Title Marketing That Works

Leveraging Cheap Database Technology to Solve Your Lead Generation Problems

What are your marketing problems? Has the recent tight market cut-off your lead flow? Are you getting less business from your current customers? Is it difficult to follow-up with your current customers and frustrating then prospects fall through the cracks due to lack of follow-up?

Whatever it is, the first thing you need to do is have a list and work that list. It’s no coincidence Real Estate agents call their list of customers and prospects their “farm”. With a good list and cheap database to manage your list you can grow your current customers and nurture your prospects and have a bumper crop. Your list will be a valuable part of your business.

You can get started here with less than $300. Just follow these next few steps and you will be on your way to solving your lead generation problems.

1. Go Online and Purchase a list. There are several sources for prospect lists. If you Google “real estate agent list” you will see several companies selling lists. You can define your list criteria demographically, by city, state, county, almost any way you would like. I recently bought a list for a client with 2700 agents (including email) for about $130. One of the same companies selling real estate agent lists also selling attorney lists. I have found the best source for mortgage lists to be infousa.com. These are the same folks who advertise on TV as “Sales Genie” prospect providers. They are more expensive than the real estate agent lists. You can also go to trade associations and purchase lists from them.

2. Put the list into a database. Having a database of your current customers and prospects can be a valuable part of the value of your business. This is well worth the time you will have to put in to do it right. If you purchase a list you will usually receive it in some format that will open in Microsoft Excel. From there you can import it into your database. You should also add all of your current and past customers. Don’t forget the box of business cards from last years real estate trade show.

For your database there are several inexpensive options. I recommend using Act! a customer relationship management database with many great features and many you may never use. Act! 2008 is available for only $99 at Costco and has a retail of $229. You can sync your Act! with Outlook. Another option is just keeping your list in Excel. Excel is a good format to do mail merge letters and mass mailings but is really tough to look things up and read the information. I know many people who use Outlook. It has many features to help you manage customer relationships.

3. Use the database to contact your current customers, past customers, and prospects. Start with your current customers. Send them a thank you letter or give them a call. Just tell them you were going through you list and just want to call and say thank you. 70% of all customer defections are due to neglect. This will stem the tide. See if you can reactivate old customers. Again, give them a call, send a letter. Remember to ask for referrals if it feels appropriate.
For contacting your prospects (the list you just bought) I recommend sending three introductory letters over a two week period and then follow up with a phone call. The letters will “warm-up” the prospect with some information about your company. You can include a small but distinctive gift in the envelope to get their attention and make your letter more memorable. I will send all OLTA readers three introductory letter examples. Just email me at cripley@smg2.com for your free letters.

Act! can do mail merges (merging your list or parts of your list into a single letter to do a mass mailing) to print tens or hundreds of the same letter. You can do this with Excel and Word but segmenting your list is more difficult.

If you follow these three steps, I guarantee you will get new business from your efforts. Make a commitment to spend time executing these steps. Don’t miss a week. Schedule some time on your calendar to focus on marketing activity and don’t miss it.