October 25, 2021
Ginger Crosbie
Breathe Life Into Your Real Estate Lead Follow Up
How many unread emails are sitting in your inbox, right now?
You likely have significantly more unread emails than you do text messages.
In fact, if you’re anything like me you actively avoid checking your email when that number starts to feel overwhelming. Instead of scrolling through copious unread emails, you might even search for a sender to see if you’ve received a response you’re waiting on.
Email is a lot different today than it was 10 years ago.
And although this image is poking fun at how our perspectives of mail have shifted, there is still a lot of truth in this meme.
That’s why you should never rely on email as a primary means of follow up for new real estate leads.
Speed to lead is crucial when it comes to winning at lead follow up.
ASAP is no longer acceptable. You have to be able to respond to an online lead inquiry within 5 minutes of receiving the notification for you to have the highest probability of making contact with that lead.
But if that follow-up is happening via phone call or email, you likely won’t get the same results compared to following up with a text message.
Think about it. What’s the one notification you always check immediately when you hear the chime?
… a text message.
Even if you can’t respond immediately you look at the notification to discern the urgency and importance of the message.
Your leads are no different and the numbers don’t lie.
People prefer to text.
Texting requires little effort.
Conversations happen in quick bite sized chunks and with the right question, a response may only require a few keystrokes.
That makes texting easy for your lead and effective for you.
Even if you send a text and don’t get an immediate response, your lead is likely to respond once they are available.
Think about it…
When you compose an email you are rarely asking one question. You’re typically asking a series of questions to gather some information. An email typically requires more effort to construct as the sender and to respond to as the recipient.
If your recipient opens your email, skims through and sees that they have to answer a series of questions, they may put off replying. Even if they were the one that reached out to you for information.
Their response requires time and energy whereas a series of text exchanges with well thought out questions feels like less of a commitment and easier than getting on the phone with someone or responding to an email.
Recognizing these two simple truths: the importance of speed to lead and that texting is the easiest form of communication (at least initially) for your leads is key.
Begin to leverage texting as your first line of communication with a lead will help breathe new life into your lead follow-up.
You’re too ambitious and too busy to let email be the reason you aren’t connecting with eager buyers.
Need more proof? Check out these other posts we’ve written about the effectiveness of texting:
Book a demo today if you’d like to learn how Smart Also can help you breathe new life into your real estate lead follow-up using text messaging.
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