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How Property Data Can Be Useful To Help Overcome Seller Procrastination

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Property Data can be an important resource when dealing with procrastination, an issue that researchers say hampers ONE out of FIVE adults.

Take notice of this issue. It’s 20% segment of any market!

Brokers and agents know the type. Homeowners who contact them and express an interest in selling their properties…then seem to disappear.

Psychologists say there are several reason why people procrastinate.

They include fear of failure, living in the present instead of planning for the future, avoidance of doing a task, waiting until someone else makes the decision for them, only being able to function under pressure and several others.

This self-defeating behavior can have negative consequences. Think about what happens when people delay seeing a doctor or saving for retirement.

A recent study by H&R Block found that every year taxpayers lose a substantial amount of money when they file taxes late and then rush through the forms to get their returns in the mail.

Property data provides focus

Fortunately, a real estate agent is not supposed to be a therapist. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems as though they have to act like one.

Obviously, there are quite a few emotional plates spinning in the air when people procrastinate. Mentally, their minds are wandering all over the place.

But as we discussed in previous articles, one of the best ways to counter emotions is with facts. Property data in particular.

Take that reluctant homeowner for example.

Instead of allowing them to wallow in indecision, help them focus by providing some market data. A real estate reality check so to speak.

Working with national data aggregators such as Home Junction, a broker or agent can embed a Real Estate API onto their website. This is basically just snippets of software that can easily be added to the back-end coding of any site.

But those simple bits of code open that website up into a huge warehouse of hyper-local property data. Just the type of information to get people to move off the dime.

Say a homeowner in Desirable Acres has retired. They insist they are ready to list their home and relocate. Perhaps to Sunny Acres in Florida or Arizona.

However, something keeps causing them to delay their decision. In fact, they can’t even give a legitimate reason why they are delaying. They don’t even know.

They suffer from procrastination.

Pull out those Home Sales charts for Desirable Acres from Home Junction.

Show the homeowner that their area is hot right now in terms of transactions. Homes are selling. Fast.

Also show them how prices are escalating in their neighborhood.

This will help them overcome their fear of not making a smart decision. The data is there. Now is a great time to sell. The homeowner is sure to receive a very satisfying offer with these current market conditions.

Enhance listing presentations

The agent can also use this property data to show a homeowner how they are going to market their home.

That marketing material to make that property shine can include:

  • Municipal  and neighborhood boundaries
  • School information – student/teacher ratios, enrollment figures, etc.
  • School attendance zones – those important boundaries that indicates which school: elementary, middle or high school, where a child will go to school. These boundaries are different for each school and periodically change for changes in enrollment.
  • Neighborhood demographics
  • Crime ratings
  • Area amenities – that includes parks, stores restaurants, etc. Research shows a Starbucks or a Whole Foods located near a property can definitely have a positive effect on home prices.

Another effective strategy to help overcome procrastination is urgency.

The property data could indicate there is a great window for a owner to sell. Now.

But that window might not always be open.

Conditions change. Mortgage rates go up. More inventory could go on the market and drive prices down. Etc. etc. etc.

Obviously, agents don’t want to talk people into doing something they don’t want to do.

They also don’t want to be the type of overly aggressive sales person that most people dislike.

But that’s the beauty of property data.

Let the data do the persuading. In a gentle manner.

Get those prospects on your email list. With your Real Estate API, send them a regular campaign of market data and charts, showing where the market is going.

Give them a short summary of market conditions.

Suggest deadlines based on market data

Another tool that psychologists say helps with procrastinators is to set deadlines.

Perhaps work with a homeowner to agree to make a decision by a certain date.

Let them know, based on the property data and charts on your website, that typically these months are the best for selling their house. (As we all know, different parts of the country have different sales cycles).

Show people these are ideal times when a homeowner has better odds of getting an optimal price for their property.

Also, these are the preferred time periods for the homeowner to place their home on the market to get it sold quickly. Let them know otherwise they could be facing months of waiting for an offer and numerous open houses.

Consumers must make quite a few decisions today.

Which car to buy, doctors to choose, where to live, which career to pursue. All of these decisions can be overwhelming at times.

But inaction can have major negative consequences, for example, when a local real estate market goes flat.

A savvy broker or agent will realize they need the right tools to help procrastinators overcome their inaction.

That’s where Property Data, supplied by a reliable Real Estate API, can be a huge asset to help people act rather than hesitate when the timing is best for them.

Real Estate Data Gives Agents The Best Resource For Multiple Touchpoints

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real estate data touchpointsReal estate data is a tremendous tool when it comes to touchpoints.

What are touchpoints? As everyone in any type of sales knows, it’s very rare to land a customer on the first try. So you need to reach out to them multiple times in multiple ways.

Imagine how important this strategy is today when consumers are touched, let’s say bombarded, by so many messages and promotions daily.

Used to be, people were hit by promotions and advertisements every day by traditional media – TV or newspapers in the morning, radio on the way to work and then TV in the evening.

Then the computer and the internet came along. Consumers were subject to a daily barrage of banner ads and promotional emails.

Now, along comes the iPhone and the smartphone. In this day and age, consumers are now under constant attack from ads and messages on their phones, computers, TVs, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc., etc., etc. on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, even their own voicemail.

Let’s call it what it really is – clutter.

So, how is a real estate broker or agent going to cut through all that clutter to get their message across?

First of all, hoping a one-time promotion lands a deal in one-shot is really like hoping that unicorns will come flying down from the clouds with signed home sale contracts.

There’s too much noise. A promotion sent out today is soon engulfed in a torrent of promotional messages that will follow in the next 24 hours. How can you catch the attention of someone in that river of information?

Today, marketers have to have a plan for repeated touchpoints.

But as a real estate agent or broker, how do you come up with six or seven exciting, appealing, attention-getting messages for each prospect?

You can’t keep telling them about the same property over and over.

First of all, there’s nothing new in that message.

Secondly, they are going to see that you are just going to keep hammering them with the same message over and over.

Real estate data provides compelling content

But what if you were armed with a full array of information on market conditions. National bulk real estate data providers such as Home Junction now a full database of hyper-local information to brokers and agents.

With advances in “big data” technology, a single agent in Pahokee, Fla.,  sitting alone at their desk can embed a few lines of code onto their website that gives them access (and visitors to their website) to a gigantic amount of information pulled from local county and municipal records and other sources.

That information includes – Recent Property Sales, charts that display local trends in Home Sales and Home Prices, Comparison Charts for where a property stands in relation to other properties in that market, School Data, Demographics, Crime Statistics, Cost of Living Indices, Government Boundaries and much more.

Talk about a source of information for multiple touchpoints!

Talk about an easy well of data that agents can turn to for constant promotions!

Talk about promotions that are sure to catch the attention of prospects, say for example a breaking news alert on changes in average home prices in XYZ neighborhood!

This is the type of content that cuts through all that clutter.

This content is also gathered not just on the county or city level, but all the way down to the neighborhood or subdivision level.

Someone who is looking to move into XYZ neighborhood is going to be very interested in what an agent has to tell them about that neighborhood.

There are plenty of touchpoints to deploy

The most obvious way to transmit this data is by email.

Create compelling subject lines: “See the latest home price data for XYZ!”

But why not use all the different media out there that consumers interact with as well?

Reach them on social media. Post a notice on Facebook or Twitter announcing  “News alert – latest market update released on XYZ neighborhood. Click to read the full report.”

Contact them with a visual promotion through Instagram. Send out a visual chart showing rising trend lines in XYZ neighborhood for home sales.

Put an ad in the newspaper – contact this agent for a full and FREE market analysis.

Talk to editors at the newspaper. They are always looking for story ideas. They don’t know local real estate like you do.

Use this data to point out interesting trends taking place in their readership area.

Same with radio. Run some promotions on the radio with offers to provide a full market analysis to listeners.

And, there’s nothing as powerful as a good old-fashioned phone call. With real estate data from Home Junction, you can offer a reason for people to listen to you. Or, in this day and age of voice mail, a reason to return your call.

What would be more appealing?

“Hello, this is Andy the real estate agent. Are you finally ready to buy (or sell) a house?”

Or, “Hello, this is Andy. I’ve just received the latest data about market conditions in the XYZ neighborhood that you were interested in and I think you will find this information very interesting. Please call me, I would be glad to share it with you.”

You have all these touchpoints to reach out to prospects with. Over and over again.

You have the resource to make these contact points effective. A data feed from Home Junction will continually supply you with fresh content and fresh ideas you can use for repeatedly.

Every day, there is literally an avalanche of promotions coming at consumers.

A real estate broker and agent today must equip themselves with the right tools to push and scrape their way past all those promotions to get compelling, relevant information to their customers.

Hype and gimmicks might catch someone’s attention, but you can only fool a consumer once. If you want to continually reach out to consumers you need to provide something real and reliable.

Real estate data is that tool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Property Data Will Help You Add This Powerful Question To Your Real Estate Sales Script

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real estate sale scripts muscleHere are some ideas on how to use hyper-local, property data to add real muscle to your real estate sales scripts.

The danger with any sales script today is that it can sound too much like a sales script.

Most consumers have already been hammered ad nauseam with the same old sales pitches from all types of businesses. Go visit a car dealer and you can almost tell them the questions they are going to ask before they ask them.

“Are you ready to buy a car today?”

“How much do you want to pay each month?”

“What do you think your trade-in is worth?”

Blah, blah, blah. Boring, boring, boring.

Don’t get us wrong. Preparing a real estate sales script is essential and certainly has tremendous value. Being prepared is always a smart approach.

You want to be ready to say the right thing to capture the interest of buyers and sellers and you want to come across as a pro who has done their homework and has extensive experience in this field.

But you have to watch out you don’t sound like you are reading from a script. Or appear as though your questioning is insincere and robotic.

Obviously, an agent has to ask preliminary questions. But you want to make sure you ask them with sincerity and personalization, not like you are reading a page in front of you.

One of the challenges for real estate professionals is how do you make your sales script sound different than the others?

How do you immediately grab the interest of a buyer or seller?

Property data helps you pose this important question

There’s an answer to this challenge.

Try this one question: “How much do you know about local market conditions?”

This query is almost like a question posed by a lawyer on a TV courtroom drama – you already know the answer.

The answer is most likely the buyer or seller has little or no idea what is going on in the market right now.

Even though they might have heard a thing or two, or perhaps read an article, chances are they don’t have many facts or an in-depth analysis of what is going on in their neighborhood or one they hope to move into.

This is your opening.

What will be your approach to this opportunity?

Hyper-local property data from national data providers such as Home Junction can make a world of difference in how you walk through that opening.

An average agent might say, “Yea, market conditions in your neighborhood are just peachy. Homes are selling like hotcakes.”

Whatever.

But a savvy agent can utilize a gigantic feed of hyper-local property data on their website and say, “I have an in-depth, complete database of information about particular neighborhoods and subdivisions in XYX county. I will be glad to pull an extensive report and provide it to you on the areas you are interested in (or for the home you are currently living in and might want to sell).”

In that report, you can include all of that critical hyper-local property data that Home Junction provides:

  • Recent home sales
  • Property sale trends
  • Home price trends
  • School information
  • Demographics
  • Crime statistics
  • Cost of living indices
  • Boundaries
  • And more…

By the way, Home Junction also offers a geo-spatial plugin that will put all of this data in visual form on a map. The map plugin can be integrated with the local MLS database so for example, an agent can display governmental and school district boundaries in relation to any property under review.

“Wow, now you got my attention” will be the first thought that pops into most people’s minds.

Who the heck wouldn’t want to see a detailed, in-depth report on the neighborhoods they are considering or the market where they want to list their home.

Offering to provide market data is THE “hot button.”

The benefits of adding a market analysis to your sales pitch

There are four immediate benefits when you offer a prospect property data from Home Junction.

  1. Value –  That offer of an in-depth market analysis immediately creates value in the mind of the prospect. They will think: “This agent is offering to give me all this information about the market where I want to buy a home or where I might want to sell? I love it.”
  2. The Most Powerful Word in the English Language – This in-depth market analysis is “free?”  I’ll take it.
  3. Convenience – just ask Amazon buyers about the power of convenience. By offering to provide all this information to a consumer, that means less work that they have to do on their own. That means less time digging around the web for them and less worry about whether or not they are actually finding the most accurate information. As you know, just because it’s on the internet, doesn’t make it right. Separating fake facts from reliable information is a big concern for consumers today. There’s too much clutter and too much hype.
  4. Instant Authority – when an agent shows a prospect a detailed, in-depth market analysis of different properties in different neighborhoods at different price points (as opposed to just telling them “the market is great right now” ) that immediately establishes that agent as an “authority” in the mind of a consumer.

As we know perception is reality. That perception of authority will not only convince the customer to do business with you, it will also persuade the consumer to refer you to their friends and family. That’s golden. The gift that keeps on giving.

And that’s when, as they say in Hollywood, your script is “green-lighted.” That’s how you create a powerful presentation that moves people to take action.

There’s a lot of b.s. going on in the world today. Consumers have created built-in sales pitch filters.

An agent or broker today needs something more than just words.

They need to strengthen their pitch by offering a full report of accurate and informative property data to become the strongest, most knowledgeable candidate in the mind of any prospect.

 

 

Property Data Can Be Used As A Neighborhood And Lifestyle “Compatability” Tool

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neighborhood and property dataDetailed neighborhood and property data can help avoid situations like this one.

A recent article talked about mistakes home buyers make and included a sad tale of people who bought a lovely home, only to discover the neighborhood was not right for them.

The couple moved from a big city urban market to a smaller market in another state. After selling their home, they were thrilled to see the size and the type of home they could buy with all that cash.

Unfortunately, after moving in, they found out all the next neighbors were much, much older than them and did not have any kids.

In fact, the entire neighborhood was like that. They also found they missed the amenities they were used to in the bigger city – choice of great restaurants, etc.

Property data is a powerful match-maker

If you reverse engineer this situation, there’s a powerful lesson and opportunity here.

This is a scenario that could be solved with property data such as the neighborhood information provided by data aggregators like Home Junction.

The property data we’re talking about consists of in-depth detail about a neighborhood – demographics, cost of living indices, school information, crime rates, surrounding businesses, etc.

Take that same couple who moved from one urban area to the suburbs. After talking to the couple about their needs, an agent can use their real estate data gathered by Home Junction to tailor a home that fits their personalities.

If the couple is middle-aged professionals, the demographic data will show the areas where there are plenty of other middle-aged professionals.

If there is a family involved, use the data to show that these particular areas have similar types of families living there. You can also display the most important information a family usually considers when buying a house – school data.

Where are the schools in relation to the property? What is the student/teacher ratio? What is the demographic makeup of the school? What is the contact information for those schools?

Home Junction provides all of this hyper-local information. They have an easy-to-embed API that will feed relevant data to an agent’s website not only to the county and zip code level, but all the way down to the neighborhood level. On any page. With continual updates.

But there’s more.

Integrate real estate mapping

Use geo-spatial mapping technology to drive home the point. With their SpatialMatch IDX, Home Junction integrates MLS listings from the local area with lifestyle information.

Say the young couple likes to golf. Pull up several properties that match their home criteria, then show on the SpatialMatch plugin where those properties are located in proximity to local golf clubs.

Perhaps they like to hike. Or walk their dog in a park. Again, use the geo-spatial data to show the location of parks near those homes. Studies have shown that homes located near a park have higher prices in general than other homes. Use that fact to your advantage (and the seller’s delight).

You can do the same for gyms, restaurants, stores. You name it.

real estate map plugin

Home Junction’s real estate map plugin.

Unfortunately for the couple mentioned above, their home was not an ideal match for them. They moved.

But the lesson here is you can use in-depth property data to show why a home and neighborhood is the perfect match for buyers. You can also use real estate data to show home sellers how you will go beyond just the number of bedrooms, baths and square feet to market their home.

You will market the lifestyle amenities that the property will provide and how the neighborhood matches the buyer’s personalities and preferences.

One neighborhood caused two homebuyers to move out. But with the right approach and the right property data, you can market neighborhoods as a great place for home buyers to move into.

 

 

How Real Estate Data Can Help You Become An Effective Publicist

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real estate publicistHere are some ideas on how to use real estate data to become your own publicist or to hire one and help make them more effective.

Why a publicist? Isn’t that someone only a Hollywood celeb would employ?

Not necessarily. Generating publicity on a local level can be a powerful marketing tool for local real estate brokers and agent.

It’s a way to break out of the pack and make your name stand out in the local community.

Today, more than ever, there are an incredible number of content providers out there.

Here’s one way to look at it. Media outlets – newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, magazine and local bloggers are all looking for story ideas.

In many cases not only is the medium looking for story angles, but every reporter at that company probably has a blog and a social media account and ALL of them are looking for story ideas as well.

Social media can be a hungry beast. If those reporters want to build up followings, they know they must post interesting content on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram

Fortunately,  news about the home market is an important topic.

But here’s the key. To approach any reporter, you must have an interesting story to present to them.

You can’t just call up a journalist and say, “Hey do a story about me.”

One, that’s not a particularly interesting angle and two, every business in town is probably doing the same thing.

This is where hyper-local real estate data gives you a tremendous edge.

Create appealing story angles with real estate data

Big Data providers such as Home Junction gather thousands of data points relevant to real estate from sources all over the country. County courthouse records. School information. Third party providers. Etc.  Their researchers know where to find the relevant data and how to aggregate it.

Home Junction then created a proprietary software API program called Slipstream that feeds the data to any website on the internet.

Therefore, a local agent in Oshkosh can embed a few bits of code on their website and tap into this gigantic database of real estate data about their local market, zip code or even neighborhood.

This is very interesting content to consumers.

Take Recent Property Sales for example. Where is the market heading? Are homes selling in the county? Is there one particular part of the county that is outselling other parts of the county? What’s the breakdown for the neighborhoods in a newspaper’s or magazine’s particular readership area?

The possibilities get even better.

Reporters are generalists. A general assignment reporter might cover a crime story one day and an interview about an interesting character in town the next. Same goes for business reporters. They might report on the construction of a new shopping center today and interview a local CEO tomorrow.

They have general knowledge about a subject. But even a real estate reporter does not have the same expertise as a local real estate agent who works in the trenches every day.

You are the real estate expert in your area. And when you embed this relevant real estate data into your website, it makes you even more of a local expert.

One strategy you can use is to use your market knowledge to interpret that data.

Perhaps point out trends taking place in certain neighborhoods. Compare one local neighborhood to another. Compare one local neighborhood to a major neighborhood in another part of the country.

The possibilities are endless.

When you call a reporter armed with some unique type of information, not just hearsay, but backed up by a credible source (in this case a national real estate data provider such as Home Junction), people will listen.

How to get publicity

One idea you might consider to accelerate your inroads into local media is to hire a local public relations person. Doesn’t have to be full-time. And it doesn’t have to be long-term.

That person can immediately help you with the contacts they have established with newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, etc.

They know who is hungry for story ideas. They have established a rapport with many of these people so that she can call them and the editors will know his or her ideas are credible and worth listening to.

Perhaps they can’t get you an interview with a local newspaper. But maybe they can get you (and your data) featured in a local magazine. That magazine might have a readership of 10,000 people and a major email subscriber list as well. Getting your name published in front of that many potential customers is certainly valuable, especially since it is FREE.

Once your foot is in the door, there is always an opportunity for more. Remember, current news goes away after a few days, in many cases, after a day.

If your interview or content works out well, the medium might ask you to be a regular source or contributor. That’s huge. That’s a publicist’s dream.

Here are a few more tips:

– Find out about deadlines. Generally, it’s best to pitch a story first thing in the morning when an editor or reporter is looking for story ideas.

– Respect the reporter’s time frame. If a reporter is writing a story and is trying to post if before the deadline, don’t bother him or her. Offer to call back when it is convenient to them.

– Call the news media in advance. If you know you will have some interesting news or your data feeds coming from Home Junction, for example, the next quarter’s results, call the editor or reporter a week or two in advance. This way your story idea is on their radar and they can work it into their schedule. Fridays are good days when most newsrooms plan the following week’s story.

Magazines publish way in advance, generally a month, so be sure to contact them much earlier.

– Prepare visuals. The Home Junction team can also work with you to present your local data in different forms – charts, tables, etc. Show this to reporters. Especially if those charts indicate a major movement, say a huge spike in home sales or property prices.

– Keep at it. As we said, your real estate data makes for an interesting story. Send a polite note on a regular basis pointing out different trends in the neighborhood. There will come a time when a reporter has run out of stories, or a story idea fell through, and they may contact you.

– Create advertorials. These are very popular today with the news media, especially newspaper real estate sections. In this case, a broker or agent can write a news article, but it a paid advertisement and must be labeled as such. However, if you write the piece as a news item, not a fluffy story about yourself, it can generate the same readership and almost the same credibility as a regular news article. This is especially true if you have credible information, such as the factual real estate data from Home Junction.

– Partner with other businesses or bloggers. Your real estate data is valuable. Perhaps a mortgage company would be interested in featuring it on their blog. Or maybe a builder. Many of these businesses will be working hard to create their own followings and you can piggyback onto their audiences with your hyper-local property information.

Let’s face it. In every marketplace, there are a ton of real estate agents. Some are full-time, pedal to the metal agents and some are retired, part-time agents. But to many consumers, all of these agents tend to blend together into one giant mass.

Using a publicist or acting as your own publicist is an effective strategy to separate yourself from the herd.

Even if you are only featured one time in a newspaper, magazine or TV station, you can copy that appearance and promote it on your website. Use it when you make a listing presentation to sellers.

When the public sees that a major media outlet has featured you, it immediately creates an impression in their mind that this agent has credibility, experience and local knowledge.

Movie stars know the importance of hiring publicists to keep their names in the public eye on a national basis. It pays off for them with higher box office sales and bigger paychecks.

The same results can work for you on the local level, with more listings and more calls from buyers. Use local real estate data to be the star of your community.

 

 

 

 

How Property Data Can Make Those Critical Email Open Rates Take Off

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property data Property data is a must-have for any broker or agent who sends out email to customers.

Why?

Research shows that poor, unappealing content is the No. 1 reason why people ignore or even (oh no!) unsubscribe from emails lists.

Let’s face it. Every business person loves email. You can launch a message out to thousands of people with just the click of a mouse. For little to no cost. There are no stamps, no envelopes, and no post office.

Therein lies the problems. There are so many emails spewing forth onto the web that people have developed blinders on what’s coming into their inbox anymore.

Consumers have heightened filters for bad emails – they can pore over subject lines faster than an airport scanner and delete the trash quicker than the neighborhood garbage man.

And after all the work a broker or agent has to do to get those email subscribers, you certainly don’t want them hitting that dreaded “unsubscribe” button (a feature that is required by law by the way).

Sure emails are free. But it doesn’t mean a broker or agent does not have to invest both time and resources to make them effective.

Because if they don’t, their competitors will.

Take open rates for example.

Where are your open rates? According to MailChimp, an email delivery platform, the average open rate for real estate agents is 20.84%.

If your emails are not hitting that level, then you’ve got a problem. Not only that, you are leaving purchases and listings on the table. Your email is underperforming.

If you are hitting that level, why not make it better? After all, every increase in open percentages means more potential business.

The great benefit of email to brokers and agents is that you only need one response from an email blast, to make it more than worth the effort. Unlike someone who is selling a watch for $9.99. The price point you are dealing with is a bit higher, say 5,000 times higher.

But it goes even deeper.

Say you have successful open rates for your email blasts. That’s great.

But what’s the click-through rate? (See, we told you, the email landscape is a complex one).

The click-through rate is the number of people who open the email and then proceed to click on a link in the email to visit the website (and advance in that precious sales funnel.)

It’s a simple equation and frankly one that’s kind of fun to watch. The more a consumer advances, the more qualified they are as a buyer or seller. In other words, the more they move toward the site and around the site, the hotter they become as a leat).

According to MailChimp, the average real estate email has a clickthrough rate of 1.91%. Frankly, that’s not a great return for all that effort in building a list and sending out emails.

If your click-through rate is low, then again, you are leaving business on the table. But 2% is not much to rant about either. Plenty of opportunities there.

Property data adds power to your email content

How can you fix this?

The solution is a simple one – content. Interesting, relevant, hyper-local content.

Where do you get that content?

From property data providers such as Home Junction, Inc.

Home Junction is part of the new breed of BIG DATA providers who have the ability to amass a tremendous amount of real estate information from a number of different sources.

Those sources include government records on the county and city levels, information from schools, listings of businesses, etc. etc. etc.

One of the big advancements in BIG DATA has been the ability of these providers to feed that information to a local agent in Anytown, USA.

However, that agent doesn’t have to order giant bulky disks full of information. By implementing a few lines of code, that information is fed directly into an agent’s website on whatever page they want.

For example, if an agent is geo-farming That’s A Great Place to live community, the agent can insert hyper-local data about that community alongside listings.

That hyper-local data includes:

  • Recent Homes Sales
  • Trends for Property Prices
  • School Information including student-teacher ratios
  • Local Business listings based on distance
  • Demographics such as age and income
  • Crime Statistics
  • Cost of Living indices

And much more.

Add punch to those subject lines

Now’s that’s perfect content for an email blast.

Instead of just sending another listing, why not put something to this effect in the subject line?

“What You Should Know About The Local Housing Market”

“Prices Are Rising In Your Area. See Charts”

“See Latest Real Estate Data On Up And Coming Neighborhoods”

“Here Are Some Reasons Why You Might Buy In This Community”

Interested consumers will have an interest in this type of property data.

They know it’s not hype, it’s not salesy, it’s factual.

The beauty of email is that brokers or agents can experiment with different subject lines to see which ones get a maximum open rate.

Some systems even allow A/B split testing for email subscribers lists that have a large enough sample for a decent comparison of one subject line versus another.

They key point here is that you now have valuable data at your fingertips to promote – property data that is local, relevant, accurate and current.

Another beauty of finding great subject lines is that you can use them over and over again, with just a slight modification.

For example, with this subject line: “Check Out Latest Price Trends In My Favorite Neighborhood For July.” If you see this subject line works, all you have to do is change the month. Home Junction will supply a new bit of fresh data every month. It’s that simple.

Do the same type of experimentation to increase click-through rates.

You might not want to splash all that local property data directly on the email page.

Perhaps, just put in some teaser information with a link back to the real estate data on your website.

You could even experiment with putting a contact form someone on your page before the information, prompting people to fill out the form if they are interested in learning more about local listings or selling their property.

(But be careful with this, because any bit of friction before a user reaches their destination on a website might cause them to leave. Maybe put the pop-form after they visit the page. Home Junction can help with this as well).

There’s more to email marketing.

A broker or agent can segment their lists, for example. Just send certain emails to people interested I Want To Live There Neighborhood, for example.

The time and day are also important.

So is inserting the prospects name, etc.

Bottom line. Even with all those features, if you are not sending interesting content, you are not going to boost your open and click-through rates.

It’s that simple. All it takes is one phone call. Then you will give your email blasts a property data rocket to boost their marketing power.