It Pays to Keep in Touch

I'm part of a Parent Participation class, where moms and babies meet weekly to learn and play. Many of my fellow mommies are struggling with lack of living space. They each own a home, but they've recently grown their family and need more room. These women are opportunities. If the REALTOR® who sold them their current home gave them a call, sent them an email or otherwise reached out, they'd most likely receive a response and the potential for repeat business.

Yet so many agents fail at keeping in touch effectively once the transaction is over. Staying in touch is key. You need to maintain a stream of communication with past clients so that you're top-of-mind when their lives change and they're ready to make another real estate move.

I talked with a real estate CRM expert, Matthew Collis of IXACT Contact, to brainstorm a few strategies for maintaining long-term relationships with clients and real estate leads.

1. Keep track of dates that matter: clients' birthdays, their wedding anniversary, the days their children were born, and the dates they closed on their new home or sold their old home. Put these dates in your real estate CRM and drop the client a line when you receive the reminder. A good CRM will automatically remind you when key dates of those in your real estate database arise.

2. Organize your contacts into groups for quicker, easier targeted communications. A good real estate CRM will let you easily create your own groups or tags and assign them to contacts. Create and assign as many groups or tags as are appropriate. That way, when you want to send out an email targeted to past sellers, past buyers, or leads that never converted, you can do it in moments. Targeted real estate marketing is effective marketing.