In the real estate business, buyers may not always know what they want when they look at a property. Because buying a house, a building, or even a vacant lot is a significant purchase, most buyers will weigh their options and consider many factors before making a decision.
For the realtor, this can mean there may be multiple viewings of the same property, long conversations about the price and amenities, or buyers needing friendly nudges when they get cold feet before making a move.
Realtors must therefore have a few marketing strategies up their sleeves that aid in the nurturing of these valuable, time-consuming relationships. Making a major decision like buying a house can be unnerving for even the most seasoned of investors. Real estate leads, depending on the level of customer service, can quickly turn into a financial windfall or, just as fast, completely disappear. Realtors should work to keep their marketing initiatives as personalized as possible to encourage conversation and increase client satisfaction during the process.
The latest voice-based marketing automation technologies work with the phone to not only help create opportunities to communicate with indecisive or potentially long-term clients, but also keep them abreast of pertinent information throughout the sales process. Here are two specific tools realtors have reported great success with:
Call Routing
Realtors are in the business of not only helping each client find that perfect property the first time, but also nurturing a strong and trusting relationship. Realtors need to build long-term client pools that grow through multichannel and word-of-mouth marketing. The best way to nurture a new or existing client is to make them feel special and valued, as if no other client exists.
A simple way to prevent poor service or communications from messing up a nurture campaign is to deploy a call routing platform that intercepts all inbound calls and directs them to the appropriate endpoint quickly and efficiently. Realtors use call routing to ensure calls from listings get sent to the right agent, no matter where they are (at the office, at home, in the car, at a showing).
You can also enable call routing to “whisper” info about where the call is coming from so agents can decide who gets it. Some clients may call a realtors office with a very specific request in mind, while others are just feeling out the market or toying with the idea of buying or selling. Intelligent call routing can lead and filter each caller based on their unique needs so the best resources are made available to them from the start. This ensures the relationship starts off on the right foot.
Voice Broadcasting
Realtors are always on the move and must have their phones by their side in case a buying/selling decision arises. Likewise, the phone plays a key role in communicating with a client as quickly as possible when a new opportunity arises and decisions need to be made quickly: you can’t send an email and hope for the best. Realtors must find their clients and keep the ball rolling, and the best way to reach them is almost always via the phone.
A valuable voice-based marketing automation tool is the voice broadcast, which allows a realtor to improve client service and communications with interactive notifications via the phone. Realtors can create pre-recorded phone messages or launch an interactive IVR to disseminate information to a large population of recipients at once. Because clients expect realtors to offer personalized services, a mass email will have less of an impact than a direct phone message on nurturing a relationship.
The voice broadcasts can contain a wide variety of information and be personalized to the recipient. Voice broadcasts can be used to automate phone messages for appointment reminders, promotions, or updates on property listings. If the voice broadcast phone call is picked up by a person, one message will play with options to respond. When paired with an interactive IVR, the voice broadcast message can offer recipients prompts that lead them back to the intelligent call routing for access to live agents. If the voice broadcast encounters a voicemail box, a more appropriate message will be left.
To learn more about call tracking in strategic real estate campaigns, check out our guide to growing your brokerage with the phone.