It's already May, said to be the best time to sell properties. However, the experts believe that if real estate sales don't pick up soon, they might declare it a dud. Mortgage rates skyrocketed by 15 basis points last month, while existing and pending home sales dropped in March.
While the median home sales decreased for two consecutive months, nationwide real estate price declines are impossible. Issues like tight inventory keep these house prices perpetually high, especially for first-time buyers. This scenario poses a challenge and thousands of opportunities for real estate agents.
People need a home, and real estate investors need properties to upgrade for reselling. These are enough reasons why, despite the challenges in the industry, the demand for real estate remains high. Use this fact to your advantage if you're in the real estate business. Improve your marketing schemes and sell more properties. Investing in real estate greeting cards for lead farming is one way.
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Every real estate agent aims to get a massive chunk of the industry's total sales. A high market share means you're selling more properties than others. It also means better revenue for your agency. Achieving this goal isn't impossible with the right marketing strategy. You can continuously pursue traditional marketing, but the cost of each campaign could limit your efforts.
The answer to this predicament is an effective marketing campaign that combines traditional and digital marketing. The best example of this campaign is real estate greeting card farming. You can reach your target market, check in with repeat buyers, and build a new network without spending too much.
Realtors can use greeting cards to sell their listings by creating an emotional relationship with their audience. These handwritten greeting cards can reinforce your target market's trust in your ability to sell homes.
Make sure to distinguish these greeting cards from real estate farming postcards. The latter is most real estate agents more common card marketing strategy. They often start with a blank farming postcard template that they can design.
The back of the postcard design usually has a message encouraging people to take action, along with a list of the services the realtor offers. Realtors often include their contact information to maximize the use of these postcards.
Aside from these relevant details, realtors add their name, social media account, email address, and link to their website landing page. With these, people can quickly contact a real estate agent.
The purpose of these two cards is similar. They both aim to gather leads and convert them into buying real estate. However, greeting cards are more personalized and friendlier. It adds a human touch to what should have been a plain marketing scheme. You can add a non-promotional message, making your customers feel special. With this card, you're still selling, but you're doing it indirectly.
You can partner with a mailing service provider to send your "just listed postcards" and personalized greeting cards to your target farm area. These strategies may be an old tactic. However, they're ingenious ways of showing people what's for sale and who they should contact if they like what they see.
Additionally, you're showing your customers that you care about them through greeting cards. Instead of boring them with “just listed postcards” or “just sold postcards,” you're sending a message that you're not just after doing business and selling properties to them.
When you send birthday, anniversary, get well soon, or Christmas cards to them, they see you as thoughtful. That simple act can make them develop positive feelings toward you. When they like you, selling is easy. Postcards don't offer this advantage since your customers view the latter as a marketing strategy.
Whichever card marketing strategy you use, expect to see returns slowly. Some real estate agents wait for at least nine months of continuous efforts after noticing changes in lead generation. However, with handwritten greeting cards, you know you’re getting qualified leads.
Most people mistake farming as solely sending greeting cards and postcards to a specific area. This scheme isn't the entirety of real estate farming. It's just part of lead farming.
Farming is a real estate marketing strategy focusing on getting new leads from a specific neighborhood or area. The real estate agent employing this strategy sends these cards to addresses repeatedly. The same agent also tries to be visible in the community by staging neighborhood events, door-knocking, hosting parties, and participating in community activities.
Between sending real estate postcards and greeting cards, the latter offers better results. Why? Simply because it adds a human element to the process. It appeals to the receiver's emotions. People who receive handwritten mailers can easily interact with the sender favorably.
If sending a real estate greeting card is new, now is the best time to explore it. Consider the following benefits:
One of the most compelling reasons to send real estate greeting cards is the assurance they reach your target market. You send these cards to your target market's home on specific occasions. With this, you know the people you want to contact gets the message.
Greeting cards are better than postcards in reaching an audience because there's a higher chance that people read a personalized card than marketing material. You may still grab your audience's attention with a stunning photo, but you win them over with a thoughtful message.
These real estate postcard templates can contain a photo of the property you're selling, the price, and your contact details. You can easily convince your target market to respond with a well-crafted call to action.
However, you can drive consumer loyalty with relationship marketing. Sending personalized greeting cards is a tool to establish a more resilient connection between the customer and the agent. With postcard marketing, you tell your customers you want them to buy this property. With a greeting card, you tell them you value them as much as, or more than, the business they bring.
The skill to customize the content of your real estate postcard can be a powerful tool for achieving your desired outcomes. By tailoring your postcards to your audience's specific needs and preferences, you increase the likelihood of them taking the actions you want.
For example, if you are targeting a specific geographic area, you could include information about recent home sales or upcoming events in that area. This tactic could help establish you as a local expert and build trust with potential clients.
You can achieve the same results with greeting cards. Even better, when you continuously send these cards on different occasions, you become valuable to your customers. They won't see you as another salesperson wanting to close a deal through a postcard campaign. Instead, they'll view you as a friend or family member. With that, it's easy for them to consider your suggestions.
Compared to other marketing strategies, sending cards is way cheaper. Some tools allow you to design these cards. The same tools are often easy to navigate and use so that you can do it yourself. After that, you can print and send them away. Each card only costs between five to 35 cents.
Greeting cards are cheaper than postcards because you don't need to get a professional photographer to take photos of houses for sale. You also don't need to spend resources looking for leads manually. Real estate software solutions like Addressable can simplify the process for you.
The tool will be the one to generate personalized cards on your behalf. It also has an added feature that allows you to target an audience within your farming area. You can even keep track of your progress in the app and see how your greeting card farming campaign is faring. Addressable made this possible through trackable phone numbers and smart QR codes on their cards.
You're doing all these in a single application — no need to go out and mail postcards.
Since you can save a massive chunk of your marketing budget by using greeting cards, you'll have more resources for other marketing activities. You can complement card sending with activities like open houses, block parties, and brokerages events.
Your targeted and personalized marketing efforts can get you high-quality leads. These customers have a high chance of converting to paying customers since you've built a solid relationship with them. If you're lucky, your leads might also be your access to new listings, referrals, and new clients.
Real estate greeting cards can be a great way to remind former clients of your services. Although you're doing this indirectly, you would be at the top of their mind when they're looking for properties to buy or sell. Since you're sending these greeting cards even when you're not actively selling, sending them flyers or open house invites will be smooth.
Even if a customer worked with you years ago, receiving a greeting card from you can help them remember their experience and keep you in mind for future real estate transactions.
Now that you know the importance of real estate greeting cards, it's time to learn how to design them. At the same time, you can always decide what goes into your cards; adding the elements that yield the ideal results is best. If you're ready to learn about these tips, read on.
Make sure to explain it simply. The goal is to send well wishes on a specific event, not to impress. Don't add a sales pitch or a market update after wishing your customers well. That would turn them off.
Note that cards have limited space, so make these elements count. Choose the template, photos, and message correctly. Avoid making your card look tacky by adding too much text and pictures that don't mesh well.
Handwritten mail and notes have a 99 percent open rate. Your customers will engage with this kind of card because they can appreciate the effort and sincerity of the person who wrote the note. On top of that, unlike spam and sales mail, personalized handwritten cards make it to the recipient's table. They don't get thrown out for being spam emails.
If your business has a logo and specific colors representing your brand, using them in your greeting card design is a good idea. Doing this will help homeowners and homebuyers recognize and remember your name and associate positive feelings with your company. However, don't overwhelm your audience with too many branding messages. A logo and a specific brand color would be enough.
Metrics can measure the performance of a marketing strategy. Coming up with a marketing strategy is one thing; determining whether this strategy works is another. Developing these metrics is necessary to know how your plan is faring.
When using these greeting cards as part of your marketing strategy, consider the following performance indicators:
Pro Tip: A bespoke greeting card makes the recipient think they're special enough for the sender to devote effort to writing a personal message. With this simple act, the recipient moves into the sender's sphere of influence, helping push that relationship forward.
Trust and loyalty are essential in big and small businesses. If you want to grow your market base, you need to invest effort in building a solid relationship with them. Make them feel important by remembering the special events in their lives. By exerting effort on this task, you're improving your chances of converting high-quality leads.
Make your life easy with Addressable. Regardless of the celebration, they can create the most appropriate personalized cards for your clients. The brand is at every real estate marketer's top of mind when looking for customized mail and real estate greeting card ideas.
Check out our marketing platform today and try this marketing strategy to save even more.
If you don’t have the time but you have the budget, hire someone to make the greeting cards. However, if you want to launch a sustainable, cost-effective campaign, it’s better to make the cards yourself.
Addressable can help you with this task. Aside from printing a bespoke greeting card, you can utilize the app’s handwritten note feature to make it look like you spent effort writing notes yourself.
It depends on what specific cards you intend to send out these cards. It's best to send one card for your client's birthday and other special holidays. The more cards you send, the better the recall.
Addressable is one of the leading tools to help you design your real estate greeting cards. This tool is preferred because, besides designing the card, you can send them to your target market through the app. Apart from that, Addressable allows you to track your progress with the app's lead-tracking functionality.
