What we’ve found more and more often with our buyer leads is that clients are much less responsive to email and phone calls. Here’s why we started texting them.
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As an agent, it’s important to stay up to date on how clients use technology to communicate with you. What I’m finding more often with my clients is that email has not been working as well as it has in the past.
One reason for this may be that Gmail has made a lot of changes to how they organize their “promotions” folder, and this has pushed a lot of our market updates and listing emails out of our leads’ direct inbox. As a result, a lot of clients have been missing our communications and going to sites like Zillow and Realtor.com, which causes us to have to buy our own leads back from those sites.
What I’ve found recently is that one of the best ways to get ahold of a lead is by texting them. I read a study the other day that concluded that 90% of text messages are read within three minutes of being sent. This is very true for millennials especially, since they aren’t as likely to answer a phone call or read their email.
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Texting is one of the best ways to get ahold of your leads.
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This is why I always suggest that agents send a text out to their leads mentioning their name and brokerage. For example, I’ll send out a text that reads, “Hi, I’m Chris Colgan with RE/MAX Regency. I saw that you registered on our website. What type of home are you looking for?” Any kind of text that gets the dialogue going will help you in the long run.
One quick tip for sending these texts is to save some of the more effective text scripts to your phone or your CRM so that you can text your leads automatically. There are some great apps out there, like FiveStreet, that can help you do this.
I would also suggest testing a few different scripts in your text messages, then gauging each response that comes back to you. Remember: make sure that you text a lead only if they come to you first; you don’t want to text somebody without their permission.
We have gotten some major results by using texting to reach out to our leads, so give it a try and see how it works for you. If you have any questions about keeping in touch with your leads or anything else, give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you!
