How to Use Mailing Lists in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Your mailing list is a valuable business tool to be fully optimised and used in commercial brokerage. You can establish your personal ‘brand’ locally, build a level of respect in your market, and attract new business in the form of clients and property listings. (NB – you can get plenty of mailing list ideas in our ‘Snapshot’ program right here – it’s free)
So, these things are good outcomes from a business perspective in a real estate agency. In saying that, the mailing list you develop and use must be relevant, accurate, and up to date. It costs money to send a mail piece, and it takes a reasonable amount of time and effort to get the message out; a strategy should develop specifically for this special method of marketing.
It is interesting to note that many brokerages have mailing lists that are ‘random’ at best, and ‘disasters’ at worst. That simple problem comes about because the list is usually not managed well by those team members that are at the ‘front line’ of client and prospect contact. There is always a good degree of maintenance needed on any client list.
Set Rules to Marketing Letter and Message Creation
Any mailing list must be shaped and maintained using rules and targets like these:
- Split the list into groups and property criteria such as zones of the city, types of businesses, types of people, investors, sellers, buyers, tenants, and landlords.
- The property needs and interests of people can then be set or be defined by locations, prices, rents, timing, budgets, and property types.
- The business people in the list can divide into business types, owner occupiers, tenants, franchise groups, and minor versus major corporations.
- The names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and the property facts should be checked regularly for accuracy and change (updates).
- Know the processes behind ‘permission marketing’. Don’t send something to a person that could be seen or classified as ‘spam’ or ‘trash’.
- Personalise the letter or email for the message that you are sending. The message should be about the prospect and most particularly their property interests or needs; the message should not be totally about you, your services, or your brokerage.
- Every letter or mail piece sent should be followed up with a telephone call as part of an ongoing contact process. Use the letter to build a conversation with new people and current clients.
- Regularity is important in messages sent. Structure a plan of mailings for the entire year and into chosen market segments that match your property speciality. When you focus your message on market segments, the conversions to meetings and calls can be greatly improved.
So, the information held on the mailing list should be reasonably ‘high level’ and suitably shaped for the target audience. The ‘generic’ letter or email today does not work and soon gets relegated to the ‘trash bin’.
Create Readership ‘Value’
Before you send a marketing message out to your list, think about the ‘value’ that the message provides or conveys to the reader. If there is no ‘recipient value’ in the letter or email, then don’t send it.
The message you send or provide is then special and real. How do you build readership ‘value’ in the message sent? Try some of these:
- Information about a recent settled sale
- Information about a nearby transacted lease
- Vacancy information for the area
- Supply and demand factors for the region
- Updates on new property developments
- Stories from the location that could be interesting, historic, or predictive
- Images of a local building or precinct
- Details of a recent listing of note for the location
- Graphs of property trends over the last couple of years
- Sales or leasing results graphed to a time frame of months or years
- Updates on regional changes such as roads, zonings, business growth, and investment
There are plenty of ideas here to build a valuable message to send in or with your mailing piece. The traditional letter still has a great impact in commercial real estate marketing.
Keep the process simple, but make the message ‘valuable’. As the industry specialist for a location, you want to build trust and relevance as part of your ‘brand’. This mailing strategy will help you grow your business in commercial real estate brokerage.
