Modern advertisers are seeing the benefits of a personalized marketing approach. According to a 2020 study, 99 percent of surveyed marketers agreed that personalization helps improve customer relationships. The numbers demonstrate the importance of this method among marketers, especially those in the real estate industry.
Real estate professionals are going back to handing out handwritten notes to add a personal touch to their marketing campaigns. In this short guide, you will discover how this strategy can benefit you and your real estate business.
Key Takeaways
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Real estate farming is a location-focused marketing strategy that helps realtors establish themselves as experts in their target area. This tactic involves focusing on a specific neighborhood and interacting with the locals to build relationships.
The key to this approach is to create relationships and capture new leads in a specific area. With a solid real estate farming strategy, you can get leads close by instead of going for less-accessible markets. Moreover, an effective system also ensures you close the deals you create with potential clients.
Today, many real estate agents rely on geo and demographic farming to maintain a reasonable turnover rate. They build a loyal client base by establishing themselves as a local expert in their area. Through consistent contact with their target demographic and target audience, they earn income through word of mouth.
This advantage is crucial since real estate can be a competitive field. Finding the right agent can be challenging for property sellers and buyers. Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing is vital for realtors who want to put themselves out there.
Aside from these advantages, other benefits of real estate geographic farming include the following:
Investing in physical and direct marketing tactics, such as handwritten notes, remains effective for modern marketers. It can be particularly effective for real estate agents who can use the tools to distinguish themselves from competitors.
These personalized marketing methods help create a lasting impression on prospects, leading to a higher chance of conversion and engagement.
Remember that as a realtor, you must build solid connections with your clients, especially if you want to create a close-knit farm. By doing so, locals are entrusting you to assist them in selling or purchasing significant assets.
You are also competing with other active realtors in the same area. You must do what you can to stand out and be more memorable to your prospect.
There are many different types of handwritten notes for real estate geo farming. The most popular types include the following:
There are several crucial reasons why incorporating handwritten notes into your real estate marketing strategy is effective. After reading, you will discover why this personalized approach can be the missing element in your campaigns.
Handwritten notes build trust and value in your real estate marketing efforts. Marketers who use these tools as real estate marketing products quickly build authenticity, confidence, and value.
They promote trust because they show potential clients that you take them seriously. You are ready to spend time getting up close and personal. You are making your prospects feel that someone was thinking about them when they wrote the note, making them exceptional.
This advantage can make your relationships with your prospects more meaningful. Moreover, it sets the tone for future interactions because the recipient knows and feels they are essential to you.
Handwritten letters have higher engagement and open rates than digital mail. According to Rick Elmore, CEO of Simply Noted, a distributor of genuine handwritten notes, receivers open 99 percent of handwritten notes.
People readily interact with these pieces of mail because they look like someone took the time to sit down, write a message, and slap a stamp on the paper before dropping it in the mail. Handwritten cards evoke a sense of nostalgia that encourages recipients to read and open them.
Real estate agents and realtors can derive significant business by growing their connections to professional contacts. For example, they can build relationships with mortgage brokers who want to trade real estate leads. The more relationships a realtor can cultivate, the more referrals they can generate.
You can use handwritten cards to encourage and inspire engagement when reaching out to new contacts. Today, cold emails can feel too impersonal if you are aiming to spark new relationships.
Realtors need a competitive edge that demonstrates professionalism, honesty, and approachableness. Handwritten cards can show all of these effectively.
If you want to establish a conversation with a professional colleague for lead-generation purposes, introduce yourself with a handwritten card. This tactic can be an authentic way of establishing new business relationships.
Now that everything is digital, everyone’s mailboxes are empty. This shift leaves people seeking a human connection. By sending handwritten letters to your prospects, you are responding to this need and fostering the development of new relationships.
Getting handwritten notes can be rare, so sending them to potential clients makes it easy for them to remember you.
It is a fact that handwritten envelopes land in the hands of influential people responsible for decision-making. These individuals are often too busy to get to their mail, so others sort it for them.
Once sorters see printed direct mail marketing pieces, they will not hesitate to throw the mail in the trash. However, if they come across a handwritten envelope, they sort it as personal mail.
Knowing when to send handwritten notes is crucial to get value from your real estate farming tactic. This section will teach you the best use cases for handwritten advertising letters.
If a potential client agrees to a meeting and takes the time to listen to you, you can show your appreciation by sending a handwritten note.
In the note, give them links to your social media pages, landing pages, and main website, where they can learn more about you and your services.
Most people undervalue the advantages of sending handwritten thank-you letters. By sending these notes, you can show appreciation to people who engage with your business.
Sending out handwritten notes can help you get new leads and establish relationships. These notes demonstrate that you are taking the time to create a real connection with local community members.
If you’ve just started your business, you can send handwritten notes to introduce yourself and your business. This tactic shows that you spend marketing efforts to get to know your potential customers and are committed to developing new relationships.
You can contact people in a hot market you discover. Try sending handwritten notes to see if they want to pay for your services. The letters can help you stand out from other realtors in the real estate farm area who only send emails and messages from templates.
Your client can be frustrated after a deal falls through. You can send a handwritten note to console them and to underscore the next steps you have in mind.
In your note, set up a time to chat to encourage continued engagement even after the failed deal. Make sure to have a plan to help them get back on track.
Expired listings can give you the perfect opportunity to help frustrated sellers successfully sell their properties.
The first step to this endeavor is sending a handwritten note. Once you have established a connection, you give your insights on why the house did not sell when listed prior. You must be ready with tips to ensure the property sells the next time.
After a client successfully closes a sale, you can congratulate them and greet them using a handwritten note. In the message, remember to thank the client for sticking with you throughout the transaction.
When writing the note, remind them that you are always ready to help and address any future questions or concerns. You can also encourage them to leave a review and refer potential clients who need your high-quality services.
In a real estate transaction, it’s normal to encounter bumps along the road. When a challenge arises, you can send a handwritten note to your client with words of encouragement.
Make sure to give them the help they need to close the sale. Remember that you want them to stay with you through the transaction, so encourage them to keep going.
When a property hits escrow, it can be a massive milestone in the buying and selling process. Send a handwritten note to your client to congratulate them and remind them of the next steps before closing.
If someone wants to purchase or sell a property, you can provide a handwritten note to show evidence of your prior successes. Use the letter to talk about how you effectively handled previous real estate transactions as a testament to your experience and skills.
Make a note in your calendar every time your clients move into new homes. Then, you can send them handwritten notes to celebrate anniversaries and remind them that you are always there when needed.
This tactic shows commitment and builds strong relationships with your clients. It can also encourage clients to refer you to others since they know of your dedication.
Door knocking and direct mail can still be effective tools for realtors looking for prospective buyers and sellers. Writing a handwritten note can be especially advantageous as it helps you rise above the competition.
However, there are crucial tips you must remember to get the most out of your new farming technique. This section outlines some things to remember to develop well-crafted notes that drive results.
Remember that building a robust geo farm is the first step to successful real estate farming. Take your time to look for the best location for you before sending out handwritten notes.
After picking a location, introduce yourself to the people through local events. You can hold community events, like open houses, to meet potential clients.
It’s understandable you’d like to make a client out of everyone who opens your note. However, remember that you are not aiming to convert every person you send handwritten notes to.
In the real estate industry, prospects have a longer conversion cycle. You must be patient if you want to succeed. Think of your handwritten notes as a tool to build strong relationships within the community.
Eventually, you will find the right time to convert the recipients into clients. Trying to convert them into clients with the first note is not an excellent real estate farming idea. First, you must express an interest in addressing client needs. Take the time and effort to get to know them better before you try to make a sale.
When writing a handwritten note, make sure to include all valuable information. Remember to pre-stamp and pre-label the envelopes you will use to save more time. Moreover, this tactic will make you more inclined to use the envelopes. Stamps can also help you get more positive impressions than a postage meter.
Remember to attach your business card to the letter. This information reminds the recipient of who you are, making it do the talking for you. If you send a business card with the note, make sure that it says what you want it to show about your business.
Remember to use QR codes that redirect recipients to your social media sites or websites. These codes are great because the recipient can scan the code and open a website.
These codes eliminate the problem of URLs being too hard to read or incorrectly typing long links. They can streamline setting up appointments and help promote featured listings.
In today’s digital age of online communication, sending a handwritten note as a real estate tactic has become a lost art. However, sending the right message can immediately set you apart from your competition.
To ensure your handwritten note stands out, start by thanking the reader for their time, regardless of if they are only a potential lead or a long-time client. This habit lets them know you value their time, which is crucial in relationship marketing.
You should also note how your expertise could be invaluable to them and their real estate plans. For instance, you are native to the area you are farming. Mentioning this information can make you look like a strong authority in that location.
Make sure to state why you are reaching out early in the letter. This way, the reader will know your purpose immediately and not feel like they are wasting time reading something unhelpful.
You can also include any information related to the recipient, such as their hometown, interests, or specific goals they have mentioned in previous conversations. This strategy will demonstrate your attention to detail and that their trust in you is safe.
Remember to underscore that making a sale is not the only reason you’re writing to them. Tell them your intentions to create a strong community presence. This tactic can help establish your business as a trustworthy authority.
A long, detailed letter defeats part of the original purpose. Be brief but include reminders of where you met, what you talked about, and how thankful you are for their time. More information could be seen as overzealous marketing material.
Writing the perfect, handwritten note can be time-consuming. However, this tactic can make your campaign resonate with your audience and help you succeed even in a cooling real estate market.
Real estate farming can be a powerful tactic, but you must be ready to put in the time and effort to succeed. Nothing is worse than sending out what you think is an excellent handwritten note, only to have the recipients throw it in the trash because you sound like an outsider.
Pro Tip: The key to real estate farming is picking a geographic area that you can consistently target with the right marketing messages.
Sending handwritten notes can be the missing piece of your real estate farming strategy. Create the right message, send them to the right people, and you will get ahead of your competition.
If you want to take real estate geo farming to the next level, check out Addressable today! Our comprehensive marketing automation platform can help real estate experts and new agents retain clients and get new listings. With our AI-powered solutions, we can help you launch powerful marketing campaigns that drive results.
Geo fencing is not the same as geo farming. Instead of focusing on location alone, geo fencing creates a virtual boundary that triggers an advertising action to a mobile phone when a user enters or exits the specific boundary.
A handwriting generator is a platform that converts digital text into handwriting font. Some tools allow users to choose from various handwriting styles.
Some real estate marketing automation platforms use AI-powered handwritten note generators to speed up the process of reaching prospects within their geo farm.
Personalization is the key to using handwritten notes for real estate farming. Handwritten letters are effective only when they look like someone wrote the note specifically with the recipient in mind.
