Automating your campaigns and follow up messages comes with a lot of perks. You’ll inevitably save time and money, while increasing your lead engagement exponentially. Despite these conveniences offered by automation, some real estate professionals still worry about losing authenticity. The thing is, you can have both.
Staying true to yourself and getting creative with your follow up messages maintains the connection you want to establish with your leads from the beginning. You can create messages and campaigns that intentionally feel and sound as if you wrote them specifically for one lead. The goal is that, in the end, your leads won’t know that anything automated. They won’t be able to tell.
Create Authentic Follow Up Messages
When it comes to getting creative it’s all about doing things your way–especially with how you communicate. These are the things to do and consider when creating your follow up messages:
1.Think About Your Voice
It’s common to have an initial gut instinct to write messages that are overly formal. What you want to do instead, is write the way you would actually talk to a lead if they were standing in front of you. This will result in messages that feel more open and conversational (i.e. more inviting). A few questions to ask yourself as you write or record an automated message:
- Which words do I use often?
- What phrases do I commonly incorporate when speaking to someone in person?
- How would I say this if this person were in front of me right now?
2. Add Something Unexpected
Most follow up messages are only composed of writing, but studies show that people initially engage more easily with images before moving on to written content. Change things up a bit and incorporate new media, like a video or emoji, into a follow up text message or email. Just don’t overdo it or include this sort of thing in every single message and it will feel fun and still professional. Using video or emojis should feel like a novelty yet have a utility– like emphasizing or reiterating something in the written part of your message.
- Video can be added to emails. This could be a link to a webinar you recorded, or video of a new property you are showing. It doesn’t have to be long, just make sure it is relevant to the leads you are sending it to in some way.
- Emojis are easy to add on to a follow up text message and can add an element of fun to an otherwise professional message. Use them sparingly and intentionally, and only include one in a message. This will help you avoid making it look overly cluttered or like spam.
3. Create a Custom Signature
A customized signature not only looks professional, it also takes the cold edge the idea of automation brings out of your messages. Some things you can include:
- link to your website
- contact information
- working hours
- a fun quote that you live by
4. Take Over After a Lead Responds
This might sound obvious, but it’s worth mentioning. Automation has a certain role to play, but at some point you’ll want to take over and respond manually. Make sure that you have a set point in your strategy where you will start manually responding to leads directly. Perhaps this is after a lead responds once, or maybe it’s after a few automated messages have been exchanged. That’s up to you. The automation is there to save you time, so that you can come in and respond directly once a lead gets to a point that they are highly likely to convert to a sale.
5. Customize Your Working Hours
Have set hours for yourself and within your automations, as well as for when messages can go out and be received by leads. This is good for you and your prospective clients as well. There is nothing that screams automation louder than a text or no-dial voicemail arriving in the early hours of the morning.
6. Target Leads Based on Interests and Preferences
Different types of follow up messages should go to different leads. When you segment your leads into different automated campaigns keep a few things in mind:
- Where are they in the process? Are they a new lead, a cold lead, or a lead you have worked with in the past?
- What is their preferred communication style? Some leads might respond better to a text messages, while others would prefer a phone call. Some might do best with email, text, and no-dial voicemails. Different campaigns can be set up for each type of lead accordingly. It shows thoughtfulness on your part and will definitely increase your response rate.
Automated lead follow up messages are a game changer for any real estate professional. Whether you are running your own business or working on a large team, keeping messages authentic is the key to maintaining engagement while still saving a lot of time and money.
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