We Build Your E-mail List

Do you plan to be in business in 24 months, or are you planning to change careers?

If you plan to be in business, then an email list of current and potential customers is a required asset.

Lots of attention is given to social media and web traffic when marketing people get together and communicate the latest and greatest to their potential clients. However, e-mail is still the more efficient and cost effective form of marketing. People use email to get work done. Hence, there is no wasted energy with e-mail. People are more likely to click through and transact on an email than in other forms of marketing communication.

In fact, to a large extent, social media is best used as the mouse trap to capture real customers – or e-mail addresses.

Successfully collecting e-mail addresses is like guaranteeing long term success in your farm. So, why doesn’t everybody do it?

The challenge is that e-mail marketing is hard. Successful email marketers know what they are doing. You can’t just send any old message to an email list. There is risk involved. If you send the wrong message, your potential clients can opt out of your list, thus removing themselves from your contact reach forever.

The solution is building a list that will last. You do this with value. Each message you send should take thought. It should support your brand story, or your specialty – the single reason that you should support many, many clients in successful transaction after successful transaction. Each message should be helpful or useful to your potential client in some measurable context. This means that the message does not have to be useful today, but it should be useful within the context that you connected with your potential client.

Questions to ask yourself when setting out to build your email list:

1. How many people do you want on your list?
2. What information is useful to the people on your list?
3. How can you extend your brand story to people on your list in a useful way?

Benchmarks

In farm marketing, a good and realistic bench mark for e-mail marketing is to aim for 10-15% of all residents in your Farm. This is a short term benchmark. Over time, you should aim for 20-30% of all residents. But, it takes time and effort.

Techniques

1. Host a local event
2. Walk door to door and ask for email contacts
3. Run a Facebook campaign with a reward in exchange for contact information
4. Parnter with businesses that target the same farm area
5. Publish local content and advertise

More about E-mail

People use e-mail to get work done. Real estate transactions are work. The public trusts that your messages are important, unless you bombard them with information that is not valuable. The best way to get somebody to open your e-mail is to offer them value.

Examples of Value Statements

Short term value – examples include small, low priced incentives. Consider this example – answer this survey for a $5 gift card to Starbucks. Or, like my page for a chance to win a new iPad II.

Long Term Value – examples include – long term thinking and strategy. Consider an article premised on the prediction of home values in 5 years – who would find that article valuable? Yup – you guessed it. Anybody who is retiring in 5 years and planning to sell their home. Who would they want to work with?

What is your Brand Story? How does it play with the information that you plan to distribute? What story do you plan to tell? Who are your target customers?