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Jott.com is an inexpensive and powerful tool for real estate marketers and sales people. Jott is a system that allows you to send voice messages out to other people’s cell phones as a converted text message. This voice messaging system can save a real estate sales professional precious time because it creates short 60 second messages that deliver exactly what you want to say concisely. Here are a couple of other things Jott can do for your business:

1. You can utilize Google’s Calendar program to post times for call in meetings or events that you will be having.
2. You will have the ability to convert voice messages into text messages and then send them to specified contacts on your list.
3. Reminders can be set in the Jott system which will send you a text message when you need to be reminded of an event or important task.

Setting up Jott is relatively easy, just go to www.Jott.com and set up a free account. Once you are finished with that, you will be able to input clients and business partner’s names so that you can send out a message to everyone on your list. You can then enter your message enter your message by voice which will then be converted into a computerized text message (These short messages are called Jotts, just like Twitter calls its short messages “tweets”.) The Jott system will then send out the voice message to everyone on your list.

I used the free account that Jott offered just to see how well it worked. When I called into the system a voice came on that said, “Who do you want to Jott?” I then sent myself a converted voice into text message by simply telling the system to send it to my account. It was really a very easy system to learn and use.

Jott is a Great Tool for Real Estate Agents to Save Time With

I can easily see where this service would save a Realtor or sales agent a lot of time. For one thing, it would help you avoid lengthy conversations that usually occur whenever you need to tell a client or business partner something. For example, if you wanted to tell a buyer that their offer has been accepted, then all you would have to do is say the name of the client when you called up your Jott account. Just like magic, the Jott system would send out the voice message in the form of an email. Jott will also send you an email confirmation letting you know that it has delivered your message.

Jott also can be used with other online applications like Google’s Calendar. By simply calling into Jott, you can tell the system what app to use by using one word commands. If you wanted to place an event into Google’s Calendar, just simply say the word “Google” and say something like, “Meet Freddy at 4:45 on Monday at Fanzoli’s Restaurant for meeting.” Jott will then convert that message into text, and then send it to your Google Calendar where it will appear in text form.

There are many more functions and features that you can use with this program, so much more than I would be able to go into here. However, you can jump over to Jott’s website at: http://www.Jott.com to get a free account and start checking the system and some of these features out.

Over the last ten years or so, I have had several businesses to include an online embroidery business as well as a web design business, and being a very busy person I have learned some valuable lessons.  One of the most important things that I have learned is that the most precious commodity that a person has is time, because let’s face it; they are not making any more of it.  So, time management is a very serious thing to consider, and if you want to take a look at someone that had a very productive life, take a look at Benjamin Franklin.

In addition to being one of the founding fathers of America, Franklin was a true Renaissance man.  Franklin had many achievements to add to all of his political endeavors, to include the involvement of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution; Franklin was a musician, poet, and avid chess player that wrote several essays and treatises on the subject.  He was also an accomplished scientist that helped to uncover the mystery of the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf Stream, while making and writing about scientific discoveries in the fields of electricity, meteorology, principles of light and cooling.  His inventions were considerable as well creating the Franklin stove, lightening rods, the musical instrument called the glass armonica, ( That’s right, it is called armonica not harmonica!) and bifocals just to name a few.

One of the things that made Franklin so successful and diverse was his management of time.  Franklin was a master planner, mapping out his days in advance so that he could complete his goals and spend time on his ideas while keeping track of the progress he made with them.  Franklin usually kept a small private book on his person wherein he not only planned out his days, but also kept track of his accomplishments, appointments and important dates.  Many of the time management planners that we have today are a direct result of Franklin’s records that he kept.

How can you apply this to your real estate business and personal life?  Obviously, if you do not have a planner yourself, you need to buy one.  If you don’t want to buy one, you can always use technology like Google’s Calendar to get one and print it up off of the Internet.  However, having said that, you can get excellent cheap pocket planners that are great because you can carry them in you back pocket.  They have schedules so that you can keep track of your car’s maintenance, your travel expenses or just about anything else you can think of.  I personally like the smaller pocket versions, because they are cheap and convenient to carry around.  Also, if you lose it you won’t feel so bad because you will not have paid so much for it.

Once you get into the habit of planning your day out, you will find that you not only will accomplish more but you will feel less stressed out.  You can then begin to knock off all of those important tasks that you need to take care of in order to move your real estate business forward.

Email Part V

In my last posts on email marketing , (Parts I,  II, III, and IV) I  told you about the importance of email marketing and how you , as a real estate professional, can market yourself and services through email marketing.  Now, I have told you what you need to do is use subgroups and then send emails out to different groups of individuals that are interested in different aspects of what you do.  I also told you that you need to make an opt-in box to help collect email addresses from your website or blog so that you can continue to market back to the people on your marketing list.  At this point, I am pretty sure that you are wondering how you can get all of this accomplished.  There is one tool that I use consistently that will help me accomplish everything that I need to with my email campaign and that tool is Aweber.

I don’t necessarily like to hype or sale a service, especially if I don’t actually use it, but I have been using Aweber for years and it is the one-stop –shop for all of your email campaign needs.   You can target specific groups of people with Aweber very easily and over the years the service has gotten better and better.   Not only will Aweber allow you to send out email to large targeted lists of people with a mere click of a mouse button, but also it will be able to send beautiful, full color messages that look very professional.  Another important aspect of using Aweber is that it will also let you personalize your email campaigns.  Instead of sending out a message that is generic, Aweber can automatically take the list collected from your web site’s opt-in box and then put the recipient’s name into the message field of the email.

Which message do you believe that our recipient, named Ralph, will be likely to open?

Inbox: Hey, we have found several properties and investment opportunities that you should be interested in!

OR

Inbox: Hey Ralph, we have found several properties and investment opportunities that you should be interested in!

Of course, the obvious choice statistically, for people like Ralph, is the message that has his name in it.  Another one of the reasons that the second message will get opened is because people get spammed a lot.  In other words, they will get email messages that they never signed up for and usually, those messages will not have their names on them.  So, it is obvious to them that if they email is not specifically addressed to them, then it is probably spam or someone that simply wants to sell them something.

With Aweber’s excellent service, all you have to do is write your newsletter or message send it, and you can have the names of everyone on your list automatically inserted into the message.  This means that the open rate for your email will be that much greater.  So, if you want to stay in contact with people on your list, the obvious choice is Aweber.

Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents Part IV

In my last blog post I wrote extensively about how a real estate professional should use quality email marketing pieces and never, ever spam anyone for any reason.  Today I’m going to write to you about one of the lists that you should learn to put together called the “announcement list”.

The announcement list is just exactly as it sounds.  It is a list that specifically talks about blog updates, product announcements, or anything that is of a particular interest in your target subgroup or list.  (To see more about subgroups, go to one of my last blog posts on email marketing.)

Now, if you create one of those lists, you can then put on your salesman hat, because people want to know about new products that have either developed or are basically selling from your web site.  This list is probably one of the most profitable subgroups that you can have in email marketing because they are EXPECTING you to send them information on the products that you are selling.  Now, if you have a good readership, reputation and people have come to respect your sage advice, then chances are, you will make good money from a list like this and you won’t see too many unsubscribe notices from them either.

There are marketers that are out on the Internet that make considerable money from lists like this and there is nothing at all wrong with it.  As a matter of fact, there is everything right with doing business this way, just make sure that you have an opt-in list and that you never spam anyone for any reason.

There are however, several basic types of email announcements for real estate agents that can deliver these types of messages and they are as follows:

1. Free Trial Offers – If you are a part of an affiliate program or know of a certain type of item that you can backend and make some extra money, then you can get an individual to try the service or program out.  You don’t have to sell you own product or service and there are loads of companies that will have free trial built into their affiliate programs as well.
2. E-zine Articles – If you publish a regular online newsletter this can be a very viable way of delivering a targeted message to people.  You can easily disguise advertisements as product reviews and critiques without appearing too salesman like.  Also, this type of format could be seen as another entirely different subgroup wherein you could inform other publishers that you have an article they can use in their newsletter.
3. E-books – I have used this method extensively and it works great.  You can make e-books (.pdf files) on specific subjects and have them on your website available for free downloading.  You can put all sorts of affiliate links in those e-books and in some cases the affiliate companies will even let you customize them with your affiliate number so you can make money from it.

In my next post I am going to try to do a recap of some of the most important aspects of email marketing before moving on to another subject.

Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents Part III

If you read my earlier marketing real estate with email articles, part I and part II, you know that my philosophy concerning the use of email is pretty important in the world of establishing yourself with your real estate marketing online.  Today I want to back off just a little and talk about the most basic principles of email marketing to make sure you understand the fundamental strategies you must use to become successful.

First of all, if you are like me and consider email to be the foundation of your Internet marketing presence, then you should make sure that you do it right.  In other words you must put the time into the early phases of email marketing and have patience.  It is the same care and patience you must use when you are putting together a blog.  It is a daily process of writing and tailoring your message to a good, well targeted market.  As one master email marketer once said, “Impatience is the forerunner to quitting.”

You want to make sure that you are taking the time and care to slowly build your readership; otherwise you will never see the fruits of your labor.  At the most, you will wander off into the sunset thinking that you either were led astray or you just did not have whatever it took to become successful n the online marketing world.  So please, take your time whenever you are building your email list and when working your blog, it will definitely pay off.

Doing Email Marketing Right When Selling Real Estate Means Quality Writing

Repeat after me, “Quality is more important than quantity.”  I personally would rather have an email list that is only several hundred  strong than a massive list, because I will know that only a small number of people will actually read my message in the first place.  What you really want in email marketing is a tight group of people that you know exactly what they are looking for, or several lists that are sub grouped in the same manner.   For example, you could have one or two hundred people that are interested in renting or renovating condominiums rather than a massive list of people that want to talk about real estate investing in general.  Why? Well, for one thing on a larger list, you are going to have to have a vast amount of knowledge and some people will be interested in some subjects while others will not.  Second, if you don’t address the needs of one group of people they may leave or opt out, so catering to everyone is going to be difficult.

Do Not Spam! One sacred rule of email marketing of any kind on the Internet is to make sure that you are not tempted to buy a list and spam people.  There is also software you can get that will scour the Internet and find people’s email addresses as well.  DON’T EVEN GO THERE!!!  Those kinds of tactics will kill what business you have and really turn people off.  There are literally no short cuts or magic software out there outside of careful planning and hard work.  Even if you can find some sort of short cut, you will have to pay dearly for it anyway.

If you really want to know how to use email properly and what tools you will need, please sign up for my free real estate marketing course at the top right hand side of this blog.

In my next blog post I will talk about the different formats you can use for your subgroups so that you can begin to use these tools to get a tightly grouped herd of people that will actually listen o your marketing message.

Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents Part II

In my last blog post I discussed the most important aspects of marketing your real estate blog or website with email and in this episode, I will attempt to talk to you about how to divide those lists up into the different groups of people that you will need to service in your real estate sales cycle.

You know, I have already quite extensively talked about why email marketing is so important and attractive to your marketing strategy.  For one thing, email is cheap and it can be sent quite frequently. Heck, you could send it just about every day but I would recommend at the most three times to once a week.  You also don’t want to start selling to people right away with them either.  I will go over more of these basics later, but right now I want to talk about setting up different lists tailored to your marketing efforts and real estate sales cycle.

Categorize Your List When Using Email to Market Real Estate

As you now, there are different cycles to the real estate market and depending on where your readers and subscribers are at, you can send out different messages to different groups.  These are what are sometimes called subgroups.

Here is a bullet list of some of the different subgroups that you could email market to:

• Young couples just looking for that first starter home
• People that have already bought a property from you and you want to stay in touch with them so that they can give you referrals.
• People that are looking for rentals for their college students
• People that are becoming empty nesters because their children have moved on.  As you know, these are people that want to downsize.
• People that want to move into the country.
• People looking for retirement communities.
• Other agents that you are networking with across the country.

In using email to market real estate, you can tailor messages to your subgroups very easily.  The reason you want to do this is so that you can cater to the needs of these people that you have either serviced or will be in the process of serving.  In the case of the above list, it would be a very large stretch of the imagination to try to write a good, fresh message to every one of your subgroups every week.  However, you could cycle through the subgroups and that way you would not have to come up with tons of content; your recipients would probably not feel like you have been emailing them to death either.

When you consider these subgroups, you may have very small lists in them.  This is good believe it or not because a tightly targeted group is far more receptive to you message that a group that is too generalized. I know of a marketer that has 500,000 people on his list.  Guess what? He is a very frustrated individual because he barely does any business.  The reason for this is because he sends out a message that is far too general and hard to maintain.  If your audience feels like they are not being addressed on a level that concerns THEIR NEEDS then they will either delete your message or unsubscribe from your list.

I once knew a contractor that built beautiful homes, but he made a terrible mistake one time when he decided to build a small subdivision of homes instead of his usual one house at a time business.  Since he had quite a few houses to build, he hired a subcontractor to do the foundations for him instead of doing it himself like he usually did.  Actually, he made two mistakes, the second one being he did not closely supervise and watch the subcontractor that was putting in the foundations.  When he started to build his houses, he noticed that parts of the concrete in which he was building his homes on were beginning to crumble at the edges.  Much to his terror, he found out that the contractor had really screwed up all of the foundations that he had put in, and that he had already started to erect most of his homes.   In effect his multi home project was an ineffective disaster.  Internet marketing is just like that.  You need to have a solid foundation to build your Internet business on and that foundation is email marketing.

Why Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents is so Important

As a matter of fact, it is just about impossible to have an Internet based business or presence unless you use email marketing to some degree.  If you are a Realtor or real estate agent, you will find several good uses for email and email marketing.  The number one principle that you need to be aware of is that your clients, past clients, and business contact lists are your number one priority.  As a millionaire once told me, “the list is gold! “  Your lists, building your lists and their quality should be your number one priority because the better you build your foundation, the stronger your Internet presence (house) will be.

There are four principals that you need to consider in order to build email aspect of your online business:

1. Your email marketing list must be educational.  People are always looking for good, quality information on the Internet.  This is one of Google’s highest priorities when ranking sites in order of their popularity on the World Wide Web.  If the content of a web site or blog provides quality content on a regular and consistent basis, then chances are it will rank pretty high.
2. Your email marketing list must be effective.  You need to have lists that are highly targeted and focused if you are going to make money online.
3. Your email list must be diverse.  You need a set of lists that are broken down into different demographic groups.  You are going to find out rather quickly that while your audience may seem as one group you will find that there are people on it that are looking for different things.  You need to be sensitive to those needs and tailor different messages to each specific group.
4. Your list must also be very proactive.   You must build your lists by aggressively marketing to customers and enticing them to join up to your list or newsletters.

The next post, I will talk more about the different lists that you will build and how you can begin to focus on those small, tightly focused groups to make money or gain real estate clients.

I once had a friend that was trying to sell a piece of land from two states away.  Since the prospect seemed like he was pretty interested in a property, my friend who was really prone to taking action, wanted to send an email and attachment with photographs.  However, when he did so, the photographs were disorganized and he had a hard time explaining to his client over his cell phone certain aspects and features of the property in question.  One of the ways my friend could easily overcome this problem would be with virtual meetings.

Virtual Meetings May Soon be a Reality

There are several online companies that have services which allow you to use the Internet to hold virtual meetings.  One of the companies that is excellent in what they do to provide a platform to give you the ability to hold a virtual meeting is an online company called Go To Meeting.  (www.gotomeeting.com)  With Go To Meeting you can use a webcam to talk to each other while sharing visual documents like pictures, charts and anything else you can think of.  This platform is very versatile because it will allow you to alert people not just by email that you are going to have a meeting, but also by phone.  (Please bear in mind that this system will only work if the other parties involved in the meetings have Go To Meeting’s platform and software installed on their computers as well.)

This system is really pretty versatile in its applications as well.  For one thing, you can have a conferencing session by way of phone and computer at the same time.  If a person is even in their car, they can hear you and other online attendees to the meeting over their phones.  If a client can’t meet with you due to conflicting schedules, you can easily record online audio and video sessions with them and play them back later.  So if a person wants to see a piece of real estate by way of a virtual meeting and their business partner or wife can’t be there, you can always record the session and the client can play it back later for the absent party.

I predict that for businesses and individual clients, virtual meetings for Realtors will be a commonplace reality.   It will save gas and traveling to offices, as well as allow people clear across the country to see pieces of real estate that they might be interested in.

Other Uses of Virtual Meetings for Realtors and Real Estate Professionals

Not only are the presentation opportunities available for this type of a platform, but also you can train staff with it as well.  Go To Meeting has interactive training features that allow for assessments that you may need such as tests, quizzes and polls to gauge the effectiveness of your training even if you are still clear across the country.

I remember the first time I started using social media to begin building my listings and clients lists.  I started marketing real estate on Facebook at the time and began to make all sorts of friends in such frenzy that I almost got kicked-off due to spamming.  Now, bear in mind I wasn’t sending unsolicited email or anything like that, but I was making friends at such a fast speed the social media site started to warn me about making too many friends.  After all, wasn’t that the idea behind social media marketing to make as many friends as fast as you can online so you can market back to them?

The Natural Way Real Estate Agents should Use Social Media

Much to my chagrin, I found that there was a lot more to connecting and selling to people on a social bookmarking site than meets the eye.  One of the big mistakes that I learned right away was to not be impatient with making friends and relationships when using this new medium. After listening to a few webinars as well as reading several books, I found out that there were important strategies as to how a real estate agent should use social media and what not to do as well.

• Try to sound like a friend.   The last thing that you really want to do is sound like a snake oil salesman.  Actually, don’t just act like a friend, become one.  If you really care about the people you are working with, it will translate into long term friends as well as customers.  People can usually tell when you are being superficial, so try to be genuine and have their best interests at heart.  In an era where everyone is in business for a quick buck, a person that takes the time to truly help people out will stand heads above everyone else.
• Ask a ton of questions.  How are you going to find out what the needs of people are if you don’t ask questions?  This will help you on two different levels.  First of all it will help you find out about what their needs are, how many family members and friends that they have as well as what type of real estate they are looking for.  Second, it shows that you are genuinely interested in them and what their needs are.
• Listen to what people are trying to say.  There is a true art to listening.  As a matter of fact, the entire sales process many times hinges on how well you can actually shut up and listen.  So, the next time you are in a conversation, ask a lot of questions, make eye contact and listen.  I know you can’t necessarily do this on a social media site, (unless you are using a web cam) but when you are chatting online make sure you don’t try to sell anything initially, not even your services, so that you can get into the habit of natural talk.

In the world of online social media, what usually goes around comes around, so try to make sure that you appear to be professional at all times.  Try to refrain from using foul language, and talking about risqué subjects because your words very possibly, will be seen by many people.

If you think for one second that marketing on the Internet is easy, then I have got some real news for you.  It is not.  It is not easy, nor is it something that you do not have to work at.  You have got to write, write, and write to keep that wonderful, fresh content coming that Google likes so much, plus you must implement different strategies. These will be strategies that are spread throughout the week while working off line methods of marketing as well as online.   So, when I mention marketing real estate properties on the Internet, please bear in mind that there is much work that needs to be done.

Learning From Other Real Estate Web Sites

There is another strategy that you can use, that will help you gain an insight and education as to what your real estate prospects are looking for, as far as an agent is concerned.    If you go into Google and look at the top real estate blogs, you will notice that there are certain articles that people are reading and commenting on a lot.  One of the articles I have read recently was from the Your FSBO Expert Blog (http://www.yourfsboexpert.com )

Even though, I fully understand that Your FSBO Expert is for people that are trying to sell their properties without the help of a Realtor or a real estate agent, a realtor or agent can learn some valuable insights from reading the postings as well as comments.  One of the things that I discovered from visiting this site was why people were not satisfied with using an agency to sell their properties.  Most people would probably think that the only reason a seller would rather sell their own property, was because they just wanted to save money.  While this is true in many cases, it is definitely not true in all of them.

Find Out What is Bothering These Sellers

Some of the reasons that people did not want to use a real estate agent were along the lines of unprofessionalism in the agency’s website, lack of caring and attention of the agent, as well as sellers felt that not enough marketing methods were being used by the agency and agent.

When you can easily get insights to the reasons why people try to sell homes themselves, you can adjust your own marketing message and try to address some of these issues in your own sales and marketing plans. How can you, as a real estate professional overcome some of these objections?  If your agency’s website isn’t good enough, perhaps you can hire someone to build a professional one for you or at least start a blog with a professionally built platform.  You can always link your site to the agency’s site even if they have given you your own web page to sell from.

Your Own Website or Blog Can Make All the Difference

If you have a blog, you can write, display pictures and load videos of the properties you have listed and are showing.  This will overcome the objection of not caring for your client or prospect.  How could anyone legitimately say that you are not putting effort into selling or representing a property if you are making blog posts, displaying pictures and videos of their properties?  If you use multiple channels of marketing for your clients, and show them great care, they will always come back to you and refer others to you as well.

By looking at other real estate web sites, blogs and forums and paying attention to what the people there are saying, you could learn to adapt your own marketing strategies.  You could also learn what concerns that your clients and potential clients have and get ahead in the game of marketing and selling to them.