Deliver the right message at the right time with marketing automation
Replying to a potential lead or customer can be time-consuming, especially when you are running a business and juggling multiple clients or property campaigns at any given time. Smart marketers around the world know that to really stand out from your competition you should always put your customers’ needs and interests first, and send them personalised messages – but it can be hard to keep track, right?
In this video, I sit down with Alex Roose from ActiveCampaign to discuss how segmentation and personalisation can be managed in an automated fashion with systems such as ActiveCampaign, and why putting customers’ needs and interests first can help you turn prospects into paying clients.
Click below to watch the video.
Following is the video transcript.
What is customer-centricity, and why is it important?
Melanie Hoole
I’m here with Alex Roose and we’re talking about ActiveCampaign and how to use some of its lead generation and marketing automation features. But first, Alex, could you explain to us what you mean by customer-centricity?
Alex Roose
The background to this is a lot of people in the property industry are sending generic messaging, like weekly property updates or RBA announcements around interest-rate cuts.
These messages could apply to anyone; they aren’t customer-centric. When agencies push out generic content, they’re not actually helping their customers. Customers want to know what’s happening in the markets that they’re interested in ‒ so the agent should be helping them by educating them about those markets.
Being customer-centric is thinking about the customer always and keeping the customer first in your mind. When you do that, you will start to create content that has meaning for them, plus you will find more to talk about than yourself and your achievements.
Although talking about your achievements is fine, I’d be spending a lot more time thinking about what my customers want to see, what my customers want to engage in, then creating content that is more interesting to them.
Melanie Hoole
Exactly. You can create a whole range of content and then tag people. We might tag people or segment them in the database. Then based on what their interests are ‒ whether it’s down to a suburb level or whether they want to rent or invest or sell ‒ we can personalise the information they see. We don’t need to send them all the content we created because that will just turn them off.
Alex Roose
Yes, it’s important that you can identify pretty quickly what those leads are interested in. The powerful thing about using a system like ActiveCampaigns is we’re able to tag people and note that, say, Alex is interested in this particular service or this particular area.
So now when you’re thinking about your marketing or sales strategy, you can look at everyone with those tags and it’s, ‘Hey, we had 100 people last month interested in this particular service or this particular area. Let’s create a piece of content or something relevant specifically for these 100 people.’
Segmentation will help you identify potential leads
Melanie Hoole
You can go deeper. It can come down to maybe just three people from your database who’ve been to your website or opened certain information and consumed it or they’ve been tracked through your website as they look at or find other information ‒ so you can see what their intent is.
Alex Roose
Right. Many people don’t realise the power of segmentation even for a small number; it doesn’t have to be 100 people. Maybe we’re only segmenting eight people. But those eight people have very, very high interest. They’ve gone onto the Sold page. They’ve read two case studies. They’ve spent five to ten minutes on your website and shown serious intent but they haven’t reached out to you yet. You might want to consider doing something special for these eight people. Maybe send them a gift or information that’s tailored to them, that’s a lot more personalised. That will mean so much to them and any one of those eight people could be a great opportunity for your business.
Melanie Hoole
Yes. It’s like bringing the needles in the haystack to the top so we can collect them easily.
We can even set up alerts that tell the agent or the property management team that somebody’s just done these things and they’ve ticked the box and we drop it into the team’s Inbox and say, “Hey guys, ring this person. They’re showing all the behaviours you would expect of somebody who’s looking for property management services or someone who’s ready to sell.”
So just on that, could you explain how agents don’t necessarily have to go into the system, how the system can send alerts automatically to the team, or to your phone, or in an email to let you know you need to contact someone?
Alex Roose
The key to this marketing automation is knowing what you want to know about your customers and then having the right message for them at the right time based on how they’re interacting with all the things that are important to you in your business. You set the parameters in ActiveCampaign and it does the rest.
Melanie Hoole
So the great thing is that once you’ve identified that somebody needs to follow up a lead, you don’t necessarily need to follow up yourself. You can have the ActiveCampaign system pre-configured to send them drip emails or certain information. Could you explain to our listeners how that works?
Alex Roose
That’s a great question. There are many instances where somebody has performed an action but that action doesn’t warrant a call. An example might be that they’ve visited your website a few times or they’ve looked at a case study. At that stage, you don’t believe it’s worth giving them a call.
So in this case, say I’d visited your website once or twice. You’d look at that and say, ‘Alex is interested in a property but we aren’t sure where he is on his purchase journey so let’s put him in a drip-feed campaign and nurture him. Let’s see if he engages with more content and we can use that as a way to learn more about Alex and start tailoring our communications to him in a couple of weeks.’
What is nurturing, and why is it important
Melanie Hoole
Can you explain in a bit more detail what you mean by nurturing?
Alex Roose
To me, this is about taking someone through the process that’s aligned to your customer journey.
So when a lead comes through, nurturing is about taking them on a journey that complements your sales and marketing so your prospect can understand who you are as a real estate agent, how you operate, where you operate, who your other customers are, who you enjoy working with.
They learn about you so they learn to trust you. By the end of the nurturing process, they feel comfortable with you, they have confidence in you. They feel ready to go ‒ and the whole process was automated.
Melanie Hoole
So, if I understand you, you can essentially bottle yourself and set up templates with all the things that you say repeatedly? All the things that you send every time you have an inquiry. Then you let people work through the information in a certain order based on what you’ve had to send prospects in the past. Is that correct?
Alex Roose
Exactly. Essentially, the best way to think about it is by asking yourself, ‘What are the most common questions people ask me during my sales process?’ Sometimes, the automated marketing process is the best way to overcome initial objections.
Just think about common questions like, How do the fees work? Or how does the sales process work? Or how do you determine the price? Or should we list for auction or sell by private treaty?
You’re overcoming all their objections in that lead nurturing strategy, building confidence, and making them aware of how you operate. Having this part of the process automated takes out all of the hard yakka. At the end of it, you can concentrate on them and help them get the best result.
About this video series
Hoole.co’s video series brings together the best digital and social media minds in the real estate industry, to share the wonders of the web and magic of mobile. Subscribe to Hoole.co or follow us on social media (below) for free tips and tricks to grow your reputation and attract prospects, digitally.