Using a Property Data API for Competitive Market Promotions

Property data API market statistics could be the tool of this decade for brokers and agents. Why? Because we now live in a world of hype, spam and constant contact by marketers. Real estate market statistics, more narrowly, hyper-local statistics can help an agent cut through all this clutter. And just as importantly, personalize their communications with prospects.

Let’s start with email. Email statistics show that nearly 65% of people open an email based on the relevance to them of the subject line. Here’s the problem and another statistic: Nearly 70% of people will mark an email as spam based on the subject line alone. There are so many emails coming at consumers today, it’s a giant spider web of text. Many times you have to wonder, how did that company get my email address?

There are the many newsletters, online stores, sweepstakes you signed up for years ago and still receive notices from in your inbox, all from the depths of who-knows-where webisphere. Then you have the spammers. They are as active as ever. The one thing you don’t want to do is give up. Because email is still an incredibly powerful way to reach consumers. And it’s free.

How a Property Data API Works

 

By adding little snippets of code to your website, an agent can gain a feed of hyper-local data for any specific neighborhood they are farming. That data includes Recent Home Sales, Trends in Home Prices, Charts on Number of Homes Sold, etc. Now that the agent has this data, they can go to work.

For email, imagine writing a subject line something to the effect:

• Check out the latest home sales data for XYZ neighborhood
• See how changing home prices in XYZ area could affect the value of your home
• Home prices have risen in XYZ  community, get an estimate on the value of your home

Naturally, the beauty of email is you can continually test headlines. And you should. A headline that improves open rates just a few percentage points could be the one that lands you that $1 million listing or a shopper’s inquiry for a $1.5 million home.

Use the same approach in your other marketing. Play up the power that resides in that Property Data API. Offer to provide home sales data in direct mail letters. Post teaser headlines in your social media posts offering to send consumers in XYZ neighborhood the latest statistics on their area.

Use a Property Data API to Gain a Competitive Edge

 

Marketing guru Jack Trout, an old-school marketer but very successful one, says business people need to know how to pick their battles. If an agent has a larger competitor they are competing with, they need to come up with a strategy to make themselves stand out. If a brokerage is competing with a much bigger competitor, or even a mega real estate portal, they also need to find a way to outwit them. He recommends that after analyzing competitors; choose a narrow front to fight them on.

Perhaps you can’t compete with them on advertising. Or the search engines. Or event marketing. But using a property data API can help you compete in a niche area. Think of your hyper-local data as your army. Trout says one of the strategies to compete with a larger company is to not only choose a narrow front, but to flood that front with resources.

A property data API gives you those resources. For one, it’s super hyper-local. You don’t just possess real estate market data for a county, or a city or a zip code. You can display data down to the neighborhood or subdivision level. Here’s some of that local data you can promote:

Just like the big mega-portals, an agent can also offer a home value estimator tool for the neighborhoods they are farming. Let buyers and homeowners know they can get an instant computerized estimate on the value of a property in a neighborhood, from a local agent who knows the neighborhood. As we all know, this opens a window to provide a formal CMA for any homeowners who might be interested in listing their property.

Let’s face it. It’s tough out there. There is so much noise, information and promotions coming on consumers today. Brokers and agents need the right tools to penetrate that wall of noise. As we said, messages with relevant and personalized real estate market data are one of those tools to capture the attention of people today.

Be the agent with a property data API and be the dominant data provider on the narrow fronts of your target neighborhoods.