33 Quality Touches for Real Estate Agents

by Mark Green

Database Marketing Expert

Author website

In Gary Keller and Dave Jenks’ game changing book “The Millionaire Real Estate Agent”, the authors recommend a “33-Touch” follow-up system to stay top of mind with “mets”.

It was actually a brilliant idea – for Keller.  KW agents immediately began flooding the market with (expensive) calendars, post cards, and chotchkies – building the Keller Williams brand in the process.  While Century 21 squandered ad dollars sponsoring the MLB All Star Game and RE/Max floated its balloon on expensive and largely ineffective national TV ad buys, Keller Williams gained market share without spending a corporate dime.

Back in 2004, when the book was published, I felt strongly that 33 annual touches was too high a frequency for real estate professionals.  But that was before I started exploring social media.  Today, it’s very conceivable for a real estate agent to reach their database with 33 quality touches per year.  Below, I’ve mapped out a sample 33-touch program.

Postal Mail:  5 touches

Direct mail is relatively expensive when compared to some of the vehicles we’ll discuss below – but I still believe it should be a core component in any CRM campaign.  Of critical importance – your direct mail efforts need to look and feel as if they are “one-to-one” correspondences.  I have never preferred post cards and “newsletters” because they are clearly mass-mailing efforts.  We want your contacts to believe that you specifically thought of them when we reach them via direct mail.  Direct mail ideas:

• Birthday cards for the client and co-client
• Thanksgiving card (rather than the stale holiday card approach)
• Market updates (make these a mail-merged professional letter, not a bulk-mail blast)
• Announcements (invites to charity events, new hires, testimonials/case studies, etc)

E-mail:  12 touches

I’ve written a few articles about the trials and tribulations of email marketing on the Top of Mind Blog – all of which boil down to common sense.  Email is cheap and easy.  This low barrier to entry creates more and more emails being dumped into our inbox every day.  Clutter is a marketer’s worst enemy.  Your email correspondences must meet an extremely high bar in order to maintain readership and response over the long haul.  Here’s our email approach at Top of Mind – please note that our program is built for mortgage professionals, but I still think these principles could apply for real estate professionals:

• Quarterly Neighborhood Home Sales Reports (every 90 days we advise each contact on what homes sold within a 1/4 mile radius from their home)
• Quarterly Mortgage Checkups (advises each client how their mortgage is performing vs. market conditions)
• Beyond the Media (aims to debunk the doom and gloom consumers are bombarded with in the mainstream media, written quarterly)

Phone Calls:  4 touches

Most of us fail, myself included, to actually talk to our past clients frequently enough.  After all, it can be awkward calling a past client who is likely not in the market for our services.  But the beautiful thing about an effective CRM program is it gives us natural, compelling reasons to contact our database by phone.  For example, when you send a community real estate market update, you could simply select 30 clients to follow up with each time with a phone call.  Questions you might ask:

• Did you receive the letter/email?  (Heck, it’s important for us to ensure that our content is reaching the recipient and is being read!)
• Did you have any questions or concerns I might be able to address?
• Might you know anyone who I can help?  (Say, for example if you’ve written about the home-buyer tax credit.)

Web 2.0 – Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Blogging:  12+ touches

Up to this point, we’re “only” at 21 touches/year… still a long way from Keller’s magic number.  Enter social media and blogging.  It’s virtually impossible to measure how often, say, a Facebook status update is read by a contact in your database… or a blog article.  And I certainly don’t mean to beat a dead horse here… but these vehicles absolutely “work”.  I laughed out loud this morning when I saw Geno’s Facebook entry about his Persian night out.  I know intimately how Brian Brady lives and dies with each Chase Utley at bat.  Above all, social media provides the ideal complement to traditional CRM vehicles because they allow us to connect on a personal level with our database – rather than just on a professional level.  I never liked this expression… but after all we are “buying brain cells” here.

The Glue That Holds Everything Together Is:

Content.  Always has been and always will be.  It’s not enough to “stay in front of” your database anymore.  The ultimate goal is to deepen relationships with your contacts.  Before you hit the send button on a campaign, ask yourself a few questions:

• Would I see value in this correspondence as a consumer or would I immediately hit the delete button?
• Is the correspondence about me or is it about the contact I’m sending it to?  What’s in it for the reader?
• Is this correspondence a “one-to-one” touch point?  Will the recipient believe that I thought of them specifically?

Today, the concept of “33 touches to your database” doesn’t seem so intimidating anymore.  Rather, the challenge becomes providing deeper, more compelling content than your competition.