If you’ve been listening at all to the plethora of marketing experts everywhere the last few years, overwhelmingly the main point they make is that you must “build your list.” This is your contact list of people you know, people you’ve met, and people you’ve already done business with. In the 20th Century, this meant having a full Rolodex.

If you saw the final episode of “Mad Men” you would have seen Joan Harris starting a money-making business quickly because of the impressive number of contacts in her Rolodex (list). Joan built her list over 10 years. You probably have as well, even if it is not organized yet into a recognizable form.

Creating a targeted Real Estate prospect list will need extra work. Getting a list that will meet your prospect profile will need a little more work.

 

How do you create your ideal Real Estate prospect list?  

At HoopJumper, we train you on how to create, organize and manage your list with whichever CRM you chose to use (MailChimp, Top Producer, etc…)

Once you get your Contacts sorted out and imported, we will train you how using your website, you can automatically stay in touch with your “List” and keep yourself top-of-mind with your List as their “Realtor of Choice.”

 

CLEANING UP YOUR CONTACT LIST

Many Agents have used many different types of online databases from different companies. Learn how to “export” your contacts into a CSV (Comma Separated Values) list that can be imported into an Excel spreadsheet.

If you have kept all your contacts only through gmail and you were not able to maintain a database before, we recommend that you export your gmail contacts to a CSV file that you would open up in Excel. (Instructions to Export Gmail contacts into CSV file: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/24911 )

Once you’ve opened up your contacts in Excel, first go through and delete people you do not want to be in contact with, like spammers, newsletters, and people who you really are not a personal contact with.

Add 2 columns to help you CATEGORIZE and SUBCATEGORIZE all your contacts:

CATEGORIES:

Contacts

Prospects

Clients

Referral Partners

CONTACTS

Your goal with this category: This category is for ALL your contacts. Everybody is a contact. You can sub-categorize your “Contacts” like this:

> Contacts: Sphere

> Contacts: Family

> Contacts: BNI/Chamber (or whatever professional or charity groups you belong to)

> Contacts: Vendors

> Contact: Other Realtors

> Contacts: Personal

> Contacts: General

PROSPECTS

Your goal with this category: To move people from “Contacts” to “Prospects”

> Prospects: Buyers

> Prospects: First-Time Buyers

> Prospects: Sellers

> Prospects: Farm

> Prospects: Military

CLIENTS

Your goal with this category: To move people from “Prospects” to “Clients”. You would enter the YEAR you had them as a client (or you could separate it in a more intuitive way to you.).

> Clients: 2015

> Clients: 2014 (separate by year if you choose)

REFERRAL PARTNERS

Your goal with this category: To turn “Clients” into “Raving Fans” who will then send you Referrals, thus becoming “Referral Partners”

Once your Excel Spreadsheet is all completed, we can then import the database into Mailchimp or another CRM of your choice.

 

NOTE: THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT TASK THAT WILL MAKE YOU MONEY.

Gather Home Addresses, Birthdays, and Home Anniversaries (when someone closed their house you sold them). Once you have all of this, we will show you how to use a Relationship Marketing System we have already set up for you so that everyone you want to stay in contact with will keep you “top of mind.”

———

What is the best way to get people to subscribe to your list?

Along with people you will be adding from your Gmail list and other contacts you’ve collected from other sources, going forward our goal is to get new people to sign up on your “list.” To accomplish this, we recommend that you offer some kind of “ethical bribe” – either a “Special Report” that someone in your market would find so compelling that they will enter their name and email address (perhaps a title like “7 Crucial Things You Must Know Before Listing Your Home in <<your area>>”) or a service like signing up to get new home listings in their area as soon as they go on the market.

———

What will you send these people who are signed up?

With your HoopJumper Great Real Estate Website you have 3 easy ways of adding content to your website:

1) Regular Blogging using the WordPress “Post” system

2) Sending email to your own website using your Secret Virtual Blogging Assistant Email Address

3) Using an App on your smartphone like you would Facebook on your phone to send Photos to your Blog.

In addition to these “Posts” being automatically Broadcast to your Facebook and Twitter, we have a service to setup your Mailchimp account to create a WEEKLY DIGEST of all your Blog Posts and email them as an eNewsletter.

That means that if you posted 3 beautiful photos of your area to your blog, a personal note about the summer market, and perhaps an Open House or Just Listed during the week, all of these would be included in the Weekly Enews that would be sent out automatically on a weekly basis.

This is how you will use your List to create a database that will become the genesis of the automated enewsletter program that will automatically compile your week’s worth of Blog posts and send them as a weekly newsletter and keep you top of mind with everyone you know as their Realtor of Choice.