How to really grow your agency in the Internet age
I get approx 35 different real estate newsletters delivered to my email each week (lucky me) and there is only one I look forward to. Nine out of ten agents use the same rubbish one from Quartile that does their business no good at all. Sending out the same thing as every other agent just hurts your image.
If you are interested, subscribe and see how good a real estate newsletter can be. The authors are Richardson and Wrench at Mosman. Their website needs some work but their newsletter is excellent. For the record they aren't our clients either.
Here is the link to their latest and just read the fantastic input from Robert Simeon. Why is it so good?
It's because these days people are sick of hype. Nobody believes it anymore. We get plastered by stupid advertising slogans that become meaningless. In every suburb I see agents advertising themselves as "Everything he touches turns to SOLD". I mean really... Come On!
What the team at Mosman are doing is cutting through all the hype and telling it how they see it, or certainly appear to be. It's well written, topical and always opinionated. Advertisers across the world are realising that telling the facts is what works now. People don't believe ads anymore. Do you? I certainly don't.
Take a look at the amazing results RWM are getting by doing it right. It's really not expensive to do it well. The hard part is putting in the effort each week consistently. If nothing else the sales story from their results page should really be exciting you. How many times over has their effort been repaid? All for a fraction of the cost of newspaper advertising.
Go back and read their results page and see if you can afford to not market this way. Each week over 4000 people are taken into RWM's world and trust them as a result.
Do people trust your agency? What could your growth be if people saw you as better than every other agency in your area? People want to deal with people, show them who you are, you'll be glad you did. The facts are that this is not an easy path to take. Only leaders will have the committment to deliver quality content week after week but the results will stagger you.
We have a system here for email newsletters that is second to none. It does all the standard stuff like let you edit your emails online without knowing HTML but it does something quite amazing. It tracks every single click made by each reader.
This means if you are advertising a property you can see exactly which readers looked at that property. You can then select all the people who looked at that property and send them a second email to see if it grabbed their attention. Imagine once they get over the shock of you knowing this, who do you think they will want selling their home?
Getting your emails opened:
When readers get your email marketing message, they make a quick decision, usually in a couple of seconds, to open or delete it based largely on the subject line.
Given the amount of promotional email today, how can you convince a busy reader - in just a few words - that your message is worthy of attention? The 3 U's copywriting formula - which stands for urgent, unique and useful - can help.
According to this formula, strong subject lines are:
Urgency:
Urgency gives the reader a reason to act now instead of later. You can create a sense of urgency in your subject line by incorporating a time element. For instance, "Save $10,000 selling your home this month" has a greater sense of urgency than "Save $10,000 selling your home". A sense of urgency can also be created with a time-limited special offer, such as a discount or premium if you order by a certain date.
Unique
The powerful subject line either says something new, or if it says something the reader has heard before, says it in a new and fresh way. For example, "Our subliminal selling techniques can sell your home 200% faster" is far more likely to catch their interest than the typical "Everything we touch turns to SOLD".
Useful
The strong subject line appeals to the reader's self-interest by offering a benefit. In the subject line "Save $10,000 selling your home this month" the benefit is saving money.
When you have written your subject line, ask yourself how strong it is in each of these 3 U's. Use a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = weak, 5 = strong) to rank it in each category.
Rarely will a subject line rate a 4 or 5 on all 3 U's. But if your subject line doesn't rate a 4 or 5 on at least two of the U's, it's probably not as strong as it could be -- and can benefit from some rewriting.
