
What Is Lead Nurturing?
Lead nurturing is the art (and science!) of commencing and maintaining a relationship with a lead through the sales funnel. Leading a prospect all the way from visiting your website (top of funnel) to handing them the keys to their new home (payday!) can mean months, if not years, of careful nurturing.
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The goal of lead nurturing is to be the agent who your lead calls when they’re ready to sign an agreement. Your careful stewardship of your relationship has led to that moment. It has taken patience, communication, consistency, and—most importantly—the ability to remain relevant and helpful.
The idea of nurturing every contact in your database might feel overwhelming. But understanding where your leads are in the funnel will help you go about this vital task in an efficient way.
Leads who are in the “awareness” stage, at the tip top of the funnel, need a lot less attention than leads in the conversion stage. Prioritising your focus will make your nurturing more effective and leave you plenty of time for your other real estate duties.
Let’s take a look at the tools and strategies you’ll need to master the art of real estate lead nurturing and reach the closing table.
Nurture Like an Expert
How do you stay out of the junk folder and top of mind for any real estate needs? You follow these three key tenets of touchpoints:
Personalise: Sprinkle in some personalised emails, texts, calls, social media messages, and letters. Send one to celebrate a birthday or congratulate the lead on their favourite sports team’s win.
Show your creativity: Originality drives engagement. Content that is interesting and unexpected makes people want to open, read, and follow your calls to action. This might not come easily, but taking the extra time to think outside of the box will pay off down the line in your nurturing journey.
Be authentic: Staying true to yourself (and true to your brand) makes nurturing all the easier. People are going to be drawn to you and engage with you if they feel like they’re getting to know the real you and not just a sales pitch.
Lead Nurturing Begins & Ends With Your CRM
Not everyone has a love affair with their customer relationship manager (CRM), but honestly, it’s your greatest partner in this mission to nurture and convert leads. Every tool we discuss below will be better optimised if you have a CRM that can track your communication and prompt your activities.
CRMs will enable you to collect relevant information on your leads, beyond their contact information. You should be able to add birthdays, anniversaries, kids’ names, social media accounts, even favourite sports teams. This type of meta information will help you as you establish long-term relationships.
CRMs can also help you organise and segment your contacts. Categorising your contacts into different types ensures that you’re sending the right content to the right recipients. Separate your contacts into smaller subgroups based on where they are in the funnel and the types of clients they are. This means you can send shorter, more targeted messages, more often.
Many CRMs will allow you to execute the bulk of your touchpoints directly from your dashboard. You can send email drip campaigns, text helpful listings, and even interact with a lead’s social media right from your CRM.
A solid CRM is also crucial to monitoring and evaluating your activities. Is what you’re doing converting leads to clients? Agents who can track their successes will save time and money capitalising on what works.
So before we talk about any nurturing strategies, the very first—and most important—step is to fall in love with your CRM.
Organising & Segmenting Your Contacts
Your CRM is full of dozens, if not hundreds, of potential leads. With your best-friend CRM, you can organise your contacts so you’re sending them the most targeted content, reaching out in the most effective way, and staying on schedule with your touchpoint cadence.
Here’s how we would recommend you segment your contacts, along with typical strategies for how often to reach out and the types of outreach that work best.
Lead Funnel | Stage | Touch Point | Activity |
Want to buy/sell right now | Conversion | Daily | Call, SMS, Email |
Actively considering buying or selling | Consideration | Twice a week | Call, SMS, Email |
Passively considering buying/selling | Interest/ Consideration
| Twice a month | Email, social media, direct mail, event invites |
Undecided (on the fence) | Interest | Once a month | Email, social media, direct mail, event invites, phone call |
Cold leads | Awareness | Once a quarter | Email, social media, direct mail, event invites |
Automated & Personalised Lead Nurturing Tools
Nurturing is all about touchpoints, or the number of times you initiate contact with your leads. There are lots of different ways to reach out to your contacts, including email, SMS, social media, event invitations, and the good old-fashioned phone call.
Email Lead Nurturing
Everyone knows that email is a powerful tool for lead nurturing and conversion, but it’s surprising how many people get it wrong.
Agents often take a set-it-and-forget-it approach, creating automated email campaigns and blasting would-be clients with too much or the wrong type of information and then no personal follow-up. But with the right approach, email is still king.
Your emails should be a mix of content so your recipients don’t get bored. Campaigns should consist of anywhere from four to 10 different targeted emails.
You’ll want to space your emails out so there are several days or even a week in between, depending on your audience. You want that sweet spot between staying top of mind and driving people to the unsubscribe button.
The key to a solid drip campaign is to remember your goal: to create a lasting relationship that nurtures your leads over time. Your emails should lead to a call to action (CTA), such as an in-person meeting.
You’ll need several different types of campaigns for your segmented buyers and sellers. Your automated campaigns should have a mix of appropriate, interesting, relevant, and helpful content. Here are some of our favourite email examples:
Hot new listings
Market data
Community news
Homes you’ve successfully sold
Homebuyer resources
Seller or homeowner tips
Testimonials
Why people love living in your community
Blog posts from your site
Newsletter featuring a combination of content
Upcoming local events or business spotlights
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