RealBird Blog

The Most Important Tool for Rental Marketing on Open Listing Markets Is...

 

The most important tool for rental marketing on open listing markets is the one that let you capture the leads contact information at the first interaction. Our recent post on Homes By SMS explains the value of lead capture early in the process with SMS text code marketing, and how it is crucial with open rental listings, where many can represent a property and compete for the business.

You can read the full post and get started on that blog, but here is a quick overviews:

Homes By SMS allows you to provide access to your home search application (rental searches in this particular use case) via text messaging. The main benefit for you is that you capture the lead at the very beginning of the search process, at the first interaction; and for your prospective clients the option provides a convenient way to easily start their search by simply texting (at places where that's the most convenient interaction)

In open listing rental markets, having access to lead information including name, email, demographics via the advanced caller ID option can be the difference between lead turned into a client and lead being lost.

Homes By SMS can integrate with the different RealBird search options (IDX, national search etc.) but it can be also set up to work with your existing search engine and application. We'll have more post about one of our recent custom search integrations, but you can get started with Homes By SMS with one of the many search engines it already supports.

-- The RealBird Team

Caller ID is Now Available for the RealBird SMS Real Estate Marketing platform

Twilio - the service powering the RealBird SMS marketing platform - has some amazing new features using 3rd party Add-ons and we added support for them in RealBird as well.  This is just a quick post about this update while we are working on the full announcement, should you want to start exploring it today.

One of the most useful add-ons is the caller ID lookup feature. With that, you can now receive name, address, emails and other public, non-confidential information about your prospect via service providers like Next Caller. These are all actionable information and will greatly enhance your marketing efforts and best of all, it is a low, per-lead cost, so you only pay for it when you actually receive new inquiries. 

For example, adding Next Caller's add-on to your Twilio account will cost only an additional 5 cents per lead. The standard rate is 1.5 cent per lead and for a total of 1.5+5=6.5 cents per SMS inquiry, you can have access to the clients name, gender, address and email if publicly available.

To add this feature:

1. Visit your Twilio account's Add-on page
2. Select the add-on and click "Install" (e.g. Advanced Caller ID by Next Caller)
3. On the Configuration page of the add-on, under the "Use it" section, select the checkbox for "Incoming SMS Message" and click "Save" at the bottom of that page.

That's all. No changes are necessary in your RealBird account, assuming you already have the SMS platform configured.

We'll publish a more detailed tutorial for new RealBird members and in case you haven't setup the SMS platform yet. In the meantime, should you have questions, please do not hesitate to email or call us.

Important note: Caller ID and related data are provided by third parties via Twilio and RealBird in no way can guarantee accuracy. We are just forwarding that data provided by them to you. Please follow all local and federal regulations when marketing to your clients using these information.

Happy Marketing !

-- The RealBird Team

 

67 Slides From Upworthy That Will Improve Your Real Estate Marketing Overnight

See these 67 slides of content marketing gems from Upworthy If you don't learn at least one new thing from these slides that's applicable for your real estate marketing, than you won't from any other sources. This is just a treasure chest of actionable information, like the one that insists that you write 25 headlines for each shares or the one about how to properly frame them on Facebook. 

Whether you are a fan of Upworthy or not, a follower of growth hacking techniques or just a casual marketer, there are more than one slides that are easily applicable to your online real estate marketing efforts, we promise !

We'd love to hear your takeaway after reading the slides!

And by the way, we did write 25 headlines for this post. We'll be happy to share them, just ask :)

-- Your RealBird Team

Webinar recording: $14.2M Worth Of Listings With Expired Listings Marketing

As promised, we are sharing the recording of the yesterday's webinar with guest speaker Janie Coffey. Over 500 registered to the webinar, it was one of the most popular ones for a long time. Thank you so much Janie for sharing your knowledge with us.

The slides are also available on Slideshare for future reference: 

Thank you so much Janie for being our guest speaker.

 

-- The RealBird Team

www.RealBird.com

What a difference good photography makes ! Or visual communication in real estate marketing

It's no secret that a correctly priced property in an active marketplace will sell in a predictable time frame.

However:

You could speed up the sales cycle, and even sell the property at a higher price by employing professional staging, higher quality photography, and using innovative ways for marketing the listing to reach more well qualified prospects..

As a RealBird case study, please meet this beautiful home on Audubon Lakes Dr in Baton Rouge ( courtesy of Mike Denham & Carmen Widmeier ) 

Click the image above to see the actual property website

Following are some of the highlights that make this property website stand out:

1. Visual communication #1: The background picture instantly suggests that the property is a golf property. No reading of the fine lines is required, it takes just a second for the visitor to realize it - it is visual and intuitive.
2. Visual communication #2: The property pictures are outstanding and hence suggest "luxury" and "quality". They also suggest that the seller of this property and the real estate agents marketing it take pride in what they are selling. This results in another powerful motivation: "trust". Again, without the need of explanation. It's communicated visually.
3. Visual communication #3: The primary photo taken during twilight is perfect for communicating "peacefulness" and "relaxation". At least that was my very first thought when first looking at the website. These are two very important considerations for buyers for calling a place a home.

As you see, attention to details like this is very powerful: within seconds of visiting the site, prospective buyers already know that the property is associated with "golf", "leisure", "luxury", "peacefulness" and "trust". Without reading a single sales pitch or digging through detailed descriptions. Powerful marketing right there.

Once these concepts are set as a baseline - as we noticed - Mike and Carmen have put a lot of effort into sharing the website with their network. They also started to announce the availability of the property on their Facebook page, days before it actually hit the market, hence building up excitement. If you click through to the property website, you'll see the growing number of social media shares (Facebook Likes, Tweets etc.) which again, add to the visual communication: New visitors instantly see the many Facebook Likes (35 at the time of writing this) and again, without thinking twice, those social counters provide positive feedback for them that the property is special and desireable, and in the case of an actual prospective buyer, this may create a sense of urgency. We also believe that the higher the counters on those social widgets are, the more likely that a new user will re-share it with their own network of friends.

So go ahead, "walk that extra mile", take good pictures, get inspired by other RealBird members' creations and make sure that you always share your own listings on your social networks. Those counters are part of the visual communication. And it takes only a few seconds.

Carmen and Mike - Congrats. Very well done ! And thanks for letting us use your RealBird property website as a case study. 

-- The RealBird Team
www.realbird.com