You Do Use Texting In Your Marketing, Right?

The other day I was scrolling my twitter feed when I caught a stat, 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes. This piqued my curiosity, so I dug deeper and found some more stats.

• Over 6 Billion text messages are sent each day in the U.S.
• Texting in the sales process can lead to conversion gains of over 100%
• Text messages have a 98% open rate, compared to 20% for email
• Text messages have a 45% response rate, compared to 6% for email
• The average adult spends 23 hours a week texting. Texting is almost universal on every phone nowadays; texting goes beyond the younger demographics and into the more mature demographics as well.
  
  

Last year, I bought a home. Before I ever called, I texted a realtor, that's just how I prefer to communicate. The other day, an insurance agent prospected me for my business. She called, I didn’t answer. She texted me, I responded within minutes. (true story) What’s the point? The common thread in every stat that I reference above is that each of those people are consumers or future potential clients of yours.

Are you offering a texting service to them? Can they drive by one of your listings and text for more info? If they can’t, you could potentially be missing a great opportunity to give your future clients a preferred method to communicate with you. Check out this short video below where Carin Nguyen of Keller Williams talks about her use of the KWKLY texting service.  

 

KWKLY makes life easier for the consumer and for the agent in several different ways and I’ve broken them down below.

For the consumer:

• Info on demand in a less invasive way than a phone call or email and in a manner they are using thousands of times each week to communicate already (it's their preferred method of communciation in many cases)
• Ability for the consumer to peek right into the MLS, via text, to see other homes in the area.
  
  

For the agent:

• Capture the consumer’s most valuable piece of contact information, their cell phone number. There's no faking it! How many times has Donald Duck registered on your website?
• And, you get the lead delivered directly to your cell phone, which allows you to easily follow up no matter where you are or what you are doing (unless you are in a listing appointment....please, don't interupt that)
• Differentiator in Listing Presentations “It is part of our differentiation strategy in which we note that we have 30,000 text inquiries a year and this provides the floor call of the 21 st century.” – Baird and Warner
• EXTREMELY low cost per lead. Many KWKLY clients are paying anywhere from .50-$2.00 per lead.
• Ready to buy prospects. These prospects are standing in front of your listing when they make the inquiry. And, they can inquire on any property for sale in your market, and you know what they are looking at, allowing you to better understand what they want.
  
  

KWKLY can deliver these types of bottom of the sales funnel prospects to you. Simply by placing your text code that YOU CHOOSE on your:

• Signs
• Yard Stakes
• Postcards
• Newspaper ads
• Bus benches
• Billboards
• Social Media
• Email Campaigns
• Local home buyer show materials
• Radio and TV ads
• And anywhere else your imagination can go.

 

We had one agent use their code in a register to win promotion and got 3,000 inquiries in about two weeks, of which over 500 were ready to buy or sell their home in the next year! (Seriously, if you have made it this far, go and read that story I link to above, it's a stellar example of the potential power of text based marketing). Pricing starts as low as $49/month for a single agent. KWKLY also offers team and brokerage pricing as well! For more information email sales@kwkly.com or feel free to give it a test by texting the word demo to 59559.

(please note, this will not work in every single market. It will only work in markets where we have IDX coverage already. However, if we don't currently have your market covered, it can easily be added)

In the spirit of full disclosure, Ben Kinney Companies own both ActiveRain and KWKLY. Ben also uses KWKLY in his own real estate business as a means to capturing the most valuable piece of contact information out there today, a consumer's cell phone number.