Strategies for Retaining Clients and Getting Repeat Business

There have been two other posts in this series on customer retention.  The first post focused on why repeat business is important for any real estate professional.  The second post contained tips for getting repeat business.

This post will discuss a tool that you may or may not be familiar with that would be a useful addition to your customer retention strategy.

In previous posts, I talked about the challenge of finding interesting things to contact past clients about.  And the fact that, at any one time, the majority of people you want to stay in touch with have no interest in buying and selling homes. 

If you think your strategy should focus on something that requires the least amount of your time to implement, you may be interested in HomeActions.

HomeActions

Technically, HomeActions consists of a newsletter that you can send to your sphere of influence, along with an online component where your contacts can find lots of different types of information.

I like the HomeActions offering for a number of reasons:

1. HomeAction has the mindset!  HomeActions understands what you’re trying to accomplish to get repeat business.  They describe their service as “a client incubation and lead generation tool”.  They’re not trying to get by with just another newsletter.
2. HomeActions is reasonably priced to fit into many budgets.  As of this writing, the fee is $289/year.
3. HomeActions focuses on a wide range of home owner issues, including:
   1. Energy Conservation
   2. Home Safety
   3. Home Improvement
   4. New In The Home
   5. Repairs & Videos
   6. Telecom & Technology
   7. Steals & Deals
   8. Green Living Ideas
   9. Consumer Protection
   10. Condo/HOA Issues
   11. Home Business Options
   12. Insurance Corner
   13. Finance/Taxes
   14. Town Hall
   15. State Resources
   16. Federal Resources
4. HomeActions supports your social media strategy.  You can include links to your social media sites in the newsletter to extend awareness of places where you can be found.  And, each of their online articles sports a new “Share This” capability.  Users of the system can use a one-click approach to sharing interesting content, and you can, too.
5. HomeActions is easy to customize.  If you don’t have time to write a specific article for a newsletter, HomeActions has you covered.  If there is something specific you want to get the word out about, you can add your own article to the email newsletter.
6. HomeActions offers a good set of statistics.  You can track activity down to the level of an individual, tracking what is being opened, what is being clicked on, etc.
7. HomeActions helps manage your email list.  You can add people to the list individually, or you can import a mailing list in its entirety.  You can also use code provided to place a registration on your blog/website.

If you are looking for a way to get more repeat business, you might want to consider HomeActions as a flexible and reasonably priced tool.

What is your strategy for getting more repeat business?  If you can’t quickly answer that question, you don’t have a strong strategy in place.  If you’re not sure why repeat business is important, read the first installment on this series on customer retention.

Tools for Getting More Repeat Business

1.  Get into a repeat-business mindset.  Sometimes it’s easy to get so focused on figuring out where the next closing is coming from, that you forget about the importance of retaining existing customers/clients.

Staying in touch with past customers can be done in any number of ways.  If you use a Client Relationship Manager where you have individual actions for specific contacts scheduled, that certainly helps.  If you don’t use that kind of a system, there are still tools available to help you.

But, if you don’t have a strong strategy in place for getting repeat business, put that on your to do list right now.  Near the top!

2.  Keep your social media outlets interesting.  You may recall an earlier post on this blog about finding fresh content for your real estate social media  outlets. 

Since most of the people you want to stay in touch with aren’t actively buying or selling, make sure the information on your social media sites cover a wide range of topics interesting to home owners.

3.  Actively “recruit” existing clients and folks in your sphere to get involved with you online.  It’s not enough to have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account.  Find out if your clients participate in any social media and make sure you invite them to become a fan of your Facebook page, follow you on Twitter, link to you on LinkedIn, etc.

The next post in this series will identify a “stay in touch” tool that might be just what you need.  Stay tuned!

Real estate marketing challenges can make you feel like our friend here.  But, if you’re not focused on finding more repeat business, you’re really missing out on marketing gold!

Why Are Repeat Real Estate Customers/Clients Valuable?

Commonly accepted statistics related to customer retention and churn come from sources such as the book ”Leading on the Edge of Chaos,”  by Emmett C. Murphy and Mark A. Murphy.  These statistics don’t pertain specifically to real estate, but you can certainly see the trends.  Here’s what you need to know:

• Finding new customers can cost 5 times more than working with past customers.
• If you increase customer retention by 2%, it can have the same impact as cutting costs by 10%.
• You can increase your profits, depending on the industry, by 25-125% if you reduce the number of customers you lose by 5%. 

The message here is that you ignore the issue of retaining past real estate customers or clients at your own peril.

What Does It Take to Nurture Repeat Business?

The simple answer to that question is that you have to stay in touch with previous clients and your entire sphere of influence.  That way, when someone you know is in the market to buy or sell, they’ll think of you first.

1.  Why is ongoing contact important?  According to the 2008 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers:

• 18% of repeat buyers use an agent they’d worked with in the past for a new real estate transaction.
• 70% of home buyers (repeat and first time) would use their real estate agent again and recommend the agent to others.
• 26% of home sellers used an agent they’d worked with in the past for a new real estate transaction.
• 65% of sellers would definitely use their agent again and recommend the agent to others.

Here’s what those statistics mean to me.  First, a pathetically small number of consumers go back to an agent they’d worked with previously.  Second,  the number of consumers who would use the same agent over and over is high. 

Taking those two statistics together, you really have to conclude that most agents are missing a very easy source of new revenue!

2.  Why is Ongoing Contact so Difficult?  There are probably several reasons.  For one thing, it looks like not many agents make a concerted effort to stay in touch with their sphere of influence.

But, I think the biggest challenge is this:  the vast majority of people you need to stay in touch with aren’t in the process of buying or selling a house.

According to the NAR report, 44% of sellers stayed in the home they are selling 5 years or less.  That means that for years at a time, your previous clients aren’t all that concerned about existing homes for sale or real estate market statistics in your area, etc.

The biggest challenge in staying in contact with previous clients is finding something interesting to contact them about!

This is the first in a series of posts about customer retention.

If there’s anything most of us hate, it’s waiting.  If you’re anything like me, you go to the grocery at non-peak hours; you plan things so that you’re never stuck going to the bank on Friday afternoon because you’re out of cash.

But, when it comes to real estate marketing, the waiting game is just part of the process.  You may find it annoying, but you can plan for it and use it to your advantage.

You might remember reading a post on this blog about Tigerlead, a real estate marketing tool.   Recently, I spoke to my client who is using Tigerlead.  He started using their services last year. 

In March of this year, he had six closings in one week.  He paid for the year’s Tigerlead fees in May.  He is adding to his team.  He had a good year last year, but this year is even better.  He is using Tigerlead to win the real estate marketing waiting game.  Do you need to use Tigerlead to win the waiting game?  The answer is no.  But, you do need to have a strategy.

3 Tips for Winning the Real Estate Marketing Waiting Game

1.  Understand the Game - The fact is that only a very small percentage of the people you meet, or who land on your website, are ready to buy or sell a home.   That holds true even for people who are doing real estate research on the Internet.  They may be just dreaming about their next home, even though they don’t plan to move in the forseeable future. 

If they do plan a move, they’re probably going to spend weeks, if not months tripping around the Internet before they are ever serious enough to want to talk to a professional.  You have to wait for them to be ready – you can’t just focus on finding those who are ready right now.

Keeping that reality in mind, you can implement strategies to deal with it.

2.  Provide Value- Tigerlead works for my client because it provides value to people who are on the Internet.  It’s a tool that buyers and sellers find so useful that they use it over long periods of time.   And, when they’re ready to talk to a professional, they call my client.  So, the first question to answer is: “What can I do to provide ongoing value to the people I come in contact with?”

3.  Stay Top of Mind – There are a lot of ways to stay in front of people without driving them nuts.  Maybe this is the time when starting that blogis something you really needto do.  Should your blog be all about buying and selling?

If you want to stay relevant to a larger number of people, you’ll need to blog on a number of topics:  the local real estate market, great homes that are on the market (especially if they’re your listings), home maintenance tips, mortgage information, local happenings, etc.

 Anyone have a great idea for winning the waiting game?