Your Launch Kit contains all of the necessary information to get you started. Click any of the links below to go directly to that section of the Launch Kit.
Before You Send Your First Email
Launch Kit Contents
# 1. Friends & Family Plan
One of the most overlooked resources for new contacts are your current friends and family. Now that you have great email publications arriving weekly, call your 25 closest friends and family and explain you would are going to begin sending them your weekly materials so they may give you constructive feedback. Once they have been receiving your materials for a month, call all of them again and tell them you are looking to expand your program, based on the positive feedback. Ask each of them for the email addresses of four or five people they know would enjoy receiving your materials. You will now have over 100 email addresses just from calling some of your closest friends and family. For agents with large past client phone lists, this method is great for acquiring their email addresses too.
# 2. Open House Plan
All agents know that a great place to find buyers is at open houses. However, very few agents know how to work this vast resource effectively. The reason is because most agents are looking for hot buyers, when in reality 75% of buyers walking into an open house are more than 6 months away from needing an agent. Collect email addresses of all open house visitors and use your email program as a way to stay in contact them over time. Follow up with a phone call every other month just to check in and watch your open house visitors turn into actual buyers because of your consistent follow up.
# 3. Confession Letter Plan
One of the most common concerns of agents who have been in the business for a while is that they have many past clients and contacts who have been neglected. If you haven’t kept in touch with your contacts for months, years, or even decades, it’s not too late to make them a part of your email program. The key is honesty. Write a letter explaining that you have evaluated your business and come to the conclusion that your most valued assets are the relationships you've built over the years. Continue to confess that you have not been as diligent as you would like in keeping up with some of your most important relationships, and that you are committing to change that with your new email program. Ask them for their email address and watch your long, lost contacts to find their way back to you.
# 4. Community Survey Plan
It can be tough to break into a new area and become the agent of distinction, but this plan always breaks the ice nicely. Create a fun, community survey of 5-10 questions. Then print some off and head off to your neighborhood of choice. Begin knocking doors and tell each person that answers you are the new area agent and are looking to get to know everyone in the area a little better, by helping them get to know each other better. Provide them with a survey and ask them to fill it out there. Then, get each participants email, create a one-page flyer, displaying the survey results and send it out to each of your new contacts. This is a great way to get some face-to-face contact in addition to building your email list.
#5. Community Event Plan
Another creative way to make a blast in a new area is to host a community event. This is easily the most involved and expensive of the ten plans, but it may also be the most effective. When run well, this plan has frequently resulted in 300-400 new email addresses in one day. Be sure to hold a drawing or contest requiring email addresses to sign up. Also take pictures at the event and put together a flyer that you can email out to all the attendees to remember the event. For more information, visit our Online Knowledge Database from our website and select “Make A Bang In A New Area.”
#6. Influencers
Certain professions come into contact with people all of the time that need real estate advice and service, usually urgently. Look in the phone book, pick out a couple dozen divorce attorneys, financial planners, and relocation firms, and, drop off some Buyer’s and Seller’s Guides at each of their offices. Tell them you know they have clients who need real estate services from time to time, and you would like to become their go-to referral. Then, quickly demonstrate how the guides will help the professional serve their clients better. Call back in a couple weeks to see if they would like a reorder and to remind them of your partnership.
#7. House Warming Party
Not only is this a great way to get new email addresses, it’s a great service you can offer to new buyers: when they move in, offer to arrange and throw a housewarming party with their friends and family (if they are local). Get their friends' and family's email addresses in order to organize the party. Once the party is complete, send a follow-up email letting the party attendees know that you would like to add them to your email program.
#8. Use Your Camera
With all of the great, small cameras around today, carrying your digital camera around with you at all times is quite easy. Now that you've got your camera, when you are out and about, offer to take pictures of people and email the pictures to them later. Once you have their email addresses, offer to send them your great email newsletter.
#9. Referral Guide
This is a great service for any real estate agent to offer, regardless of the email benefits, but the email benefits are too large to ignore. Send out a flyer to an area, explaining that any businesses and services that would like to be placed in a community referral guide, need only send you their information via email. Once you've assembled all of your listings and compiled your referral guide, you can send out a flyer to your geographic areas of choice, explaining that anyone interested in a free referral guide need only send them your email address so you can email it to them. For newer real estate agents, this is a great way to kick off a new email program (netting hundreds of addresses) and introduce yourself to a new area.
#10. Casual Contact
The most practical, and perhaps overlooked way to gather email addresses is to simply talk to the people you meet about it. Next time you are standing in the checkout line, sitting next to someone on a plane, or bump into an old friend, explain to them that you have a great newsletter that you send to friends and family that you think they'd enjoy.
10 Email List-Building Plans
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