If you are working in real estate, you are probably aware of the importance of direct marketing campaigns. Direct Mail marketing has a high conversion rate for estate agents, because you can target your exact customers geographically and send information or special offers straight to their physical home address. So why is it such an effective strategy? And what tools are available to make a direct mail campaign simpler and easier for you?
Why is direct mail marketing so important in real estate?
Direct mail marketing has excellent conversion rates in real estate (over 5%) because you are targeting people in the exact geographical area that you can help and offering them a service that they may not need right now, but are very likely to need in the future. Direct mail marketing is simple, targeted and effective.
If you are interested, you can read more about How direct mail advertising can benefit your real estate business in this article here.
But managing a campaign is not a simple or easy task. It may be something that you want to outsource to a company such as Supercharged. Or it may be something that you could tackle in house if you had the right tools for the job.
5 tools and techniques you can use with direct mail marketing in your real estate company
You will be pleased to know that there are some fantastic tools that can make your direct mail campaign run with efficiency. Save time and maximize your campaign by using one of these tools:
- PURL (Personalized Uniform Resource Locator)
- Mail Tracking
- USPS Informed Deliver
- Call Tracking
- CRM
1. PURL (Personalized Uniform Resource Locator)
PURL stands for ‘Personalized Uniform Resource Locator’ and this can be a valuable tool in tracking the success of your direct mail marketing campaign. You may think that direct mail can’t be tracked like online marketing campaigns, but you would be wrong to think that, because a PURL can make your campaign trackable.
You may have heard the term URL being used on its own – a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is what you probably understand to be a web address – what you need to type into the address bar to access a particular website. So, if you have a website, you will have a URL such as www.superchargedoffers.com
A PURL creates another unique and personalized URL that you can use to track your direct marketing campaign only. This is what is printed on the marketing material for direct mail such as letter heads, postcards and leaflets.
Marketers generate PURLs by uploading lists and mapping them into specialist software, which will merge the list with a domain to create a PURL.
2. QR Code Mail Tracking
These days, you can actually use QR codes to help you to track conversions on your direct mail marketing campaigns. If you don’t already know what a QR code is, it’s a black and white scannable code that you can put on leaflets and print based marketing. It often contains a special offer or tickets to an event. When your potential customer scans it then it will take them to a dedicated landing page. You can design postcards and leaflets on www.postary.com and it will automatically insert a QR code for you!
3. USPS Every Door tool
If you are running a direct mail marketing campaign and have never heard of USPS Every door tool, then this could transform your business and change your life! You can use this tool to target potential customers in certain ZIP code areas, so for example, an affluent ZIP code area where you are particularly looking for people with houses to sell. Enter up to 5 ZIP codes that you want to target and then you can hover your mouse over an area and find out the number of residents as well as their average age range and annual income.
4. Call Tracking
Did you know that you can also use call tracking to see how your direct mail marketing campaigns are performing? Your ultimate goal from direct mail marketing is to get them on the phone so that you can discuss their needs and turn that lead into a customer. With call tracking, you can get a unique call tracking telephone number and give this out on all your direct mail marketing material. Then when you receive calls on this number they become trackable and you can measure:
- Number of inbound calls received
- Amount of prospects vs. inbound calls received
- Cost per Lead
- Appointment Conversion rate
If you set out targets at the start of your direct mail marketing campaign you can then use the data to measure your success so that you can monitor and refine your campaign.
5. CRM
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool can be one of the most important tools that a marketer can use. It’s a piece of software or tool that manages interactions with customers and tells you where they are in the sales pipeline. It organizes and analyses customer information to help you to manage your customer pipeline with ease. This helps you to streamline your sales process and get the right information to the right customers at the right time. Some of the most popular CRMs to use in real estate are Wise Agent, Pipedrive, Zendesk Sell, Zoho, Realvove and Freshworks CRM.
These simple tools and techniques will hopefully make your direct marketing campaign more efficient, effective and trackable! Remember, when you track your direct mail marketing efforts you can see what’s working and what’s not, and adjust your campaign accordingly to get the best conversion rates.
If you feel that you need help with your direct mail marketing campaign you can contact us here at Supercharged offers. You might also like to read this article on Choosing the right real estate agency to represent your brand.
