Real Estate + Technology + Business
Marketing
Real Estate Tech #1 – Duplicating Lead Information
Jun 28th
How do you get your leads?
If you have a web site (almost all agents and investors do) that you collect leads from (why do you have a web site if you aren’t collecting leads?), how do you receive that information?
Most people it seems have the home owner fill out information on their web site, which sends them an email, where they re-enter the information into their contact management software (if you aren’t using this, more on that later).
This is a waste of time! Once information is in once place, you should never have to re-enter it somewhere else. Almost all contact management software has a function to import information from a web site or email (ACT!, Goldmine, Salesforce.com, etc. can all do this).
I’ve spoken with investors who have full time staff members that spend their entire day collecting information from property owners and entering it into the computer. If you have a smaller operation, how much of your time is wasted with entering data, instead of marketing, buying, or selling?
Lastly, if you do not have a web site you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Home owners spend 10 – 30 minutes each entering their information at our web site – Fast Home Offers. With 4,500 people contacting us every month, that is 2,250 HOURS each month we might spend if we took all of the calls directly – that is almost 15 full time staff members!
Where are you duplicating information? Find out and commit to stop wasting time!
Real Estate Investor Marketing: Blind Offers
Jun 23rd
Today our company made 150 offers on listed properties in specific neighborhoods in the Dallas / Fort Worth area.
Using technology and automated processes we were able to make all these offers in 15 minutes.
The Criteria:
- On the market for over 60 days
- Listing price has been lowered
- In specific zip codes
- Offer price was 55% of the listed price
- No price cap
- Sight unseen
Of the 150 offers, we have had quite a few "no way" responses and a couple the are interested in selling. We will post our purchase rate (we expect to close 1-2 homes).
Cost of marketing: $0.00
LeadFeed – RSS leads from Fast Home Offers
Jun 17th
We recently launched RSS feeds at Fast Home Offers. This allows investors all over the world who purchase leads from us to view them via 3rd party products like Bloglines or FeedDemon (my new favorite).
After our press release and email to current subscribers the response was as expected. About 30% “This is great, exactly what we need” and 70% “what is RSS, how does this work, why do I need it?”. Obviously I need to do a better job of educating our customers on new products (not everyone knows what a BLOG is!).
This launch was precipitated by the very large amount of email that bounces back to us from SPAM and Junk Mail filters – both on individual computers and at the service provider level (aside – when is email going to get fixed? It is becoming almost useless for marketing anymore).
To view the RSS feeds and subscribe (leads are by state right now) visit LeadFeed.
We are always looking for ways to increase our ability to serve real estate investors.