Video Transcription

Good morning everybody. I'm Mike Minard, and I'm doing another video solo today on unlocking your potential. Today, in preparation for tomorrow's Tech Tuesday, I'm going to be talking a little bit about email marketing. The reason I'm doing that is because tomorrow's Tech Tuesday, I believe the subject is on our email reporting, and Harley is going to be reviewing the email reporting with everybody on a technical level because of all the functionality we've been adding, especially as it relates to reporting.

But I want to talk just in general about email marketing because I think with text messaging and other things going on, we've kind of lost focus on the power of email marketing. I actually have pages of stats here. I kind of like this type of stuff. You know, here's one, 70 email marketing stats every marketer should know. Many of you would probably be fascinated by some of the stats, but it's kind of a boring read unless you're really into the marketing side of email. But there was one statistic that I wanted to just mention out of all these statistics I could go through here. Here's one that I don't think is getting talked about a whole lot. This is this statistic that 73% of millennials prefer to contact brands via email. I just kind of want to chat about that because, not necessarily about millennials, but the importance of email and email in your business.

I've talked about this over the years. My goodness, I've talked about this probably about the past 19 years in the real estate industry on email, on how to use it, how to respond to it. But the purpose that I'm doing this video is because we're really beefing up in our platform what we're doing for email marketing and some of the automation we have for email marketing. There's a lot of data behind us doing that and reasons to do it, but beyond that, I want to talk to you about your email marketing and the importance of it.

The first thing is that email marketing does work. I have pages of statistics that I could share from multiple sources that talks about the effectiveness and the growing effectiveness of email marketing, if it's done properly, if it's done in a targeted fashion, and even in an automated fashion, because I can just share with you that even just outside the real estate industry, across all companies, companies are investing a significant amount of resources in automating their email. The purpose of that's not just to automate it. Really what they're wanting to do is to personalize the emails to the individual recipients. I think I could speak for you in saying that I appreciate that too, that hey, when I get an email, it's not just a blanket email, it's something that's geared and tailored towards me. For those of you that are familiar with all of our email marketing tools, you know we have that functionality in our platform.

But let's talk about just emails in general, and the importance of it. I want to go ahead and point out a couple things. Don't want to turn this into a training video, but I want to talk about a couple specific things. That is, one, lead responses, because I know that all of us would rather typically pick up the phone and have a conversation, but taking this statistic about millennials, it's very likely, over 70% likely, that they will reach out to you via email to have a conversation about the home or our home buying process, and it's really important how you respond to leads. In all of the analysis I've done of all the email responses to leads, I've seen some really bad ones, but I've seen some really good ones, too.

I want to focus on what makes a good response to a lead via email. Obviously the first thing is answering the question. Sometimes I see the question actually not get answered, so it's answering the question, and also with a quick response. You know, sometimes, like for example, if you have to confirm a showing, I think it's a good idea that even if you're waiting on a confirmation to go ahead and reply to the customer making the request, and just say, "Hey, I'm checking into this. I'm checking with the listing agent and I'll get back with you as soon as I hear back from them, but I just wanted to follow up with you right away." It shows that you're on top of things, and people that email, we do expect it to almost be real time. I know most people have that expectation.

The other aspect that I think that gets lost is, you need to pay attention to your signature, so how your name is. Do you have your phone number on there and your email address? I know that seems kind of ridiculous, but sometimes emails get printed out without a header, so it's good in your signature to have your phone, your email address, and even your social media channels. But the one last thing that I wanted to mention about an email response is a call to action, or an offer for resources. That's the biggest thing, that's the biggest differentiator that I have seen from top producing sales associates and agents versus ones that don't, they aren't top producers, is the offers for things.

Just as an example, somebody making a showing request, answering a question or somebody that asks a question on a property, you answer the question, but then I fail to see kind of a call to action here. Are there any other properties that you have questions on? I'd love to help. Do you want to talk on the phone or send me a list? You know, I'm here as a resource, or would you like me to set up new listing notifications that are similar to this property? Again, you can come up with more, but actually offering something in the email with a call to action.

The biggest thing that I want you to take away is, with all the talk on text messaging, and granted we're spending a lot of time internally talking about text messaging and developing that deeper, but emails really do work and email marketing works, and it's actually growing right now. But the most important component of it is, what in here we call segmentation, or what we call, you know, basically what that means is that you're personalizing emails for individual recipients, like new listing notifications or like a market watch or even our my customer for life platform, which does the exact same thing as well.

Anyhow, just wanted to have that quick conversation on email and the importance of it. Tomorrow, Harley's going to be doing training on the reporting that we have for the emails going out of our platform for you. I also should share too, without getting into specifics, but we have a lot of resources internally being spent on beefing up what we're doing for email marketing, and even the automation of it, of that email marketing and the personalization, the one-to-one personalization of that email. So until next week, be sure and check in tomorrow with Harley's Tech Tuesday. I look forward to talking to you next week. Thanks.