How to Execute a Customer-Centric Real Estate Marketing Strategy
Many agents are interested in customer relationship management (CRM) and how to either implement it or better utilize their current software as part of an overall real estate marketing strategy. If you aren’t riding the CRM bandwagon, it’s time to hop on! The time and dollar investment in CRM has proven to be well worth it. According to one analysis, the average return for CRM is $8.71 for every dollar spent, a continued trend of increasing return since 2011.
Customer relationship management can take many different forms, from customer service and support to personalized marketing, but as the phrase itself would imply, in the end, it’s all about your audience - making them happy with the purpose of building a relationship with them. Building a relationship with your prospects at the first interaction, and effectively managing those relationships over time, will ultimately lead to a higher chance of conversion as well as word-of-mouth referrals. Research has shown that customer relationship management applications can help increase sales by up to 29%.
A huge component of CRM is behavioral marketing. Behavioral marketing draws from information provided by the customer through online activities such as opt-in forms on ecommerce sites and online searches. Based on this data, you can make communications more relevant in terms of preferred content, channel, digital platform and frequency. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best, a behavioral marketing approach allows you to get granular with the things that your audience actually cares about, meaning higher likelihood of a sale.
Below, we offer a few essential components to consider when using behavior-based marketing as part of a strategic communications approach centered around customer relationship management.
Consideration 1: Make sure communications are trackable.
No behavioral marketing strategy will work unless you’re tracking your prospects’ reaction to your communications efforts. With today’s technology, you can track interactions through any number of platforms; for example, email open rates, paid search click-through rates, and social media engagement - all for the purpose of better understanding how your audience responds to your organization’s communications so you can adjust for better engagement in the future.
There are even platforms for tracking direct mail campaigns, such as our real estate marketing and farming solution, AutoMail. AutoMail allows agents to schedule and send multiple automated real estate postcards over the course of 12 months, and each trackable postcard includes a unique link to an online market report that allows agents to gain insight into the performance of their direct mail campaign. The report gathers recipient information that is then sent to you immediately and is available to view anytime on the AutoMail dashboard, so you can then follow up quickly to establish a timely personal connection.
Consideration 2: Keep interactions timely.
This brings us to our second point for effective behavioral-based marketing and customer relationship management: interactions and follow-up with prospects should be as timely as possible for the best results. Prospects can quickly go to another source for their needs if they don’t quickly hear from you after indicating interest in your brand.
But you can make quick follow-up easier on yourself. For example, utilize MailChimp’s preset automation types to schedule emails based on customer interaction without lifting a finger. For direct mail campaigns, make sure that the platform you’re using is able to send notifications to you in real-time so you don’t miss the opportunity to follow-up with hot prospects.
Consideration 3: Adjust communications based on what your audience wants.
You’ve made your campaigns trackable and have formulated, over time, a better of idea of what your audience likes to see from your brand. Now, it’s time to adjust those current campaigns to give your audience more of what they want, leading to higher returns for you!
This is why testing is so important for any behavioral marketing strategy. Whether it’s email, social media, or direct mail, changing things up based on your prospects’ reaction will ensure that you’re always evolving and responsive to the needs of your prospects. If you’ve A/B tested an email subject line, for example, and found that your audience responds to one type of subject line over another, you can adjust future subject lines to be more aligned with the one that resonates with your prospects.
The same is true for AutoMail - the AutoMail platform includes a flexible scheduler that allows agents to edit campaigns at any time for better engagement. If a campaign isn’t garnering the response rate you hoped for, you can edit it and try something new until you find which marketing postcards resonate the most with your audience. Remember, it’s audience first, always - if something isn’t working for them, it’s not working for you! Don’t be afraid to be bold and adjust strategies at any time to get the results you want.
We hope you’ve learned a thing or two about how you can utilize customer relationship management and behavioral marketing as a part of your real estate marketing strategy. By taking your prospects’ interests into consideration to elevate your brand, you’re headed in the right direction, and ultimately, your sales performance will be, too.
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