Your Guide to Real Estate SMS (Text) Marketing
Buying or selling a home can be a stressful, nerve-racking time for your clients. As a realtor, you can go a long way in helping your customers navigate the process calmly, effectively, and efficiently by using real estate SMS marketing campaigns.
One of the biggest strengths of communicating by text messages is the immediate and personal attention both clients and realtors can provide. Real estate SMS marketing initiatives can help nurture an attentive and personal relationship that can build trust, which is the foundation of closing a successful real estate transaction.
Your Guide to Real Estate SMS (Text) Marketing (Video)
According to the National Association of REALTORS, 92% of realtors prefer communicating by text messages. A second study noted that 62% of clients preferred to communicate by SMS. Because the majority of people keep their cell phones within arm’s reach, SMS marketing is an excellent way to keep your business top-of-mind during the house hunting or selling process.
Why Use Real Estate Text Message Marketing?
Real estate SMS marketing campaigns are a great way for realtors to generate leads from prospects who are just starting the house buying or selling process all the way through to closing a sale. The process of buying and selling a home involves a myriad of steps, decisions, questions, negotiations and communications, making real estate SMS marketing campaigns a perfect tool to help keep your business front and center.
A property can come on and off the market quickly, which means realtors, buyers and sellers must often act fast to take advantage of the best homes, offers, and deals. Using text marketing allows realtors to get up-to-the-second information to their prospects or customers.
How Real Estate SMS (Text) Marketing Works
Real estate text message marketing requires interested prospects and customers to opt-in to receiving text messages from specific realtors. Although obtaining permission to send marketing messages by text is required by law, it also helps realtors build an engaged subscriber list from the beginning. After all, home buyers and sellers are asking for marketing messages to help them achieve their real estate goals.
If you’re selling homes, be sure to establish keywords that are tied to a particular listing so you know exactly which prospects are interested in which home. This will help you set up open house visits, private tours, answer questions, or send updates on price reductions or pending offers.
If you’re a buyer’s agent, you might tag your campaigns to keywords related to the homes’ geographic location, number of bedrooms, square footage range or style of home in order to help clients narrow their choices.
Realty SMS Opt-In Marketing Campaigns
Many people are probably familiar with “for sale” yard signs that increasingly advertise a keyword, usually related to the address, and shortcode number to text for more information. When interested potential customers drive by, they can choose to respond to this realty SMS opt-in invitation.
Ideally, you can set up your real estate SMS marketing campaign to automatically follow-up with a text as soon as the prospect provides a phone number. This text could provide basic information on the home such as number of bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, and asking price with a call-to-action to take a virtual tour on your website or schedule an in-person showing.
Bulk SMS for Real Estate Campaigns
One of the advantages of using SMS messaging is having the ability to send bulk SMS for real estate messages quickly and frequently.
For example, if you have a list of subscribers interested in buying a three-bedroom home, you can send a bulk text message as soon as such a property is listed on the market. You can also segment your prospect list by price range, sending a text notification as properties within that range enter the market.
If a certain property has generated a lot of interest from a set of prospects, you can send bulk messages to alert these subscribers of price reductions or pending offers, remind them of upcoming showings, or send them pictures of the property to keep them engaged.
Sending Real Estate Text Blasts
All of the above ideas can be sent as a real estate text blast to either all of your subscribers or a special subset interested in a particular property. Real estate SMS marketing text campaigns can reach dozens to hundreds of subscribers in a matter of seconds, accelerating the pace of decision-making throughout the house buying and selling process.
For realtors, this can mean closing more sales and earning a greater commission. Capitalizing on real estate SMS marketing campaigns is easy once you’ve built a mature subscriber list that’s ready and waiting for property updates and news.
Using MMS Marketing to Promote Real Estate
Once you’ve mastered SMS marketing campaigns, you may want to make a step up to multimedia marketing (MMS) text campaigns. Similar to SMS campaigns, MMS marketing real estate campaigns allow you to go into more detail and send both images and videos to your prospective buyers and sellers.
Real Estate SMS Marketing Templates and Examples
To help you get started, here are several real estate SMS marketing templates that you can use and modify:
When a prospect expresses interest in a specific property:
Follow-up messages for the same prospect a few days later:
Additional marketing opportunities for specific properties:
When a prospect opts-in to a general invitation from an ad:
For this final example, the survey may include number of bedrooms, square footage desired, price range, lot size, or geographic area. You can then better segment your future real estate SMS marketing campaigns.
Both buying and selling realtors can take advantage of real estate SMS marketing campaigns to generate new leads and nurture existing ones. DialMyCalls offers free accounts and a no-fee trial that will allow you to start your real estate campaigns quickly and affordably.