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Realtor Marketing – Remax Logos

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:32:30 +0000

From a realtor marketing standpoint, the Remax International logo has a fun and varied history! I find it fascinating that a huge corporation like this has SO many different looks and feels to their branding.

John Jacobsen (my fabulous photographer husband) took this picture at a balloon show here in Erie, Colorado.

The history of the Remax balloon starts in 1978 when the first Remax hot air balloon flew at the the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. This is when the corporate offices picked the balloon for the icon at Remax and to this day, a fleet of 120 Remax balloons are flying across North America. The advertising power of this iconic shape is listed on the Remax Balloon page:

The average RE/MAX Balloon makes 65 appearances a year, each event averaging more than an hour, for a fleet total of about 6,400 hours of advertising – equal to nearly nine months of 24-hour flying.

Remax Logos

Remax Balloon Logo – transparent png.

Remax Balloon Photo Logo – transparent png.

The Remax Logo – transparent png.

If you are looking for the official link to all different kinds of Remax Logos, check out the Remax Media Page. If you would like to find out more about realtor marketing logos, click the link to check out our posts!

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Realtor Marketing | Real Estate Email Newsletters

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:16:25 +0000

Realtor marketing is a funny thing, especially real estate email newsletters. I get hundreds of email newsletters from agents every year and most of them are WAY off the mark as far as good marketing practices and just plain old sales techniques.

Today we are going to tear up Danielle Sharp’s email newsletter! She is a fabulous Cape Coral Short Sale Realtor, but not such a great email marketer (AND she has a thick skin so her feelings will not get hurt!)

Basically Danielle is doing everything wrong from her subject line, to content to delivery method and we are going to go over all that and make sure you know WHY they are all wrong and WHAT to do to make them better!

Real Estate Email Newsletter Subject Lines

As you can see from the picture, the subject line of the email was “newsletter”. Now that is factually correct, but doesn’t really give me a reason to open it other than that I like Danielle and am on her list. I have seen other subject lines such as “Monthly News From The Irish Realtor” or “Jason Lee’s Financial Newsletter”. Each month (or week) the same email subject line. Yawn.

What happens when you send the same email month after month, your readers get fatigue and stop being excited to read what you wrote. So what are some good email subject lines?

Check out these “SPOOKTACULAR” properties – Lori Crawford, Trinity Realtor, has a sense of humor and sends out the best real estate newsletter email subject lines. She reports that people email her back with funny comments and she has even had showings because people looked at her listings, imagine that!
Pinellas Home Prices Take A Nosedive, What is the market coming to? – we are going to talk later about market statistics BUT if you lived in that county, town or subdivision, wouldn’t you be interested in knowing what that is all about? You could add a “call me for a free CMA” to get even more out of the news!
Want to know how many homes sold in Denver last month?
3 Things You MUST Do Before Putting Your Home On The Market
Top 5 Things That Most Buyers Miss In A Home Inspection

You get the drift. All of these headlines are a REASON for me to want to open the real estate email newsletter BEYOND the fact that I like the agent. Using these kinds of teasers will increase your open rates and make doing that newsletter less boring because you know that people will be reading.

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Real Estate Email Newsletter Mailing Companies

Most Realtors want to use what is easy to send their newsletters, whether it is effective or not. Database companies like Top Producer, Wise Agent and MyRedTools are not set up to be email newsletter distributors. Their skills lie in being REALLY good contact databases. If you are going to take the time to write a great email newsletter I STRONGLY recommend that you pick a true email company like Constant Contact to do your mailing.

Their ONLY job is to send email newsletters and they are very good at it. They make sure that they stay off of blacklists and that your messages will get delivered. Now, it does mean another $20-ish going out a month BUT that is just a cost of doing business. Trying to jury-rig something that is good enough is a waste of time and energy if the emails never get delivered.

Additionally, they send out HTML emails (the pretty ones that open up right in your email client). Danielle resorted to sending a PDF of her newsletter. Now I don’t know about you but I have heard HUNDREDS of times not to open up attachments, so she might lose some people there. I also am super busy and tend to just glance at a message to see if it would be something I would want to read, she would lose those people also as they probably don’t have to time to download and open a PDF (if there is anyone reading this who is NOT super busy I have some work that I would like to offload on you!).

Real Estate Email Newsletter Content

This is a HUGE bone of contention for me! Realtors LOVE to send out recipes, health tips and other such fluff in their email newsletters and I contend that they should stick to real estate and home related topics because they are not chefs or Martha Stewart. Danielle said that she was still going to have a section for fun stuff she found that was not real estate related – can’t win them all!

So what should you talk about in your newsletters?

Market statistics – EVERY MLS on the planet publishes last months market statistics. How many homes sold, how many condos, what the median price was, etc. Make a nice format for these types of things and then send them monthly with a little overview from you about what they all mean. You can talk about seasonality to sales, absorption rate, all the things that you know and never let the world hear!
FAQs – Your email sent mail folder is FULL of questions that you have answered for prospective sellers and buyers. Include the question and answer to one of these a month.
Featured Clients – People love to read about other people! Write a case study about that first time homebuyer you just closed or the short sale couple you helped. This is called social proof and makes people want to work with YOU rather than all the other agents who send newsletters.
Articles about the national real estate market
Articles about the mortgage market - you can even get your mortgage guy or gal to help with some of the content!
Home Inspection Tips
Staging Tips

There are literally HUNDREDS of things that you can mail out. Oh, oh, oh, if you have a blog, why not post a blurb about recent posts with a link to the article. Drive to web baby! AND if you have Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, links to those go in the template of the email also.

There you have it, my rant about real estate email newsletters! If you have any good suggestions, let me know, if this sounds like too much work and want us to do it for you, check out our Realtor Marketing Services page!

Disclaimer – there IS an affiliate link to constant contact and a couple of gratuitous links to realtors I think are doing a good job!

Real Estate Marketing To A Farm Area

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:56:57 +0000

Real estate marketing to a farm area means that you are picking out a geographic location such as a subdivision or a small town and focusing on making a name for yourself in that area, becoming the defacto Realtor of choice.

I would like to say from the start that I am PRO farming as a part of your real estate marketing efforts! Having a farm is a way to lay claim to an area which you become EXTREMELY familiar with and which becomes easier to service because of economies of scale!

How To Pick A Farm Area

This is a tricky one! If there is a super high end subdivision in your area, it would seem like that would be a farm area of choice for the aggressive Realtor. Couple of things to consider there though:

How many homes sell per year in that farm area
Can you afford the higher costs you will incur to sell million or multi-million dollar properties?

My trick was always to pick a subdivision with a high turnover rate that was in the high first time homebuyer or low move-up buyer price range. Targeting this price point will assure that you will have a ready, willing and able pool of buyers to purchase all those listings you get!

Economies of Scale With A Farm

I briefly touched on this, BUT there are HUGE economies of scale when you have a farm area. Here are a few that come to mind:

You can service all your brochure boxes at once (yes in a farm you want to have a brochure box so that all those lovely neighbors can see your name in print!)
You can organize neighborhood open houses with your own listings
You can stop by and see sellers with one drive
When advertising, they will all be able to go into the same types of publications
You can cross sell your other listings when getting buyer calls
If you pay to have flyers distributed, you are only looking at one route
You can develop email and mailing lists to that one area and save the cost of purchasing them
You will know all the problems and benefits of the community (for example, one area that I worked had dysfunctional gas tanks in the ground that HAD to be removed prior to the sale. It was MUCH cheaper and less stressful to tell the sellers that BEFORE we listed the house rather than when under contract!)

Effective Real Estate Marketing To A Farm

There are many things that you can do when marketing to your farm, some more effective than others either monetarily or time-wise. I am sure to catch flack for where I put some of these but here are my suggestions!

Sending just listed or just solds – NOT just for your farm area but include your farm in EVERY mailing you send. This will let them know that you are an active agent!
Neighborhood Newsletter – it is VERY easy to get the mailing lists for homeowners. Some MLSs provide tax records or if not you can buy them from a list broker. Remember that you want to get the OWNERS for listings and the RENTERS for buyers!
Brochure Box Flyers – I HATED brochure boxes, they were always empty and the most likely to trip me up, BUT they are great for branding yourself with neighbors! Make sure to list all your other homes for sale in your farm on the back so that you can cross-promote them all.
Open Houses – Make sure to do LOTS of open houses in your farm area. This is a way to meet the neighbors and to get their contact information. Tell them that you have a great email neighborhood newsletter and get their email address! Once you have a bunch of emails you can send your hard copy newsletter quarterly and the email newsletter on the off months.
Farm Signs – If you Realtor Association allows it, brand yourself as the neighborhood expert with sign riders or custom signs right for that area. You can call yourself the neighborhood expert BEFORE you are, there are no “expert” police!
Special Features – Let your farm know that you are willing to let them know BEFORE homes in the area go on the market. They might not buy but they will appreciate knowing what is going on (neighbors ARE nosy!)
Neighborhood Videos – Get a flip camera and drive around your neighborhood, recording interesting details. These videos can be posted on youtube.com, Twitter, Facebook and your blog.

Time Wasting, Soul Sucking Real Estate Marketing To A Farm

Setting up a community page on the Facebook – This is one I hear A LOT! The thinking is that you are going set up a community page and then the people who live there will flock to it and you will be able to market to them. First, once you get them to join your page, you cannot get their emails out of Facebook to add them to your “real” mailing list. Second, you have to know them BEFORE you can invite them to your page so why not make them a “friend” on Facebook and get them to “like” you regular business page. This sounds like A LOT of work for very little reward!
Sending Calendars, Magnets and Stickers – Ask any big-dog listing agent how many listing agreements they have signed with other agents calendar magnets hanging on the fridgie right behind them! They will tell you a lot! I firmly believe that Realtors should send real estate marketing pieces like market statistics and neighborhood news, NOT calendars, recipes or stickers.
Setting Up Neighborhood Yard Sales – ALL my KW friends like this idea! Hold a neighborhood yard sale for the homeowners and they will list their house with you…sigh…not sure I get the connection! The time taken organizing that sale could be used to door knock, do open houses, lick and stick postcards, any number of things. For heavens sake, you are a Realtor NOT an event planner!

Okay, let me have it! If you are a Realtor with real estate marketing ideas that I missed, please let me know! If you pet real estate marketing project got shot down and you have had great success using it recently, post a comment and let me know!

Realtor Marketing – Realtor Newsletter Ideas

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:56:56 +0000

Because I help so many Realtors with their marketing efforts, I KNOW that generating a monthly newsletter can seem like an overwhelming task. Here are my best Realtor Newsletter Ideas, in no particular order.

Realtor Newsletter Ideas

Your Real Estate Newsletter should be a tool to talk with current, past and potential real estate clients. It is actually amazing that we can send an email or two a month and let everyone know we care and are thinking about them or to mail a newsletter into an entire neighborhood and in one fell swoop let everyone know you are a neighborhood expert.

Your Realtor Newsletter should contain:

Market statistics – If you are doing a market area it is fine to use MLS wide statistics. If you are farming a neighborhood, it would be best to chunk it down to just that area. You should also be sure to explain confusing terms like “absorption rate” in easy to understand english. A 10% absorption rate means that only 1 out of 10 homes are selling each month.
Listings – You should have listing ads in your newsletter. These should be listings be similar in price to the area you are mailing to OR a good move up price OR show that you are a luxury lister. If you do not have your own types of these listings, ask someone in your office if you can “borrow” theirs. Few listings agents will say that you cannot help to market one of their properties.
An informative article – This is a big one in addition to statistics for making your readers feel they got a value for their time. It can be about current local market trends, national real estate news, home related items like preparing for winter, what hurricane season means to your insurance needs or even house care tips.
A picture of the agent – I am way happier with agents using a logo to represent their business, BUT this is one place that you can have something like a “Lori’s Corner” and get your face out there.
An article or ads from an outside vendor – Per RESPA you cannot charge for space in your newsletter BUT you can get compensated for the exact amount of space they use on a print document. So you could feature a mortgage lender on one panel of a three panel piece and charge him one-sixth of the total cost of the mailing. Make sure you take into account all the costs of the newsletter including labor time to put it together, time to copy and prepare it, copier costs, postage, cost of the list if you have to buy it, etc. To make it even more on the up and up, I had him make the check out to USPS to purchase postage, rather than having it made out to me. Covered us both business wise!

A database of clients is an invaluable tool for printing labels or sending emails. If you are using Top Producer or My Red Tools then you have the ability to generate lists of physical or email addresses. Not only did I email my newsletter to my database, at least 4 times a year I would mail them a hard copy version. Over 5 years after leaving the business, I would bet that some of them are still floating around in desk drawers!

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Realtor Marketing Most Real Estate Websites Let Realtors Down

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:10:13 +0000

Is your website submarining your realtor marketing efforts? Most realtors I know do not cruise the internet marketing sites and forums like I do so they are not aware of some the top things that effect their page rank or how high they are listed on google. Having worked with LOTS of Realtors with different brokers over the years, I can tell you FOR SURE that if you are using a website provided to you by Keller Williams, C21, Coldwell Banker or any of the other big guys you probably do not rank well for local search terms.

Do you know why? It is because google hates duplicate content! I wrote a post earlier in the week about Duplicate Content for Small Business Owners and MLMs but I didn’t want my Realtor buddies to think this was not about them also!

When we think of Google’s goals for their search results, this makes total sense. If you did a search for “real estate” and google returned 1,000 or 10,000 of exact same site with just a different realtor’s name on them, you would stop using google. This means that google is looking for new and exciting content that they can serve up to their searchers and that your cookie-cutter site will never be found!

At least those sites where free….sigh. My pal Deb Ward (Dunedin Realtor) has a fond wish that eventually she will have enough disposable income to afford a Number One Agent or other duplicate content website for her realtor marketing master plan. That is crazy in today’s day and age. Spend that money on a blog which you can optimize and then buy tons of content to plop into that site to help you rank higher in the search engines! I know I am fighting a losing battle when my best buddy still wants to throw me over for smoke and mirrors but I will just keep trying..:)

We have made a couple of really neat Realtor websites lately from sea to shining sea – Kathy Moore of Franklin Tennessee Real Estate News and Cecil and Charlotte Volsch of Homes For Sale Victorville California both launched recently with great content, keywords and IDX functionality!

If you DO have a duplicate content site from your broker, change it today as much as possible to help you rank better with the google. If you do have a little bit of money to spend on a website blog, give us a jingle today and we will see if we can build a site in your sales area or farm (we don’t make competing sites in the same area…:)

Internet Marketing – Making the most of your marketing efforts

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:36:49 +0000

When you start internet marketing, or real life marketing for that matter, you are all fired up. You are going to tweet, and facebook and get a blog and free websites and and and…. Then one of two things happens A) nothing works because you did one thing on each of those mediums or 2) you get lots of business so you stop doing what worked!

The other thing I hear is that small business owners, entrepreneurs and realtors don’t have the time to do this kind of marketing. They are too busy running their businesses to do lead generating to get more sales. Sigh. Their ONLY business is getting more customers and prospects! If they have no customers they have no business! So what is a smart marketer to do?

First – Determine what you like to do!

If you like to sit in front of the computer, make sure you are spending your time wisely…

Watch TV and follow more people on twitter
Take the time to write thoughtful blog posts instead of watching HGTV or Spike
Set up multiple twitter accounts in the niches you would like to target
Set up multiple blogs in the niches you would like to target
Answer your emails
Stop removing yourself from lists
Set up google alerts to get the latest information and inspiration on what to talk about
Get a database like aweber or constant contact and learn how to set it up

If you hate sitting in front of the computer, take 15 minutes a day and do these things

Answer your emails from the night before (if it will take more than 1 minute to answer them then put them on your list of things to do and move on)
Follow 50 people on twitter using twellow.com
Go into Facebook and accept your friend requests then post your status and “talk” to a couple of people on your live feed
Add a link from google alerts about something interesting to your fan page

(membership site gang – watch out for a really neat video later this week that shows how to pick your best marketing opps!!!)

Second – Stop Whining

This one is going to be a little bit mean so if you are having a bad day skip it…:) I do SO many things on the internet. I do everything I have suggested and more. I have client work to do, I have articles and blog posts to write, for goodness sake I have over 20 blogs, 5 twitter accounts, 4 Facebook pages, the list goes on and on. Sometimes I get overwhelmed and think that there is too much to do – then I look at the time I am actually spending working. I mean nose down, no phone, no emails, no nothing, just work. It is about 8 hours a day.

Can you say that you are actually working 10, 12, 14 hours a day. Really? When you are honest with yourself, couldn’t you carve out an extra hour (or even 15 minutes) a day to schedule dedicated time to growing your business?

Third – Get help!

Okay, back to being nice..:) When I say help I mean whatever help YOU need. I don’t need much help with setting things up because I am good at it. I have been doing it A LONG time and some things that may seem overwhelming to you are not hard for me. That having been said, balancing my checkbook is too much for me. All those numbers, ick. So – here are some ways you can get help!

Hire an assistant (virtual or real) to do some stuff for you. An assistant is only as good as what you need though. I need someone who can make sure I am doing my client work in a timely manner, enter all the people I meet in my database and add people to my membership site. I cannot expect an assistant to fix my blogs when they break (I hire a programmer for that), I cannot expect my assistant to be an accounting wiz (I hire my CPA and bookkeeper for that). DO NOT give your assistant more than they can do technically and DO NOT try to farm out your internet empire to them. If you do not know what to do hire a marketing person to SET UP the systems for your assistant to manage.
Learn to use tools – All those twitter accounts I have, most of them update themselves automatically when I post on any of my blogs via twitterfeed.com. Updating all those Facebook pages is super easy with hootsuite.com. I use writers to help with the heavy lifting of content for my niche blogs. I use my database to talk with people all at once. I automatically follow people using socialoomph.com. All these things make it easy to manage multiple accounts BUT I had to set them up first. Get your online empire built the right way and managing it is easy for you or your assistant!
Schedule time – Do you see a theme here? If you do not put time in your calendar to do these tasks you will never get them done. Take the first 15 minutes or hour of your day, shut off your phone and do your online marketing (or if you are having an assistant doing it, stop bothering them with “real work” while they are doing it..:)

Anyways – if you are down here, you are probably interested in REALLY starting to do some internet marketing. Congratulations! Your business will thank you and your bottom line will thank you.

Realtor Marketing – Direct Mail Postcards

Tara Jacobsen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:50:15 +0000

Realtor Direct Mail Postcards

The BEST marketing money I ever spent when I was an active Realtor was on direct mail postcards! I sent them out to my farm, to past clients and to prospects. To this day, two years later, I still get people who mention that they are sorry that I am not still sending them as it helped them keep up with the real estate market in the area that I farmed!

So why should YOU mail out realtor postcards? Here are my top five reasons!

They hang around A LONG time – people will keep them on their desk, bulletin board or refrigerator for longer than you ever though possible!
It reminds people that you are still in business – I know, you are a professional and should not have to say so BUT with the market the way that it is you never can be too sure.
You can market your listings – I know this one is not popular but it is true! Part of the reason you are paid commissions is that you market a property. I always made sure to put my client on the mailing list and boy did it make an impact that I was doing my job when they got it in the mail.
They help grow your farm – When you do consistent mailings into an area you become the defacto neighborhood expert even if you have never had a buyer or listing there!
Lastly, the cost has come WAY down from when I was doing it!!! – The price per piece, including addressing, First Class Postage, and Delivery is now $.40 per piece. Dang.

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That last one is a life saver!!! The one thing that I did not like about doing real estate postcards was the cost! First I had to order the printing, then I had to have a bulk mail stamp to save on postage, then lick and stick the stamps and finally schlep on down to the post office and make sure I had my postcards sorted the right way. Wow am I having a bad flashback!

The cool thing now is that you can order one or a thousand with no change in price – the weensy ones are forty cents no matter the quantity you order when you use www.BrokersHelper.com (KW Agents make sure you use My Red Tools for a little discount).

So as you are planning your marketing for the upcoming year, make sure that you consider adding direct mail postcards to the mix. Here are some of the top ones that I sent out with great results!

Expireds
Just Listeds
Just Solds
Neighborhood Info
Spring Ahead/Fall Back
Happy Thanksgiving
Funny Realtor Postcards (if you are not the queen of corn like I am don’t do these)
Future sellers drips
Farms
Under contract in X days

Ones I didn’t send

Recipes – I am a realtor not a cook!

Hope those help with your realtor direct mail marketing ideas – please feel free to comment if you notice one I may have forgotten!!!

Eyejot – a free email marketing tool!

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:21:45 +0000

There are SO many free tools on the internet to get your marketing message out – Eyejot is a winner! One of my absolute favorite marketers – Brian P. Forrester of Mortgage Communication Spot sends out an eyejot most Mondays to tell his sphere important information about the mortgage industry. It takes him less than a minute to record and he reaches many realtors and home buyers with his message!

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If you want to get great updates from Brian, email him to get on his eyejot list…:)

How To Leverage Google – Do More of What Is Working!

Tara Jacobsen — Sat, 30 May 2009 12:54:25 +0000

So I was looking at my Google Analytics the other day and noticed that I was getting more organic click-throughs from the search term “Realtor Email Newsletters” – YAY! While I work with all kinds of businesses, we have a product called Thrive that focuses on marketing for Real Estate Agents, Mortgage People and Title Companies.Â

I have been trying to make it REALLY clear that this is not a real estate blog and that MOST of my clients are small business owners NOT realtors BUT that was just too big an opportunity not to tell you about!!!

So what will I do to leverage this great search term?

Wrote this post with a link to Google to tell them I love them!
Wrote a post over at Active Rain (a blog for realtors and real estate) that links to my productÂ
Will post this blog post on my Facebook page to add to the effect
I will make pages on sites like Squidoo and Wetpaint that capitalize on the search term

Another great problem I heard about this week comes from Julia Fishel, a fantastic Palm Harbor Realtor. She emailed me to ask what she could do about the fact that she wrote a great blog post that ranked high for Palm Harbor Realtors on Active Rain that was showing up high on Yahoo but that did not “hook” to her real blog. Here are some things she can do!

Put a cool banner at the bottom that drives people from the high-ranking post to her blog where she can collect data like email addresses
Make sure she uses that term in some of her post titles and other online info – I am huge fan of the path of least resistance. While it is admirable to try and rank highly for ALL the search terms you could, I tend to figure out what works naturally and then reverse engineer my stuff to capialize on it!

So there you go – Do you know how people are finding you on goole or yahoo? Make sure that you have google analytics loaded on your site so you can see all the incoming search terms people are using to find you!