Would you like to use a marketing system that costs nearly $0.00 and can bring you a steady flow of quality, motivated buyers — even during this slow economy?

Then keep reading because in this article I’ll show you one of the highest-return, lowest-cost marketing strategies you’ll ever use in your real estate practice. I’m dead serious. This is working today to get more exposure and contracts for your listings. As a side benefit it also demonstrates your unique value to sellers and helps you get more listings.

Here’s how this 2-step marketing strategy works:

STEP #1: Get a quality list of people to EMAIL

STEP #2: Send them a “valuable update” at least once a month

The best way to explain how this strategy can help you sell more homes is by answering a few common questions about email marketing…

QUESTION #1: “Is email effective?”

• Emails are quick and easy to create and send, and they cost you nothing…
• Emails are welcomed when they’re part of a “valuable update” (as long as you’re sending something people want to read and not all real estate info, more on that in a moment)…
• Emails are seen more than Facebook posts or Twitter updates because they arrive in someone’s in-box rather than on a website someone has to go and check…
• Emails are the most reliable way to get visitors to your website anytime you have an updated listing (no more running ads, printing flyers, or paying for traffic to get potential buyers to see listings on your website)…

Are emails opened by everyone?  No.  Email open rates depend on many factors including:  1) your relationship with the people you’re emailing, 2) the nature of your previous emails, and 3) how often you email your contacts.

If your contacts know you personally, you can expect 25% to 40% to open your emails within the FIRST DAY of you sending an email, spending $0.00.  That’s why email marketing is the best way to promote your listings — it’s the highest-leverage tool you can use for free to get exposure for your listings.

QUESTION #2: “What if I don’t have email addresses of my contacts?“

The most valuable business asset you’ll ever own is your “Power List” — some agents call this your sphere of influence. It’s your past clients, quality leads, friends, family, or acquaintances who know of you from a common organization or group. These are people most likely to welcome and respond to your emails.

Many of these contacts are already in your current email program. You can easily export these contacts and put them in an email marketing system. Then you’ll be able to send a “broadcast email” where you message all your contacts at the same time (instead of one-by-one). The email can still be personal by having the email system merge in the FIRST NAME of each contact.

But what if you still don’t have ALL the email addresses of your contacts, or you want more? I’ve created a quick reference guide with 15 easy ways to get more email addresses, organized into the following FOUR categories:

1. FREE (7 strategies to collect emails for no cost)
2. CHEAP (3 inexpensive and effective strategies to get more emails)
3. BIG BANG (2 strategies that cost money, but can help you build a huge email list quickly)
4. LEVERAGE (3 strategies to get emails from high-quality contacts that other people know)

I’ve numbered each of the strategies so it’s quick to scan the list, pick the ones you want to use, and start building your email list. To download this guide, click the image below…

* One agent I know was averaging at least 2 new people every day added to her database, and in her first year alone made over $122,000 in commissions from this group.  And she keeps making a $6-Figure income each year from them, even in this economy.  This is worth it.  Follow the reference guide and keep at it.  You’ll be glad you did.

QUESTION #3: “What do I email so it’s welcomed, opened, read, and acted-upon?”

OK, so you’ve got your “Power List” with email addresses. What do you send them?

If you blast off a “pitch” email promoting your listings to these folks, many of them will be upset or wonder why you’re spamming them. Instead, you want to send them something that will be welcomed and valued. It needs to be something radically different than the “email flyers” you see used to promote listings to other agents.

How do you send something that sets you APART from other agents, brings great VALUE, bonds a deeper RELATIONSHIP, while ALSO promoting your listings and giving specific REASONS to contact you?

The answer is to send a “valuable update.” That’s a little vague. Let me explain it using Service For Life!^® as an example.

Each issue of Service For Life!^® is engineered with:

1) Articles people want to read (not all about real estate) to make your email welcomed and valued…
2) Teasers, trivia, odd facts and helpful resources to get people involved (the longer they spend with your emails the more they’re bonded to you and the more they’ll see offers to contact you)…
3) 14 specific OFFERS to convert leads, generate referrals, word of mouth and repeat business (including multiple places to promote your listings in each email)…

You can see a sample of the email version here.

The bottom line: sending the “right” kind of email allows you to notify all your contacts about your listings at least once a month… where they THANK YOU for emailing them. Now that’s powerful. Thousands of agents are using this strategy today to get more listings sold, for no cost, while also deepening their relationship with each person for more referrals.  This also demonstrates a marketing system you have to promote listing, which will bring you more seller clients.

There’s a lot more I could say to describe this strategy, but you can learn all the specifics on this webinar training.

What you need to know right now is: produce a “valuable update” email, once a month, that has all the right elements to get opened, read, engaged-with, and that motivates response.  More specifically, you’ll need to…

• Spend 15 to 20 hours a month researching, writing, editing, rewriting, etc. the articles on your own,
• Layout the entire email in HTML (or pay a graphic designer to do it),
• And find an email marketing system to send broadcast emails.

Or, you could become a Service For Life!^® member and have it 95% done for you each month…

** Your contact info and photo are already loaded into your email issue…
** You take 5-minutes to add a personal message so it looks like you created it (this personal touch is very important)…
** You can add links or listing information directly to the email template through a simple editor that looks and works just like a word processor…
** All articles are also modifiable through the email editor and there’s an article library with dozens of new articles available each month, ready to cut and paste in about 30-seconds…
** Press SEND, and you’re done.

All the right elements are already engineered into the Service For Life!^® email template, plus there are videos and guides to export and upload your contacts into an email sending system, pre-written email openers that bonds people to you for life, and information for getting more emails opened with the right subject lines, along with the best times of day and days of the week to send emails.

Your time is really better spent working with clients and closing deals. The choice is yours: create your own “valuable update” email each month, or have it done for you.

Either way, putting in place this cheap, and amazingly effective marketing strategy could be the ONE thing you need to prosper in today’s new economy.

In Part 1 of our article series, we covered 6 strategies for generating online buyer and seller leads.

Now we’ll shift our focus to an even more important area of web marketing… converting leads into commission-producing clients.

How To Convert Online Real Estate Leads

The first step in the conversion process is capturing the contact information of leads so you can follow-up and give them more reasons to become your client.

INTERNET STRATEGY #7: Make An OFFER For Valuable Information

Contact forms are not new to real estate websites, but it’s surprising how many agents don’t include a “lead generation magnet” to collect the contact information of interested prospects.  This is a specific offer for a free report or free video in exchange for a person’s email address, mailing address, or phone number.

Remember, 99% of your website visitors will not fill out a “Contact Me” form just because it’s on your site.  You need to offer visitors something THEY value and then create a custom opt-in form for them to request the free information.

What could you offer?

• Free MLS searches
  • Allow visitors to view 2 listings, before they register (this method is proven to get 14 times more leads than other options)
  • Allow visitors to save searches — if they register
  • Create a signup for HouseTrack to get automatic email updates on the listings they like
• Free “Introductory” Services
  • “Dream Home Finder Service” for buyers
  • “Maximum Home Value Audit” for sellers
• Free information
  • A relocation package, including local information and moving tips
  • Special “consumer awareness” reports filled with helpful information for buyers or sellers and pre-sells your services
  • A video tour of homes in specific subdivisions or areas of your city
• Free news and updates
  • A free signup for your real estate newsletter
  • You can also offer staging tips, market information, local event reminders, and real estate news

How do you create a custom contact form?

Most website providers have a way to create contact forms and add them to your website.  At the very least, you’ll want to capture a person’s name and email address.  Keep in mind the more information you request the less likely you’ll get leads, however, the leads may be a higher quality if you ask for full mailing address and phone number.

After a person requests your free information… deliver it via email, physical mail, phone conversation or in person.  Then, continue to follow-up to convert them to a client.

INTERNET STRATEGY #8: Track Your Visitors On Your Site

It used to be that you would have to talk to a homebuyer first in order to discover what they’re looking for in a home.

Now, the right technology allows you to immediately know what a homebuyer is searching for in the MLS.  Meaning, you can have that information ready before you actually have a conversation with them.

This allows you to be more efficient when dealing with new leads AND you make a better impression when you talk to them.

Common situations where this information is helpful:

1. You can’t reach a homebuyer. Whenever you call, they aren’t available. Well, when you know the time of day that a homebuyer is usually searching for homes, you can customize your strategy to reach the homebuyer at a time you KNOW they are available.

2. A homebuyer has viewed the same listing repeatedly. You notice that a homebuyer has returned to your MLS Search page to view the same listing they saved a week ago.  You know that they are obviously interested in that specific home so you can contact them offering to setup a viewing.

Several high-end IDX MLS Search tools now offer tracking information similar to what is mentioned above.  These tools also help you track your communication with leads.  If your IDX search tool includes these features, it will more than pay for itself from the increase in the number of leads you can convert into commissions.

INTERNET STRATEGY #9: Send Out Listing Update Emails

If you have a tracking system on your website you will know if a homebuyer is searching for very specific features.  The more focused the homebuyer is, the closer they tend to be to purchasing.

You can offer to setup showings or send other listings that you know match their search criteria.  These “listing update” emails are an invaluable service to a homebuyer!

There are two ways to implement this strategy:

FIRST, you could search the MLS and send your leads periodic emails about new listings, updated listings, and hot buys that the homebuyer may be interested in.

SECOND, you could use a system that has a built-in feature for sending out listing updates automatically.  When visitors save a search on your MLS Search page, they have the option to receive HouseTrack and get automated listing update emails.

All emails should include your photo and link back to your website, meaning your name stays at the top of their mind. These emails are a great way to keep your website visitors coming back to your site and to convert them to from online to a live showing of some of the listings.

INTERNET STRATEGY #10: Follow-up ASAP and Ongoing

This is perhaps the most important strategy of all to increase the number of online leads you convert to clients.

If you don’t try to get in touch with new leads immediately, they won’t become your clients.  They will not pursue you.  If you are unresponsive, homebuyers will move on to find someone who is responsive.

Why is quick response time so critical?

Because it communicates how responsive you’ll be if they were your client.  A slow response time sends a message that you cannot provide the support they need.  No one wants to work with an agent that is too busy to even talk to them. Plus, if someone fills out a form on your website and you wait a week before you respond to their inquiry, they may not even remember you.

According to a study done by the California Association of REALTORS®, when homebuyers were asked why they were satisfied with their agent, the most common response was “always quick to respond”.  So make sure your real estate website has a way to notify you every time a new lead fills out a form on your site.

ALSO, and this is really important, most of your leads will not be ready to buy or sell when you contact them.  Most will needs weeks if not months more to decide their next move.

How can you stay in touch with these leads at least once a month without spending a lot of time managing the process?

The biggest mistake agents make after the initial contact is failure to follow-up sufficiently to convert a lead to a client.  The important point here is you continue to keep in contact with leads you generate…offering them more information and resources to help with their search, or simply being on their mind when the time is right for them.  Here are two ways to contact leads without it taking a lot of time:

1. After a lead opt-ins on your website, add them to an automated drip email campaign. You can send them market information, real estate news, home buying and selling tips, or anything else that is relevant to what they requested from you.  Showcase your expertise and the high level of service you offer.   These emails can be sent daily or weekly at first and then monthly to ask them how else you can help.
2. Consider sending them a monthly real estate newsletter (email or print) that is NOT all about real estate. They may be close to buying or selling but the vast majority of people will welcome and value helpful consumer-related information more than continual mailings that are only about the real estate market. You’ll be surprised at how well this can build trust and pre-sell your services, especially if you continue to offer multiple reasons for them to contact you in your monthly newsletter.

So, there you have it… the last 4 of our “top 10” strategies for generating and converting real estate leads online.  If you have an existing website you can begin to implement these strategies or talk with your webmaster this week about adding these features to your site right away.

If you’re looking for a complete web marketing system without the usual technical hassles or expense, you can check out the new Elite Website platform by clicking here.

[Ed Note: If you'd like to learn how one of our agent-members from Boston is using these strategies to make over $6-Figures per year GCI from her website visit this site to learn more...
http://agentinnercircle.com/SixFigureWebsites ]

Having a steady flow of clients is easy if you have a database of quality contacts with which you regularly communicate. Here’s a great way to build your database by offering a valuable service to prospects and clients.

Agent Salome Janse Van Rensburg creates a flyer offering a “community update” service, informing subscribers on anything from interest rate changes to new tax laws. She could distribute this flyer to neighborhoods in her farm, pass them out at her open houses, or include it with her regular mailings. This is a versatile tool and there are some important details …

1. Attention Grabbing Headline: ‘PUBLIC NOTICE.’ This gets under a prospect’s radar that filters out ‘sales messages,’
2. Offering something of value to target audience (updates include information buyers and sellers seek),
3. Making it easy for people to respond (include both phone and email contact), and
4. Letting a person choose how they want to receive updates (via email or sms message).

Here’s what Salome said this strategy is doing for her:

“This was my idea to try and get more people on my database, so far it has worked for me! I have had people contacting me on a daily basis and giving me referrals of friends and family that would like to sell/buy a home.”

You can click on the image below to see the full flyer as a pdf:

Would you like to use a marketing system that costs you nearly $0.00 and will bring you a steady flow of quality, motivated buyers and sellers – even during a deep recession?

Then keep reading, because this will be one of the most valuable and powerful marketing strategies you’ll ever use in your practice. I’m very serious. Keep reading, you won’t regret it…

I’ve seen booms and busts in real estate over the past three decades of my career. And regardless of the market I’ve never stopped looking for proven ways to make my marketing dollars stretch as far as possible.

Today’s market requires you to stretch like never before.

Most businesses (and agents) cut marketing programs during slow times and, in the process, lose tremendous market share and revenue. What they also don’t realize is a recession is an opportunity (actually a mandate if you want to survive) to gain an increasing share of a declining market.

It’s in times when everyone else is cutting back that you need to market MORE not less.

Question is, how do you market more frequently AND

more effectively while spending LESS money??

Here’s how: First, your selection of the right “market” is at least 80% of your success. And the most valuable market (and business asset) you own is your House List, or what some agents call your Sphere of Influence.

They include your past clients, quality leads, friends, family and acquaintances who know you or know OF you. These are the people most likely to welcome and respond to your message (especially if it’s value-oriented – more in a minute).

They’re also the highest quality people you’ll ever work with in your practice. They qualify and close at the highest rates.

Don’t have a “house list”?

Then start one. One of our agents started adding just 2 people a day to her database (past clients, family, friends, common associations such as church, community organizations, etc.), and in her first year alone made over $122,000 in commissions from the group.

And she keeps making a growing $6-Figures each year from them. Not bad in my book.

OK, now, the way you “market” to your House List is to do something radically different from what other agents are doing…something that will set you APART from other agents, bring great VALUE, bond a deeper RELATIONSHIP, AND give people specific REASONS to communicate with you and use your services.

Your communication needs to have 3 purposes: 1) converting leads to clients, 2) generating new clients, and 3) motivating referrals and repeat business.

I’m talking about creating a very, very different, but simple-as-pie EMAIL Marketing Program.

But remember, you don’t want to be sending “pitch” emails to folks – that will just make them angry. Instead, you want to send them something that will be welcomed and valued on it’s own merit.

And here’s how you do it – step by step…

STEP #1: Find “The Right” Kind of Contact to Send – Something That WORKS.

This is going to sound like a pitch, but read on because it’s important.

I want you to go to www.ServiceForLife.com, and scroll down BELOW the input form, and click on the “order” button.

Or you can call my office and speak with Michele or Karen at (800) 622-2540 (land line: 520-546-1349) – they’re terrific people. Be sure to ask them for the special limited-time “Agent Inner Circle Member Deal” (don’t forget, OK?).

Why do this?

Because for just $67 a month you can get a ready-to-use newsletter that is written FOR you, engineered with ALL the elements you need to make it “work”: 1) High Readership Content, 2) 7 proven “Bonding Elements” to build the relationship, and 3) 14 Specific “Offers” to convert leads and generate referrals, word of mouth and repeat business.

You could spend 15 to 20 hours a month researching, writing, editing, rewriting, etc. your own (and still not get it right) or you can let me do it for you. Be smart – you practice real estate, I’ll write your marketing communication. Seriously, just do it – you won’t regret it.

OK, now that you’ve done that, here’s the “radically different” part: You’re going to convert your newsletter to a simple .pdf document and EMAIL it out.

Why do it this way?

People will welcome your .pdf document because it’s PERSONAL and DIFFERENT and will stand out, and can be read on-screen or printed out (by the way 99% of all computers have Adobe Acrobat Reader already installed, so nearly every human soul can read it just by clicking on the attached file). AND…they can very easily forward it to family and friends on their email list – free viral marketing for you.

Plus, there’s another use for your pdf newsletter and I’ll share it with you at the end of this article – let’s keep going…

Step #2: Here’s how to send your newsletter:

1: Customize your newsletter as usual as if it were written by “you” (another very important reason to use Service For Life!®), updating it with your contact information, phone, email and web sites – just like you do every time you send it. It’s very easy.

2: Convert your documents to an Adobe Acrobat File (.pdf). If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat full version on your computer you can get a free .pdf converter online by either going to http://www.adobe.com/acom/createpdf/ or http://www.freepdfconvert.com, or you can search Google or Yahoo, etc. for a “Free PDF Converter”. It’s Free, Easy and very Fast.

3: 3: Send your .pdf newsletter out by email attachment. When your issue is ready to go you can email it to your database of contacts one of three ways:

• Send using your existing email software since it’s free and takes just seconds (Outlook for Windows, or “Mail” for Macs). Just create your message (see below), enter your recipients from your address book, attach the document, and “BAM!” you’re done. This is best if your list is smaller than 100 people.
• If your list is bigger than 100, you can send your direct-response newsletter using an “email send” software. You can also customize your message using a merge function. Investigate these programs I’ve used with success: www.Group-Mail.com or www.ColoradoSoft.com. These simple programs will allow you to store your contacts in a simple database, and send right off your computer (no, I’m not an affiliate trying to sell you email software – I’ve used these myself).
• If your list is really large (5,000+), or you want a more powerful list server, send using an online-based list server. Companies I have used include: www.GetResponse.com, www.AWeber.com, or www.ConstantContact.com.

Here’s the message I want you to use in your email:

Again, merging the first name is optional, but I like to do it because it’s more personal. Don’t forget to ATTACH your newsletter to your message. And please don’t spam folks – it angers them and is horribly ineffective as a marketing strategy.

OK, that’s it. Easy, don’t you think? And get this: It will take you about 20-30 minutes a month to do this – TOPS.

Listen…I mean this…please don’t be like the “mediocre masses” who cower and whimper in the face of challenges. This is what separates the “players” from the “posers.”

You can do this. All it takes is a small commitment and a few minutes of your time – that’s it. I’ve seen it work wonders for a lots of agents now. Just try it and see for yourself. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

OH…and I almost forgot: Don’t forget you can also add your .pdf newsletter to your website! Search engines love .pdf’s, so you’re getting more bang for your buck. AND…having a new issue on your site each month motivates people to return.

So don’t wait. Do it now – it’s dirt cheap, amazingly effective, and “may” be the ONE thing you do to survive and prosper during this crazy market.