so far.  We’d love to hear your feedback if you end up using them.

Conventional wisdom has it that in December people are busy with holiday preparations and travel plans, and therefore probably aren’t likely to turn their minds to real estate until well into the New Year.  But check out today’s graph (12/3/11) from Google Trends:

From Dec. 3, 2011. Click image for current search results on Google Trends.

This shows the search activity in North America on Google for specific search terms related to home buying.  As you can see from previous years, there’s always a dramatic jump in activity late in the year, but look at the volume so far this December!  It’s interesting that the term “home buying” hasn’t followed the trend (yet, anyway).

So, should you concentrate on marketing to home buyers late in the year?  In my opinion the answer is “yes,” since ultimately as real estate agents the goal is to provide people with useful information that will help them accomplish what they’re trying to do, and the graph tells us that right now there’s a surge of people thinking about buying homes.  As always, just keep things in perspective, and remember that you’re marketing during a season that is focused on something far more important.

(Either way, the current graph implies that early January would be a great time to go all-out.)

The problem is that 90% of agents who want to gear up on the social media scale end up never getting around to it.  If that sounds like you, I recommend checking out Mike Mueller’s AreWeConnected site and possibly hiring him to set up your Facebook business page for you.  I haven’ t used this service myself, but I’m a fan of his own Facebook business page and I can tell he’s really active on there and on Active Rain; overall, he seems to really know his stuff.

Here’s the link:  http://areweconnected.com/facebook/ - if you scroll down the page you’ll see samples of Facebook business fan pages he has created.

Click the graphic on the left to see his profile on Eyejot, and I highly recommend checking out this video about the Home Buyer Tax Credit deadline that he is sending out to his real estate clients today for an idea of the type of useful videos you could create.

Eyejot has a free option, and their premium option that allows longer videos and more branding is around $99 per year.  Check out Eyejot’s membership options here.

(All of the above?)

Regardless of which category you fall into, here’s what you need to know:  Having a Facebook business page (also called a Facebook fan page) is a great way for you to market yourself online as a real estate agent.  It’s free, easy to set up, and easy to keep updated with content such as links to interesting articles, photos, and even videos.

How much or how little you put into it is up to you.  But, here’s the catch… most real estate agents don’t know how to create a Facebook business fan page to begin with!

Fortunately, it’s easy.  Here’s a video I made showing exactly how to do it, along with tips on choosing the right title for your Facebook business page.

• Comparing home loan refinance options
• Understanding ‘no cost’ refinances
• Calculating when you recoup the expense of refinancing a mortgage
• Home mortgage prepayment penalties

There’s also a glossary of home loan refinance terms that’s highly useful.

The pamphlet dates from 2008 and is 29 pages, it opens up in just a few seconds via pdf – here’s the link at the Federal Citizen Information Center:

A Consumer’s Guide to Mortgage Refinancings

Personally I’d be pleased if someone dropped one of these off on my doorstep - I don’t have any, and they look really handy.  You can currently get Hot/Cold thermal bags for just $2.38 each ($119 per case of 50) at the American Bag Company.

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.

The Big Points

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.

Can I tell you how DIFFICULT it is to find a designer who actually accomplishes those two things consistently?  I’ve spent hours and hours (and hours) looking at logos, and a lot of the time it’s a bit underwhelming.

So I’m happy to recommend Josiah Jost, owner of Siah Designs - I stumbled on his site last night when I was looking for Twitter graphics and was totally blown away.  Here’s a link to the Siah Designs logo portfolio, check it out.  (These aren’t real estate logos, but they totally hit the mark, so I’m sure he can do that for your real estate business.) I also talked to him and I think his pricing is very reasonable.

By the way, if you use him for your real estate logo design I’d love to hear how it goes!

The report is called “Online Engagement Affects Agent Selection Process”  and it’s here, on the Broker page -- it’s the second report in the list at the bottom of the page.

Here are a few facts I picked up from the report:

• Most people (74%) rely on word of mouth to initially choose an agent for consideration, then they follow it up with research for confirmation.

 

• People use an average of five sources to research agents.  (See the graph on pg. 9 of the report, which breaks the five sources down further.)  Seventy-seven percent use the Internet.

 

• Of people who use the internet, 50% spent 4 to 20 hours researching agent information online (pg. 10.)  Hey, that’s a lot of time!  (How did your website fare?)

 

Page 19 starts off a really interesting quadrant analysis using this format:

Keep in mind that while topics in ’3′ are less influential in selection, they are still highly researched, so having information about them on your website or other marketing increases your chances of people finding you in the first place.

There’s a good section about how people use real estate agent websites in hiring an agent.  I just want to point out, regarding page 24 where it says that 31% of people used the agent website only to get the agent’s contact information:  I think in a lot of cases that’s because the agent uses a generic company site and the only pertinent information on there is the contact information. 

(In other words, the 31% is not a reflection of the fact that websites are unimportant.)

There’s more interesting stuff on there and it’s definitely worth your time to look over.  (Plus, lots of graphs -- it’s a quick read.)  Another good one on that page is “Embracing the Online Real Estate Market.”

Here’s a link to the Yahoo Broker page with the reports again.