10 Proven Tactics to Boost Your Email Visibility and Sidestep the “Load Content Directly” Button

Have you ever noticed the “Load Content Directly” button in your emails? It's a small but significant feature in many inboxes, like Gmail, that plays a big role in how your emails are received.

Designed as a security measure, this button prevents the automatic loading of images and external content, guarding against spam and malicious content.

But what about legitimate emails like your newsletters? They too can fall victim to this filter, hiding your valuable content from your audience.

The list below prescribes ten strategic tactics to navigate past this digital gatekeeper, ensuring your emails get the attention they deserve.

1. Strengthen Sender Reputation:
   Consistently send high-quality, engaging content. Build trust with email providers by maintaining a low bounce rate and high open rates. This involves understanding your audience's needs and preferences, ensuring every email adds value.

2. Optimize Text-to-Image Ratio:
   Keep your emails predominantly text with a few high-quality images. Emails heavy on images are often flagged as spam. Ensure that your email looks professional and is readable even if images don't load.

3. Use Descriptive Subject Lines with OmniSend’s Tester:
   Craft subject lines that are clear, engaging, and free of spam triggers. Use tools like OmniSend’s free subject-line tester to optimize for clicks and opens, avoiding words that might trigger spam filters.

4. Encourage Whitelisting:
   Directly ask your subscribers to add your email address to their contact list. This can be done through a friendly reminder in the email footer, ensuring your future emails land in their inbox. Another prime opportunity to encourage whitelisting is during your initial engagement with new subscribers – include a friendly request in your automated welcome email, reinforcing the importance of receiving future communications directly in their inbox.

5. Regular List Maintenance and Engagement Analysis:
   Regularly remove unresponsive subscribers. Understand that engagement metrics differ across platforms. For instance, if your Gmail subscribers are largely disengaged, this can negatively impact your sender reputation with Gmail, even if engagement is high among Outlook users.

6. CTAs and Visible Links:
   Ensure call-to-action buttons and important links are visible as text, even if images are disabled. Avoid relying solely on image-based buttons to maintain functionality across different email viewing settings. Additionally, be cautious with the number of links in your email – overdoing it can raise red flags with spam filters, undermining your efforts to reach your audience effectively.

7. Test Emails Across Different Platforms:
   Regularly send test emails to different email clients to see how your content displays. Adjust formatting and content based on these tests to ensure consistency and readability across platforms.

8. Use Alt Text for Images:
   Always include descriptive alt text for images. This ensures that if images don’t load, your message still gets across. Alt text also aids in accessibility for visually impaired subscribers.

9. Consider Sending Plain Text Versions:
   Offer a plain text version of your email alongside the HTML version. This can increase deliverability, as plain text emails are less likely to trigger spam filters and the “Load Content Directly” button.

10. Educate Subscribers About Email Filters:
    Inform subscribers about email filters and the “Load Content Directly” button. Guide them on how to manage their email settings to ensure they always receive your content, like marking emails as “important” or moving them to the primary inbox. Keep in mind that email clients use a variety of signals to gauge engagement, going beyond just clicks and opens. Actions like filing, moving emails to different folders, or marking as important, all inform email clients about your content's relevance and engagement levels with your audience.

With these tactics, you're not just avoiding a digital hurdle; you're enhancing the overall quality and deliverability of your emails. Remember, it's all about building a trusting relationship with both your subscribers and their inbox providers. Implement these strategies, and you'll see a marked improvement in your email marketing performance.

How to Ensure “Snowbirds” See Your Postcards: Email-Copy Your Postcards

Have you ever wondered about the real impact of your postcard marketing efforts? Or maybe questioned how long your mailings even hold your audience's attention?

Here's something to consider - USPS Informed Delivery, a complimentary service that provides residents with a digital preview (i.e., scanned images) of their mail, is being utilized in over 33 million homes. That's about 20% of all eligible U.S. households. So… Roughly 1 out of 5 addresses you mail to is probably already enrolled.

From a marketing viewpoint, this opens a new avenue for reaching homeowners—especially those elusive "snowbirds" who often are away from their second homes.

Now, your message is landing not only in their physical mailbox but also in their inbox, thus multiplying your touch-points. As a postcard marketer, USPS Informed Delivery can boost your reach by:

• Ensuring your mailings are seen, even when homeowners are away.

• Giving homeowners a digital preview of your postcard.

• Making a deeper impression with this dual-delivery system.

It's a smart move to add a secondary call-to-action (CTA) on your postcards every now and again, encouraging homeowners to sign up for USPS Informed Delivery. It's a way of making sure your future mailings are noticed, even when the homeowner isn't physically there to pick up the mail.

And don't forget the magic of multichannel marketing – that seeing your message on multiple platforms boosts its impact and makes it more memorable. The combination of physical postcards and digital previews is working to amplify your marketing message.

Remember, you're making connections, one postcard at a time. Each mailing builds awareness, establishes your brand, and increases your chances for hire, bit-by-bit. Keep pushing, keep engaging, and keep making impressions that last.

Email VS. the World: Why Email Marketing is Still King of Digital Platforms

EMAIL is the undisputed titan of digital platforms. Not what you expected? With a gargantuan 4.37 billion users worldwide, it leaves Facebook, YouTube, and the rest eating its dust.💨

But why does that matter? It’s simple: to maximize your marketing efforts, you need to reach your audience where they’re the liveliest. And the numbers don't lie—99% of email users check their inboxes daily, usually before they even glance at social media.

Don't misunderstand—this isn't a slight against social platforms. The real faux pas is underestimating the importance of email.

Consider that each social post only hits a small fraction of your followers at a time. So don't restrict your reach to social feeds when there are inboxes waiting to be filled.

What’s more, email marketing's strength doesn't just hinge on its epic reach. What sets it apart most is its rock-solid dependability—email offers a hotline to your audience, more direct than any social platform.

Are you ready to learn how to build an effective email strategy and craft compelling messaging to become an email-marketing hero? If so, check out my new course, INBOX HERO: Tapping into the marketing GOAT.

This doesn't mean that email subscribers are necessarily more loyal; after all, email opt-outs are common, just like unfollows on social media. You get what your content attracts and keep what it satisfies.

Bottom line—followers might be flighty, but email endures.

A Cautionary Tale: How You Can Avoid Losing Your Most Important Social Media Accounts (YouTube, Google Business, etc.)

Heads-up real estate agent friends! It's important to use your most reliable/permanent email address when setting up logins for any of your online profiles:  e.g. Google Business, YouTube, et al… Ideally an email that’s attached to your own domain:  e.g. username @ yourdomain . com.

If you use an email address that you might lose access to, you could get locked out of your profiles and pages or those accounts could be altogether deleted. Like if you switched brokerages, for instance, and had been using your company-provided email address.

All the hard work you've put into building your profiles - your posts, your followers, your reviews - could disappear in an instant.

To avoid this scenario, make sure to use a permanent email address as your primary login. This is an email address that you own and control, and that you're unlikely to lose access to in the future.

But what if it's already too late? Don't worry - there are steps you can take to regain access to your profiles:

• Contact the support team for the platform in question.

• Provide proof that you own the profiles in question.

• Work with the support team to establish a new login using a permanent email address.

• Update your login information for any other profiles to avoid this problem in the future.

Your online presence is crucial to your success in real estate, so it's important to protect it by using a reliable email address for your logins. And if you've already encountered this issue, don't panic - just take action to regain control of your profiles.

Protect Your Reputation and Improve Email Marketing Deliverability with Domain Authentication: a step-by-step guide

What would stop someone from sending mass emails to a list of recipients with your email address or domain?—as in, yourname@yourdomain.com. Technically, nothing—unless you take a preemptive action known as, Domain Authentication.

With Domain Authentication, you can rest assured that emails sent from your domain are from an authorized source (as in, you), thereby protecting your reputation.

More than that, though, Domain Authentication can also help to improve the deliverability of your email campaigns—that is, successfully reaching the inboxes of your email-list recipients versus getting marked as SPAM. Reason is, emails sent via an authenticated address give mailbox providers like Gmail and Outlook extra confidence in the legitimacy of your campaign.

Here are the overarching steps to achieve Domain Authentication, regardless of the email service provider you’re using (e.g. MailChimp, BomBomb, or omnisend):

1. Identify your email service provider (ESP) - This is the platform you use to send and manage your emails, such as MailChimp, SendGrid, or the like.

2. Look for the option to authenticate your domain - This may be found in your ESP's settings or under "account" or "security" options.

3. Add DNS records - You will need to add DNS TXT or CNAME records to your domain's DNS settings. This can be done by accessing your domain's hosting service (e.g. GoDaddy, Bluehost, Dreamhost) and adding the records as instructed by your ESP:

• Locate the option to manage DNS settings or zone files.

• Scroll down to the section for adding new records.

• Select the type of record you need to add (TXT or CNAME).

4. Verify the changes - Once you've added the necessary records, verify them with your ESP to ensure they are set up correctly.

By following these steps, you can ensure that your domain is properly authenticated and protected from unauthorized use. What’s more, you’ll be well on your way to significantly improved deliverability of your emails by increasing the confidence of mailbox providers in the validity of your campaigns. You don’t wanna miss out on the benefits of email marketing, one of the highest-rated marketing channels in existence, because of a lack of technical knowledge. Make sure to take the necessary steps to properly authenticate your domain and improve your email performance.

P.S. Wanna significantly improve your email strategy in 2023? Be sure to check out my new course,INBOX HERO:Tapping into the marketing G.O.A.T.

Maximizing Email Marketing Performance: How Incorporating Videos Can Boost CTR by 65%

Incorporating videos into your email marketing campaigns can significantly boost your click-through performance. In fact, studies have shown that the increase can be as much as 65%.

As video continues to dominate our feeds as the people’s “preferred media format,” it's important to ensure that you're taking advantage of this trend in your email marketing.

What’s more—given that nonverbal communication plays such a significant role in ALL human interaction—it is not surprising that videos can be so effective at increasing click-through rate (CTR) performance. Nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions (like in the thumbnail of the video) and body language, for instance, can convey a great deal of meaning and emotion, thus giving the viewer more reason to click.

By including a video in an email, you are able to take advantage of the power of nonverbal communication to grab the attention of your audience and convey your message more effectively.

Why Use Videos in Email Marketing:

• Videos can increase click-through rate (CTR) by up to 65%.

• Nonverbal cues in video-thumbnails (like facial expressions) can convey meaning and emotion to engage the viewer.

JUST DON’T EMBED THE VIDEO

That said, though—it's important to note that directly embedding a video file (like an mp4) in your email may trigger mailbox providers like Gmail or Outlook to flag your message as SPAM, thus impeding its deliverability. Your mass emails shouldn’t include attachments, flash, or other types of “rich media”—video included. To avoid this, include a clickable thumbnail image instead that links to a web page where the viewer can watch your video.

---

Looking to massively improve your email strategy this year? Make sure to check out my new course, INBOX HERO: Tapping into the marketing G.O.A.T.

---

Click-through rate, the way I see it, is arguably the most crucial metric in email marketing because it tells of the effectiveness of your campaigns in terms of getting recipients to take a desired action. Open rates, while still important, may not be as reliable—especially with the release of programs like Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, which can pre-load emails and report false opens. A click, on the other hand, indicates that the recipient wants more—thus, they clicked!

How to Include Videos in Emails:

• Do not directly embed video files, as it may trigger spam filters.

• Use a clickable thumbnail image that links to a web page where the video can be watched.

So, my advice:  take a moment to go over all of your email campaigns: newsletters, drips, automations, and more. Ask yourself, “How can I incorporate more video content into my emails?” And then do what you say to yourself and include more videos!

4 Tips for Crafting an Effective Welcome Email for Your Real Estate Business

Welcome emails are a powerful marketing tool that can significantly boost the success of your email campaigns. In fact, they tend to have a 4-times higher open rate and a 10-times higher click-through rate compared to regular-styled bulk emails. This is because welcome emails are sent to individuals who have already shown an interest in your brand and are expecting to receive emails from you.

Email service providers like MailChimp and ActiveCampaign, for instance, make it easy for businesses to create automated welcome campaigns for anyone who joins their email list. These platforms provide a range of tools and features that allow you to easily design and schedule welcome emails to be sent automatically to new subscribers.

To create an effective welcome email, follow these four recommendations:

1. Thank and Remind New Subscribers: Be sure to thank new subscribers for opting in to receive emails from you. This not only shows your appreciation, but it also serves as a reminder of why they are receiving your emails in the first place, affirming their decision to subscribe.

2. Let Your Subscribers Know What to Expect: Provide your subscribers with an idea of what they can expect from your emails in the future. This might include the frequency of your campaigns, the types of content that you will be sending, or any special promotions or offers that you have planned. By providing this information up front, you can help/prime your subscribers better understand how to use your emails to their advantage.

3. Share Some of Your Top Resources: Consider sharing some of your top resources or past edition emails with your new subscribers. This gives them a sense of what they have been missing out on and can help to affirm their decision to opt in to your email list.

4. Encourage Address Book Addition: Encourage your new subscribers to add your email address to their address book. This can help to prevent future emails from landing in their spam folder, ensuring that they receive all of your correspondence.

---

Are you ready to learn how to build an effective email strategy and craft compelling messaging to become an email-marketing hero? If so, check out my new course, INBOX HERO: Tapping into the marketing GOAT.

---

Sidebar: As a real estate agent, it is common to purchase leads through sources such as Zillow, PPC advertising, and open houses. While these leads may have consented to receive emails from you, they are not the same as organic subscribers who have actively chosen to receive emails from your business.

However, leads can still be interested in your services and open to hearing from you. By sending a well-crafted welcome email, you can introduce yourself and your business, provide value, and potentially turn a lead into a client. While it may be necessary to tailor your approach slightly for leads compared to organic subscribers, a welcome email can still be an effective marketing tool in this scenario. Just be sure to follow best practices for email marketing, including obtaining explicit permission before sending emails to individuals who have not opted in to receive them.

Overall, welcome emails are a crucial part of any email marketing strategy. By following these recommendations, you can create an effective welcome email that helps to build a strong relationship with your subscribers and drive greater engagement with your brand.

4 Email Marketing Optimizations for Mobile Devices

Most of the folks are opening your email campaigns on a smartphone 📲. Case in point, HubSpot reports 41% of all email views 👀 come from mobile devices. Here’s the full breakdown:

‒ Mobile ➟ 41%

‒ Desktop ➟ 39%

‒ Tablet ➟ 19%

‒ Other ➟ 1%

On that account, here are FOUR mobile-first email marketing optimizations:

1. Keep the subject-line short and to the point. Campaign Monitor recommends a max of 41 characters. Why? Simple… It’s because your phone’s screen isn’t very wide ↔️. If your subject line exceeds the character limit, for instance, the inbox is just gonna show a generic, “•••” for whatever text doesn’t fit.

2. Make any buttons 🔘 in the content of your email easily tappable. If it’s just hyperlinked text, for instance, it could be easy for a viewer to overlook or mis-click a link. Point is, make sure any important links are easy targets for the press of a viewer’s thumb 👍

3. Use LARGE-SIZED TEXT. If you’ve got excessive line spacing or if the email is just hard to read because your font is too tiny, it’s gonna drive down the overall performance of your campaign.

4. Avoid using email templates with side-bars, columns, or any special layouts other than a single-column ↕️. Thanks to social media, we’re all used to scrolling through feeds. My thought is… Your email should function the same. If the user has to pinch-and-zoom to read your email, then—frankly—your email’s broken.

Your Everyday Email Signature Can Outperform the Clickthrough Performance of Your Mass Emails 😲

The average professional sends out 40+ emails per day with approximately a 100% open rate. Through the lens of email-marketing performance benchmarks, that’s epically impressive 🤯.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for mass/bulk email marketing. However, there’s a strong case to be made that we should all conduct an audit of our everyday email signatures to ensure they’re properly optimized.

And think about it this way:  the clickthrough performance of calls-to-action (CTAs) in your email signature will likely be just as good or better than those included in your mass email campaigns. My point is, it’s low-hanging fruit.

Your email signature should incorporate the following CTAs:

• Postscript:  something like… “P.S. Should you hear of anyone looking to Buy, Sell or Invest in real estate, would you please connect us? It would be my great privilege to serve as their REALTOR®.”

• Contact:  include your cell phone, email address, social links, website, and more – every time! Don’t be the person whose signature is only included in the first email of a thread, whereby a recipient has to go digging to find your number.

• Deliverables:  perhaps you have a Home Valuation landing page, or an IDX-powered home search site, or downloadable PDFs like a buyer or seller guide). If you do, link to them!

5 Email Marketing Tips for Realtors (in 2022)

I’m willing to bet you’re not sending enough email. I know, I know—that’s a big statement, especially considering how much email each of us receives on a daily basis. What I mean is, we’re not sending enough VALUABLE email. The fact is, if you poll any group of marketers, chances are, they’ll unanimously vote email as their best performing sales/marketing channel.

Question is, what should you send? Answer:  CONTENT 😉. Start to think of email marketing as another channel to distribute your blogs, videos, and social media posts. If you immerse yourself in creating valuable content—tips, advice, and updates about your local marketplace—then no matter where you publish that content, it’ll be received with great enthusiasm. Email included. Why? Because it's valuable/useful.

Now, what to send is one matter—best-practices around HOW to send your email is another. Scan through the stack of images for tips on how to get better performance out of your email marketing campaigns.

1. Everything Clickable: Since Apple’s release of its Mail Protection Privacy program, Open-Rate metrics are virtually unreliable. Nowadays the Mail app on iOS devices preloads ALL your emails on its “proxy servers,” which email service providers interpret as an open—even if the recipient never did so. So hyperlink your images, text, and so forth so that you can get a better read on who’s consuming your campaigns.

2. Smartphone Optimized: Year-over-year, mobile email adoption rates continue to soar. That being the case, it’s critical to ensure your email campaigns are outfitted and optimized for smartphone consumption. For example, make sure text is sufficiently sized so it's readable, avoid multi-column layouts in which viewers have to pinch-and-zoom in order to see properly, and make all buttons extra BIG for an easy tap.

3. Preview Text: When you send an email campaign, there’s an option to customize the “preview text,” which is the sentence-or-two snippet that appears below the sender name and subject line in recipients’ inboxes. If you don’t modify it, by default, it’ll usually say something unfortunate, such as: "Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list." Nooooooo! My advice: customize it!

4. First-Name Personalization: When someone says or writes, JASON—as would be expected, it get’s my attention. Why? Because that’s my name! It’s simple psychology. My advice: utilize your email service provider’s {FIRST-NAME} merge tag feature so that your bulk emails send out personalized to each and every recipient. It’ll increase your campaign's relevance and, by extension, its performance.

5. Drop the ”Newsletter:” Not literally. In fact, I think the concept of a newsletter—that is, a recurrent email campaign sharing news, tips, advice, and/or updates related to your business—makes for a fabulous email. However, that being said--whatever you do--DON’T incorporate the word “Newsletter” in your subject line. It’ll get deleted faster than you can type DELETE.

4 Ways to Grow Your Email List (For Realtors)

The Internet is changing (rapidly) — for instance, new privacy regulations are coming into operation practically every day (e.g. Apple’s iOS 14.5 , Google’s Privacy Sandbox, etc.). And, because of that, running targeted or retargeted ad campaigns (e.g. Facebook, Google, and more) to reach customers is now and will become increasingly more restrictive.

Advertising platforms like Facebook and Google, for instance, have historically relied on what are known as third-party cookies to accurately deliver targeted/retargeted ads to designated audiences. Now that’s all changing—third-party cookies are getting the boot 🥾

Backstory:  when you installed your Facebook Pixel and/or Google’s Global Site Tag on your website, for instance—in so doing, you permitted Facebook and Google to plant “cookies” (third-party cookies, technically) on the web browsers of your site’s visitors. Those cookies were/are used to track the actions and behaviors of the folks surfing your site and could/can then be made into target audiences for your ad campaigns. Impressive, right?! 

In effect, however, every Pixeled-and-Tagged website here, there, or anywhere has become somewhat of a spy network for these platforms, observing Internet-users’ patterns, interests, and so forth. (Sort of like how, in The Dark Knight movie, Batman turned everybody’s cell phones into a sonar system to track down the Joker 🤡) It’s all big data!

As privacy restrictions intensify—and, as a result of that, as ad-targeting becomes less and less effective—it’ll be all the more critical to build your email list! (What’s more, it’ll be equally as important to develop useful/valuable email content to send out.)

Email marketing is (way) underrated! Many marketers believe it's purely a direct sales channel—but it's more than that. In 2022, consider distributing a once-a-week email in which you share ALL your content (i.e., blogs, videos, social posts, and so forth).

Here are FOUR ideas to grow your email list in 2022:

1. Postcard QR-codes:  On every mailer you send out, consider adding an email opt-in call-to-action (CTA) adjacent to a scannable QR-code. Link the code to an entry page on your website whereby visitors can subscribe to your email list.

2. Website Pop-Ups & Banners:  Optimize your website with pop-up boxes, banners, and/or promo-bars to offer visitors a free subscription to your weekly email.

   Heads-up:  improper use of pop-ups, for instance, can damage your site's SEO. (I’ve added details in my blog — just tap my LINK-IN-BIO.)

   For example, Google penalizes websites in which pop-ups cover a page’s main content immediately after the page loads. So be sure to program your pop-ups to appear, for instance, on a delay, on the second page viewed, or when a users demonstrates exit-intent.

   In addition, Google notes that fullscreen pop-ups that block a desired page’s content and/or that require the viewer to dismiss prior to accessing the page’s content can also damage your site’s SEO. The solution for this is the same as before: program your pop-ups to only show on, for instance, the second page viewed or upon exit-intent.

   From a search-engine POV, Google’s only looking at the page that’d be listed in the search results—not other pages on the same website to which visitors may navigate next. Those, for all intents and purposes, are fair game for pop-ups.

3. Social Media Link-in-Bio: The use of a "LINK-IN-BIO" tool, such as Liinks.co, Linktree, or LinkFolio, is popular (and useful) on social sites like Instagram. Insert important CTAs to drive visitors to your various links—for instance, a podcast, a blog, or, you guessed it—your email subscriber form!

4. Facebook Advertising: In your FB Ads Manager, run either link-click (redirects to a URL) or lead-form campaigns to capture emails and grow your list. Target your market area, retarget your website traffic, and/or retarget your Facebook-Page and Instagram followers.

Bottom line: the Internet, in many ways, is changing. As privacy ramps up, make email marketing in 2022 a top business priority!

Supercharge Your Email Marketing Lead Generation with Alex Berman

If you’re looking to take your #EmailMarketing to the next level, you can’t miss this (super technical) interview with cold 🥶 email marketing expert, Alex Berman. To watch/listen, tap the LINK IN MY BIO.

⚠️Fair warning, this #MarketingStream episode goes from 0 to 60 💨 in terms of subject matter complexity SUPER FAST. Alex flat-out knows his stuff!⚠️

In the show, Alex explains:

‣ The nuts-and-bolts🔩 of how email marketing actually functions -- and how it differs from just personal emailing (e.g. Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, et al.).

‣ Top email marketing mistakes/pitfalls to avoid. Specifically, what causes emails to filtered out of inboxes and marked as SPAM (along with solutions and workarounds).

‣ Recommendations of best-in-class Email Service Providers (ESPs). Included in that discussion, Alex talks about the importance of “warming-up” your email address prior to use.

‣ Pro-tips to boost email campaign performance (i.e., sending frequency, subject lines, message formatting, and more). PLUS types of emails to send (and not to send).

‣ How to navigate 🧭 new and impending privacy restrictions.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀! What’s more, it was a really fun conversation!

As you’re watching/listening, keep in mind, we discussed email marketing from the standpoint of two different objectives—so the conversation bounces back-and-forth quite a bit.

1. Increasing sales and conversions.

2. Positioning your brand and nurturing relationships.

Grab your notes 📋 and strap in for 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺, 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝟬𝟬𝟳.

ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴜʟʟ ᴇᴘɪꜱᴏᴅᴇ ɪꜱ ᴀᴠᴀɪʟᴀʙʟᴇ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇꜱᴇ ꜱᴛʀᴇᴀᴍɪɴɢ ᴘʟᴀᴛꜰᴏʀᴍꜱ:

🖥 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗧𝘂𝗯𝗲

🎧 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆

🎙 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲

Generate Real Estate Seller Leads with This Proven Marketing Strategy: Name Your Price! (Part 1)

“Yes, really… NAME YOUR PRICE.” That’s the email-offer Tom Ferry coaching member, Matt Curtis, is sending out to his database - and it’s creating new listing opportunities in abundance!

(As we all know) listing inventory is alarmingly low 📉, so don’t expect houses to just fall into your lap. Today’s MARKET belongs to agents who MARKET to create inventory when and where there is none.

If you’re looking for a seller-focused lead generation strategy, you’re in the right spot! Today’s video will outline a word-for-word email campaign designed to source listings straight out of your database.

Keep in mind, the National Association for REALTORS reported that approximately 67% of sellers identified a real estate agent to list and sell their property by way of repeat business or a referral from a friend, family-member, or neighbor. In other words, roughly 2/3 of your listing opportunities are likely stashed away in your DATABASE, ready and waiting on you! So let’s get to work.

Heads up... I’m planning to release a series of videos devoted to the NAME YOUR PRICE campaign. Today’s video is focused on the database email. I’ll layout a Facebook ad strategy in the NEXT VIDEO.

The “Name Your Price” Email:

Email composition is an art form. It’s words! To that point, according Oxford English Dictionary, there are more than 170K (English) words currently in use. Point is, you must choose your words strategically!

Parts of the Email:

1. Subject Line: casual, clear, and engaging; all lower-case.

2. Personalization: utilize merge tags to incorporate recipients’ first names—e.g. Hi {FIRST NAME}.

3. Opening Line: fulfills on the subject line; creates curiosity and sets up a basis for the offer.

4. Calibrated Question: yes-or-no question poignantly asked directly before making the offer.

**There are two types of questions: open-ended and closed-ended. Open-ended questions ask “Who,” “What,” “How,” “When,” “Where,” or “Why.” They’re designed to draw out more meaningful responses versus closed-ended questions, which typically result in a “yes” or “no” type of answer.

A calibrated question is, technically, a close-ended question, only, it’s intended for closing; it’s to be asked at the moment when a definitive (or rhetorical) response is exactly what’s needed.

For example, “At what price would you be CRAZY not to sell?”**

1. 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹-𝘁𝗼-𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗖𝗧𝗔): a “Name Your Price” button linked to a Google Form.

2. 𝗣𝗿𝗲-𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴: first CTA has been skipped; addresses the primary objection or challenge preventing offer acceptance/action.

3. 𝗔𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿: hyperlinked text embedded in the pre-frame (i.e. no buttons); links to same destination as the CTA.

4. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴: builds on pre-frame to position offer as a solution to the problem/challenge.

5. 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹-𝘁𝗼-𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗖𝗧𝗔): a “Name Your Price” button linked to a Google Form.

TRIPLE-STRIKE CTA

Notice how Matt’s email embeds his offer again-and-again throughout the email copy.

The first CTA button, “Name Your Price,” is inserted toward the beginning of the email. Then, in the event his case wasn’t strong enough to get certain viewers to click, he pre-framed the most common/likely objection, followed by a soft offer to “let us know”—which was hyperlinked to the same destination URL as the first CTA.

Finally, he re-used the primary CTA button at the end of the email to make one last pass.

---

Here’s a shortlist of some Email Service Providers (ESPs) to analyze:

• BombBomb

• MailChimp

• SendGrid

• AWeber

• Convert Kit

• SendFox

• Sendinblue

• Omnisend

• Keap

• MailJet

• Constant Contact

• Drip

PLEASE leave a comment to let me know what you think of this training. Also, don’t miss Part 2 where we breakdown the Facebook ad strategy!

“Just Listed" LEAD CAPTURE Tactics for REALTORS® (in 2021)

Capturing email addresses has always been mission-critical. Having said that, as new privacy protocols are implemented across social networks and search engines this year and next, doing so will become all-the-more important starting now and into the future.

__________
𝚃𝚘 𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚗 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚞𝚙𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚊𝚌𝚢 𝚞𝚙𝚍𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚜, 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑/𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚢 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚠 𝚠/ @dennis.yu:
🎧 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁: bit.ly/Internet-Privacy-Changes
📸 𝗩𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼: instagram.com/p/CMX-kdXDzSO/
__________

As the privacy changes get underway, 𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 & 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 prospective customers is likely to become slightly to substantially more difficult. To that point: 𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐋‼️

In every "Just Listed" social post, @farr.groupnw simply adds a “LINK IN BIO” clause to the post caption whereby interested parties can go to learn more about the property. The link redirects to a registration-required landing page. Always gettin’ emails—simple!

PRO TIP: used forced registration when it’s an exclusive offer, like this example. Try a suggested or delayed registration for generic offers (e.g. home search, home valuation, and others).

Off-Market Listing Attraction Database Email Script (for Real Estate Agents)

We’re facing an epic listing 🏘 shortage in real estate markets across the US, Canada, and around the world 🌎 It’s causing intense bidding wars and rapidly increasing purchase prices.

During a recent mastermind session I listened to numerous top agents who, one after the next, explained how they’d been procuring listings lately. Remarkably, every tactic they shared involved straight-up hustle. I suppose that figures. After all, there’s no such thing as a 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚-𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩-𝙢𝙚 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹. In other words, acquiring listings isn’t 𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒐𝒎; it’s 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒑𝒆𝒅. So, if you’re willing to give it some elbow grease (so to speak), here’s an idea for you to consider!

Send a plain-text email (meaning, it should simple and unadorned—no HTML fancy stuff, etc.) to your database:  friends, family, acquaintances, past clients, old/new leads, et al.

🚨🚨I’ve linked to a sample email script at the bottom of this post. 🚨🚨

Part 1:

Begin by acknowledging the inherent challenges of this market. Once again:  multiple offers, escalating price points, limited inventory, etc.

Part 2: (Optional)

Share some market context. After all, only a limited set of events historically shift real estate markets:  foreclosures, new construction, interest rates, and so forth. Give a snapshot overview of what’s happening at large because would-be sellers may be waiting for purchase conditions to change in the short-term, when, realistically, it could take longer than anticipated.

Part 3:

State the point that there are likely myriad sellers who would list their homes IF the ideal purchase opportunity were to present itself. If that describes anyone receiving 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 email, ask if there’s a type of home they’d like for you to seek out on their behalf. Then, proceed to circle-prospect, door-knock, and/or bulk mail off-market homes, subject to all applicable rules/regulations, with the intention of scheduling “one-time showings.” (Oh yes, you knew we’d eventually hit the “hustle” part, LOL.)

Collect their wish-list criteria via a Google Form. In that same Form, ask if they have a property to sell and gather data about it. Basically, by the way, you’re amassing a registry of pocket listings.

Pro Tip:  when contacting off-market homeowners, if you hear, “Well sure I’d be open to selling my home to one of your buyers—only, where am I supposed to go once it’s sold?” Say, “Tell me about the type of home you’re looking for. It may already be in my off-market registry [i.e., your Google Form] and, if not, I’d be happy to add you to my list of buyers for whom I’m actively seeking out suitable purchase opportunities.”

Remember:  𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒕.

I’ve composed a sample email script. Feel free to use it, edit it, turn it into a video, or whatever -- at your own discretion, of course. Just complete the form below.