Successfully generating leads with an email list is a matter of figuring out what segments you should divide your list into and determining what each of your segments will find valuable. How well you segment your market and deliver meaningful messages to those individual groups determines the level of success you can achieve with your email list.
“Buyers” and “sellers” are not specific enough niches. Don’t be afraid to get really granular with your groups or to enroll your contacts in more than one relevant list. If your contact really does have a particular need or interest, then they will appreciate the information they receive as part of the group.
So how do you determine what groups you should set up? Sometimes it is easier to start with the message you want to deliver, and then identify the group who would benefit most from that information.
Special Problems
Look for common problems you can offer a solution to. If you live in a college town with a lot of student housing, helping parents with college-aged kids find housing is a great place to start. Go through your email list and find the people with kids in high school and start sending them information about buying vs. renting during college and lists of the best student housing locations.
Those same people may also benefit from being added to your downsizing list if their kids are moving away. Starting with problems, you can identify several groups of people that you can help in very targeted ways. Â
Lifestyle Changes
Big life events often affect housing requirements. Is one of your contacts having a baby? They may be looking for a bigger yard or a better school zone. Are they getting married? Then they are probably moving out of their current house and getting a place together. Whatever the event, if you have a content plan for them and a group to add them to, then your chances of helping them with that housing change are much better.
The groups you create will often be permanent, but the people in each group will change over time. People will need to be moved from one group to another as they go through the phases of their life, and if it all goes to plan, you could be there to help them with each of their moves. Â
Special Data
In the old days of real estate, you had very limited access to listing without a real estate agent. Lists of available properties were printed out, locked in the broker’s office, and buyers had to come see you to know what was for sale. Now anyone can easily find listings anytime, anywhere thanks to the internet—but that does not mean you cannot add value.
With so much data available, what people really need these days is an expert (you) to organize and deliver listing data in a useful and easy-to-understand way. The perfect example is the neighborhood report. Anyone can find the data in a neighborhood report, and there may even be someone organizing it in your town already, but not personally delivering that information directly to your email list.
If you have your contacts sorted into groups of people who live or want to live in particular neighborhoods, then you can provide value to them by delivering the information about that area to them.
Ultimately, the goal of all this email organization is to increase the lifetime value of your clients. Just because you helped someone buy their first home five years ago does not mean they will be calling you for their next move. You need to continue providing them with information they will value, at the time they will value it, if you want them to think of you when they or someone they know needs a real estate agent.
If your current CRM does not offer the flexibility to group and send targeted messages, you should check out the tools Homes.com has to offer. The Homes.com lead manager helps you create custom groups and our agent IDX websites are the perfect platform to host your targeted, custom messages.
Mark Mathis is VP of Sales at Homes.com. For more information, please visit marketing.homes.com.
