Help with a Drip Set Up

[Ryan Ward]

I'm looking for some advice on how best to set this up. I want to be able to have full control so I am using Outlook for my responses. This is what I have done:

Once or twice a day, I respond to my inquiries, about 10 -12 day now. What I have done is set up a newletter with live link buttons that I send out to the registrations. I open outlook twice (one open to the saved newsletter that I have sent to myself and the other outlook I have open to the registrations) and I copy and paste each email address into the forwarding newsletter open outlook and manually type in the persons name from the registration (if they leave one). So basically I forward them the newsletter. I can't attach the newsletter, but, I created it to look very similar to my website. This is what t says:

Hi John,



Thank you for choosing my website to search for your real estate information. You can click the links in the newsletter below to contact me or search for homes. I realize that you are probably just interested in viewing homes right now, but, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me and I will do my best to answer your questions and help you anyway that I can. I can be reached at 404-630-3187.

This is not an automatically generated email and I am here to help any way that I can! I am at my computer so if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call!
404.630.3187



Thank you,



Ryan Ward

(Followed by the newsletter) If you would like to see it PM me and I will email it to you.

Then, I take each contact and place them in a category called "prospects"

I can then go back whenver I would like and send a second or third or whatever newsletter that I have created in one quick shot to the entire group. I have them categorized in one week groups so as to not confuse them and keep up with the emails.

This seems a little bit cumbersome, but, maybe it just is what it is and that's fine. Each entry response takes under 1 minute including saving the contact.

Any suggestions???

Oh I just received my first response to one of these newsletters and I just sent him a group of homes. He emailed back and said he would discuss them woth his wife and get back to me about seeing them.

So I would like to know if anyone has any good ideas to increase the conversion here as well. I have about 150 people in the system now so that rate doesn't seem so good yet.

Thanks,

Ryan

[RESteve]

I am having trouble understanding what the prospects are asking for: Is this basically a newsletter sign up form, and in the responding email they get a newsletter with properties for sale linked?

[Ryan Ward]

Steve, I'm talking about consumers who register to search for homes on my website. I want to make sure I am optimizing my conversion rates.

[ericbramlett]

Ryan -

As far as the mechanics of your system, I don't really have any suggestions. We're using about the same level of automation that you are (which is to say, low.)

We use a system pretty similar, but we stress the importance of a personalized search (we have a Client Gateway here) & the importance of a phone call. IMO, the whole idea is to get the phone number (in the nicest way possibe.)

[Ryan Ward]

Eric,

We have the client gateway as well. I have offered it a few times, but, people haven't seemed to really want it - even when I tell them it's there own personal website...I hear what your saying about phone numbers - I will have to work on that.

[ericbramlett]

If they provide any search criteria, I usually set up a basic Gateway for them - which will work the drip for you. If they don't provide any search criteria, I'll usually provide a sample gateway like this in my email response to them. Try out the sample gateway - you only have to create it once & then paste it into your template. Added benefit to the sample gateway - you can see if anyone's viewed it that day, so you'll know if it's a flop or not.

[Ryan Ward]

I will have to play around with the gateway. My IDX allows people to save searches and favorites and I can view what they save from the backend. It also emails me daily when they have new listings that are emailed to them so I know when they receive an email. For the standard registrations`with no favorites or saved searches, I could email them my newsletter and also send them a generic gateway link that I have set up so that they can see what they can get from a gateway. I could also seperate out the people with saved searches and give them more personalized service because I know what they are searching for.

[ericbramlett]

Absolutely. And let me say that I don't consider myself a "conversion expert" by any means. We're just now getting significant traffic to our websites. However, about 2 years ago I used to buy leads from justlisted - and there's nothing like paying $30/lead when you're broke to make you work your butt off on every crappy lead that comes your way. All I learned was that the more added value you can offer, the more likely they are to actually talk to you - so I'd always focus on "improved search results after a quick conversation." Anyways - best of luck - I know you're already converting & just trying to improve!

[Dennis Pease]

A better system is high on my wish list. I have discussed this with Morgan & Thomas and apparently I'm not the only one that has brought it up.

Here we have killer websites, page one on google and I feel my weakness is a good follow-up system.

I do something like Ryan, I also have Top Producer with Outlook Connector so when I email from Outlook it also saves a copy in Top Producer. it just seems like I have too many things going on here, CMS, Outlook, Top Producer.

I would like to hear from some team owners here. How do you handle leads and with what system.

I know of one team here on the forums that uses CLPSuite. Anyone else have any experience with them or know of a better one.

I think the ideal system would come from REW. Please move this to the top of the REW wishlist.

[RESteve]

Let's outline what our ideal lead conversion system of online signups is:

-User searches online. Wants to register to receive filtered search results of homes to email on a daily, weekly, or biweekly basis.
-System/software adds contact information of user to our database and automatically applies a follow up plan - be it 4 letters and four calls, 5 calls, and three letters (I use a 8x8 program to develop relationships).
-System also at the same time, registers the user under a "gateway", allowing the user to get emails of properties sent as requested.
-At the end of the eight weeks, if user isn't converted to an appointment, then gateway will turn off and agent will call to see how they'd like to proceed from here. Agent can extend gateway expiration or cancel it all together.

I know top producer has a lead capture form that will automatically put the lead in our database, THEN you can automatically apply action plans to the person based on contact type. The problem is is that Top Producer has two types of code you can download for this to work - .ASP (what if we are running on LINUX?) and (I think) .CCP which is uncompiled code.

Top Producer has never been able to help me with .CCP, and they say that my web developer can do this. Every web developer I talk to says that you need a compiler to get the code to work, which should be received by the .CCP creators. (the runaround)

So is this pretty much what other people are running into or would like from their lead capture from their website?