It’s difficult to get a response from most leads. People’s attention is fragmented. Your follow-up messaging competes with a non-stop barrage of online advertising, not to mention apps, websites, and social media deliberately designed to grab and hold attention. People have also gotten very good at screening or ignoring phone calls and messages, often using technology to assist.
To break through all this, you need to be persistent. Marketing research shows that 12 “touches” is the real estate industry norm to get a response from a lead. Most agents don’t come close to that number. They can still get replies from motivated buyers and sellers, but it’s clear that one or two phone call attempts, then putting them on a monthly newsletter list, will not cut it.
You also need to craft messaging that speaks directly to the lead’s interests. The campaign they responded to provides a hint. If a lead wanted information about luxury properties, messages about first-time buyer homes will be ignored. Miss the mark too many times and leads will unsubscribe or otherwise reject you.
Without a persistent and consistent follow-up plan, you’ll miss out on conversations and leave a lot of potential deals on the table. Start by considering what you’re promising in your campaign. After fulfilling that promise, draft your future follow-up with an eye toward the interests that brought the lead to you. Ask open-ended questions to encourage response and get leads to qualify themselves.
Then think about how and when you’ll deliver each message. Consider multiple channels at once, such as sending an email followed by an immediate text or voicemail to notify them. Different people prefer different channels, so scattering your messaging like this helps attract attention. It also increases your number of touches per lead.
Finally, you’ll need a way to organize and manage your follow-up, so messages are sent with the right timing and no one falls through the cracks. Your CRM is invaluable for tracking messages you’ve sent to each lead and any responses. Some CRMs (including our own EngageCRM) will send your follow-up automatically, saving you a lot of time and effort. (We’ll talk more about automation in a later article.)
For a maximum number of responses, you’ll need to repeat this process for each campaign you’re running, so that the follow-up applies to those specific leads. To save work, use your previous communication plan as a template and replace the messaging copy.
The biggest advantage of a follow-up plan is that you can measure results. This lets you experiment with different combinations of messages and timing to start even more live conversations.
If you want help to get responses from your leads, let’s chat. Our team of digital marketing experts has 23+ years of experience designing effective follow-up plans, plus technology you can leverage to get more conversations with less effort. To learn more, click the green button below to get started with a free marketing assessment.
