[00:00:01] All right, hey, everybody, I apologize for the late start here I was in another room somewhere without Frank and Frank was sitting here waiting for me. So anyway, let's go ahead and get started, Frank. Today, we get to talk about how to generate more commissions from our database, which you are the king of. Now, you've been around this industry for as long as anybody, I think, in marketing. And so the thing I love about you is you're constantly seeing what's going on, constantly shifting, constantly saying, OK, how can we pivot here? What can we do there? So, everyone, I'm super excited for our session today with Frank. I'm sure people will be coming in. I'm sorry I got off to a late start, Frank, so I'm going to let you dove in.
[00:00:52] My microphone's good. Can you hear me coming through?
[00:00:54] I can hear you. Great. Good.
[00:00:56] I don't have the webcam coming. I guess it's like the worst audio, so. Yeah. So I'll talk about how to get more commissions from your database. So what does the database to past clients, the list of everyone that you bought or sold on with, it's your sphere. Probably the easy way to think about that is doing a log in to your Facebook account and go click your friends list and scroll down. Those are your sphere, those of your friends and people you know, and people in your life that probably know who you are. It's also any warm leads you're working. So if you've been talking with a buyer and they're not really ready yet, you actually have some some marginal relationship, the seller, and they're not ready to sell yet. They know who you are. At least they'll respond to you when you call. That's your database and you really got to have some type of way to stay in touch with all these individuals. That's not maybe just necessarily sending them a bunch of spam or junk mail, which is, let's face it, there's a lot of the a lot of the content available today to rip off some cantrip email or so that some can drop stuff. And as information becomes better and better and better and more streamlined with, you know, Internet and everything else, like when you send something, something, what do you send something to someone that's like totally irrelevant and totally canned? It doesn't really position you as the expert and trusted advisor and guide to be able to earn a commission where you can make a profit and a good living as a real estate professional. So I guess today let's talk about how to reconnect with that list we talked about here and see if any of those individuals might actually want to buy or sell a home.
[00:02:28] Yeah. So, you know, you talked about Facebook being your database and absolutely it is. But I think when most people think about their database or database. They think about their CRM, who is it, CRM, that that's my database, so I guess, Frank, that the key point you've clarified here, I just want to clarify even further if you have somebody in your Facebook.
[00:02:56] Make sure they're in your database, most likely, at least a lot of the people that needs to keep you actually look at your friends list like the people in the top that you're actually interacting with, those are probably most likely your people who know who you are. Right, OK. And so you can expand the definition. Actually, that's why I want to share with the audience here today is so let's say you were to come to me or you would you realize, man, I really need to get some business and I don't have much money. I really abhor prospecting. I have no desire to go knock on the door doors a day or I don't have any desire to be a telemarketer all day long. But you can make very good money doing that. There's nothing wrong with that. And certainly you can be very successful as a real estate professional doing that. But I want to give you another option is my Islamic charity now. So let's let's make a list real quick, guys. This is your business plan. Run the business planning summit here. You want to get more business for database. What do you have to do? Well, here's the first step. I was going to go into your Gmail or your outlook, whatever you're using for your email marketing, like for regular communication, go into the address book and click export and grab every single contact that exists in your Gmail and every single contact that exists maybe in your outlook.
[00:04:14] Those are two most popular ones. If you're still using AOL or something else, whatever, no hard feelings. Go grab all those contacts as well. Export those bumps, sit on your desktop next on your phone, Android, iPhone, go on that. Figure out you do it will help file. But figure out how to get all the contacts out of your address book. Every single person that you've saved as a contact in your address book over all these years. Let's export that entire thing and let's get that as a second spreadsheet on your desktop. Third, your CRM, whatever it is that you're using, there's a lot of them out there. All right. But you're going to go into your CRM or maybe you have some your buyer leads, the seller leads, and maybe maybe not your best clients in there, but it's people that, you know, you have contact information from in one way or another reached out to you. You've captured their information. Might be interested. Buyers will say, let's export everyone from the CRM. And if you can, let's leave out anyone who's already unsubscribed and let's leave out maybe anyone who's like an archive byerly maybe that never got back to you.
[00:05:13] Those are usually pretty low quality. Let's grab all those people as well. Let's keep going. I'm not done yet. If you use a dialer uses like Mojo or Vulcan and you load it up phone numbers of homeowners in there and you maybe have conversations with homeowners and their follow up dates for let's go into those dialers. Let's grab all of the people that maybe you've connected with on your dial or in your phone seller prospecting system. Not everyone, but I only want the people know you actually spoken with. Let's grab all of those individuals and export them. And I'm going to take a step further, really make sure that you have a list of your past clients to. Now, I would assume many of them would be in one of those lists. But if you don't need to go to your broker or your past broker or figure it out, but figure out who are all the people you've helped buy or sell real estate and see if you at least get their names or the last previous address was so you can communicate with those individuals as well. So now you're study on your desktop. You have all these spreadsheets doing that, Brian?
[00:06:10] Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. This is like what do I do with them?
[00:06:14] Yeah.
[00:06:14] But like, if you're a brand new agent or you're just starting off or you're you run a real estate brokerage and you bring a new agent on or you're running a team and you're a brand new agent, like this is like required onboarding, like what I'm sharing here, like I would have them go through all of this right now. The next thing and have them do is go check out.
[00:06:33] There's a lot of companies that do this, but go check out a service called Never Bounce. All right. We'll never bounce. Does it silently pings all the emails to see if they're actually good. So you take those five different CSV Excel spreadsheets, upload them and never bounce dotcom. And what they're going to do is remove all of the emails that are bad, undeliverable spam traps, not written correctly. So when you read download those, you upload the five lists from those sources I share with you and download them. Now all the emails are clean.
[00:07:04] I may have eliminated and 10 to 20 percent of your list.
[00:07:08] Oh yeah, definitely. Probably more. Yeah. But at least you've gotten now all of those emails I've been sitting there that are in your system now, they're actually deliverable. Now you can actually get a message out. So the next thing that you do is you go to email marketing program, something that can send a blast email out. You have services like MailChimp, you have services like Constant Contact, the one at Viral Marketing. My firm that we use is called Emma. We just find the deliverability is superior. That's really what you're paying for when you pick a marketing service. There's all these bells and whistles, drips and templates and eds. All that stuff is a distraction from the only thing that matters is when I press the send button, does the email actually get in the inbox because the domain has those servers have good centralized. And we find that Emma is up there, so we now take those five clean spreadsheets and upload them all into Emma. All right. And Emma will automatically duplicate them by email address. Got it. So now it should get a little exciting. You literally have everyone you've ever known your entire life sitting inside of an email marketing account, cleaned and scrubbed and ready to receive the message. Now, it's a matter of sending them kind of an unsolicited message. It's not spam, an unsolicited message, just saying like, hey, you know, this is what's up.
[00:08:36] This is what I'm doing now. So what I'd like to do this is being recorded. I'm sure someone can watch the recordings at some point. I like to articulate to you maybe what that message would be, what the subject line would be, and what type of email would you write if you were going to press send to get more information from your database to that list, which is essentially the fastest, easiest way to get a message out to everyone. So you guys ready? I'm going to kind of feel the I want to kind of feel the tonality in the voicing of those to get this just right. And we don't want any graphics or any videos in it. Just a simple, plain text, email. We can we go. So the subject line would be looking to reconnect with you or something. To that extent it would say, dear clients, friends, colleagues, I love those emails out of the blue. But the reason I'm writing you is just to let you know that I'm still selling real estate right here and where I lived in San Diego. The reason I'm writing you is we've done business together. You're a friend of mine. Your connection. We're connected on social media. And I just wanted to reach out and I want to let you know, even after with covid, you know, obviously I'm selling real estate, but there's like nothing for sale.
[00:09:43] Inventories at record lows. And we've been doing open houses that had only a hundred people walk through them. And the market is really hot. In fact, you haven't even unless you've been living under a rock, you can get a mortgage now for probably two and a half, two point seventy five or thirty years, if you're good, qualified for owner occupancy mortgage. But still, we don't know what's going to happen with covid coming back here in the winter or what's going to happen with the election. So the reason I write you is I want to step up and I want to do a better job of keeping you informed of what's going on in real estate here in San Diego or wherever you're at. And I plan on publishing a couple of helpful videos every single month, answering some commonly asked questions about home prices, what's going on, the area, you know, development projects. So you stay informed. So make some really good real estate decisions. I'd like to start something up to you. And since I know this email's out of the blue, no hard feelings. You don't have to hear from me ever again that you actually just scroll down to the email and click unsubscribe. You will never hear from me again.
[00:10:41] But with it, if you actually made it this far, you are actually thinking about your home is worth because the home value has probably jumped considerably given the shift of supply and demand with low rates and everyone wanting to move out of their old houses due to covid to get something probably bigger because that's where we all live now. You can actually click here to find out what your home is worth. I had this nifty tool that will tell you what your home is worth. I pay good money for and I'll give you a good estimate. So click here to find out if you're interested, know what your home is all for. And if you think about buying a home like probably a lot of people right now due to low rates and you actually see what's for sale. I have a home search website that'll actually show you all the homes for sale. So you can see pretty much exactly what's available on the MLS, just like we realtors do on a really nice user friendly website. So you can click here to find out what your home is worth. And of course, if any questions up buying or selling real estate, I want to know I'm here. Just reply back to this email. I'm happy to help. Thanks for reading all this. Look forward to stay in better touch, Frank.
[00:11:38] So does that does that happen to come in your soothing voice, Frank, so that.
[00:11:43] Yes. Well, I said that I want you to feel the tonality. I want you to feel. I think really what you take away from that is it's very personal. It's very relevant. It's very honest. It's very authentic. Yes.
[00:11:54] It's you know, someone's going to read that and be like. OK, I mean, really, what I want them to happen is not click the report spam button. I mean, my goal in that first email is to make sure they don't click report spam. But when that first email goes out, man, I mean, it's a longer email, but long copy, Popol short copy.
[00:12:15] That's a whole other discussion. But you'll find an influx of people opting on your similar website. You'll find an influx of people in to a nearby website, and you'll probably get some people reply back saying, it's so funny, you emailed me. Let's let's talk.
[00:12:27] And you might get some leads just from that first email. And what does that cost you? Virtually nothing, right. You know, I'll watch it. Sad, honestly. I'll watch people that really need to make money in real estate.
[00:12:40] You know, I'll start paying the mortgage, just pounding out kolkhoz. I mean, just nonstop. It's like exhausting. I'm like you being considered just like sending out an email to your database and the like. No market doesn't work. I must keep pounding towns and they're learning. Yeah. They're not really building like any As'ad along the way to provide for them, but just constantly like trying to find a new stranger to go appointment with. And I want to give you guys some thought about that. The topic of today for this material is how to get more commissions from your database and what to do that you have to export, reconnect, clean, scrub your existing list. I share with you how to do that and you got to get a reconnect message album.
[00:13:21] All right, then going forward, you know, what do you send them? You are going to send them someone else's stuff that's watered down and passed along. Or are you going to step up as a professional and teach and educate and answer commonly? Ask questions, and hopefully the answer is the latter.
[00:13:39] So it is video what you recommend there, Frank?
[00:13:42] Yeah, unless you're a really strong writer, which most people aren't. That's a very hard skull video because it's not so much about.
[00:13:56] Look at this amazing content I'm publishing out of my database every two weeks. He's a short little videos. It's more about this is how you get to know me. This is how you get to see me. This is you can kind of see my personality, who I am, and get comfortable using me.
[00:14:12] Now you get to sell your home. You've got a job transfer. You don't want to have two mortgage payments. You're thinking between three realtors.
[00:14:20] You know, you're trying to feel like, you know, who do I like? Who do I trust, where I feel I mean, it's not a very always a logical numbers and dollars and cents decision on the professional are, you know, that's B.S. It's like I like this person. I feel comfortable with this person. And the more videos and the more things that you do or people can spend more time online with you and they find that you're congruent online with who you are offline, there's a lot of trust that's built that way. And people are more likely to hire you just because they like you.
[00:14:48] So getting on video once a month and on a webcam just like this, I'm using the Logitech 920. You know what? I can do a whole thing online, but also looks pretty good for the wrong with how this looks. You look too good, right? You look amazing. Yeah. And you also know how to wear a black shirt because it looks better on video or in black today. But you look right into lens. I'm looking right into the camera lens and say, hey, this video may answer the question, should you hold an open house during covid?
[00:15:17] No. And possibly have one hundred people walking through it.
[00:15:23] Great. That's very possible given the lack of inventory, yes, so you go back and you answer the question of maybe what your thoughts are, what your stance is on open houses.
[00:15:31] And he's standing up and really that's where virus comes in.
[00:15:35] I mean, you've got to eat. You don't have to hire us. You can hire an assistant. I mean, you could do it yourself. But, you know, you have to hold yourself accountable, actually shoot the video and then, look, somebody probably has to do some editing to it. You got to get the thing up on YouTube. You got to get it up on your blog and you have an article with it. You got to email it out of your post on it. Right. It was what I needed. Yes. We're going to go into real estate and I needed someone to do that for me. And by having my own checklist, what I needed, I realized maybe there's a maybe there's a business in itself of doing that for people. And that's what I do here at Viral.
[00:16:10] So we process that for you. But that's essentially how you get your business, your database. You have to reconnect with it, clean it, get a message out and have some type of legitimate, helpful, relevant, ongoing touch plan where you're probably touching your list in some way through a mixture of online, even direct mail, you know, two to three times a month.
[00:16:36] So you're there and they remember you. And when they have the problem that you can solve, they either call you or when you call them and you say, hey, I'm Frank.
[00:16:46] Closet's Diego. Oh, yeah. Hi, Frank. Because we get your stuff versus like I've heard from you like five years. Yeah, right. So you show once and that is the basics of how you do it.
[00:17:00] So I would ask yourself, when you're writing your business plan, which is why you're here on this meeting, you know, you should have a smaller lead generation strategy. How do you go get new sellers into your database? You should have a Byerly generation strategy. How do you get new buyers into your database? What are your ways of doing that? I'm sure you're hearing many strategies and insights to bring in new people into your list, whether it's a buyer seller as a real estate professional. Right. And how do you track that? And Sisu helps you up all those great things. But also you have. OK, well, what am I doing with all my nurtures that I'm ready to buy or sell, which is like most people. What am I doing with all my past clients has influence as a lead source, as a way of nurturing those individuals. And you've got to have what they would call in the industry a thirty three or thirty six touch nurturing plan in place. And my argument is I like I recommend you start a video blog and start publishing to helpful educational videos. A month posted everyone online, Facebook, social media, email, and also to your best contacts, a small number, a monthly piece of direct mail because you're not going to reach everyone online.
[00:18:09] All right. So you just led right into this question. Direct mail. Frank, I know you've been a direct mail fan for, well, a bunch of direct mail. Do you recommend let's talk about direct mail for a minute.
[00:18:20] I got some. So I'll show you two types. OK, so you're mailing to a homeowner list that doesn't know you, I recommend kind of an unbranded letter like this.
[00:18:35] So when you're mailing through a list of intentionally smear the top left hand corner. No, that's my coffee. Oh, OK. I just I mean, I thought that might be part of the strategy.
[00:18:45] Yeah. You know, so when you're mailing a brand new audience that has no brand relationship with you, OK, this this is what pops up. And when you open it, the letter should be very personal looking, something like this.
[00:19:04] That's what gets red, got it.
[00:19:08] Got a picture and that's like we send out I send out ten thousand these a month to get all my all my deals.
[00:19:15] That's really easy. So that's like to a cold list. Now, when you have your database, you have your relationships with people that know who you are and recognize you.
[00:19:25] You can show up as Branden's. This is this is a return piece of mail that this is literally my newsletter that I send out, but see how it's branded here.
[00:19:33] So, yes, you're showing this individual and then when you open it. It's a little one page newsletter, and I could put a picture in there if I wanted to, but you can actually put the three letters.
[00:19:48] I have another example in here, then I have a little flier. You can have your so I have a three page letter, but all I'm getting at here is a simple letter. You need to have a direct mail strategy to stay in touch with your list in addition to using online, because I'll show you the metrics.
[00:20:06] I mean, hey, congratulations. You got a 30 percent open rate, which is like really good on email. I still need 70 percent, right? Yeah. It's like, hey, here's your reach on Facebook.
[00:20:18] You have all these people, like you only reached 40 percent of them. You know, what do you how are you to communicate with your most valuable asset? I recommend direct mail and you can bring up your videos.
[00:20:26] We do this for you via marketing. We put the videos out there and we also create the monthly piece of direct mail. So really, the thirty six touches is two emails a month with the videos posted everywhere online boosted to your database. So we get maximum digital exposure and then a monthly piece of direct mail to your best contacts that are worth the buck.
[00:20:44] It's going to cost you to send us your Zachs asking here. And I can tell Zach has a lot of love for you and all of his content. But Zach is asking, how do you determine your best contacts? I mean, what if you are only going to send one hundred or. Yeah.
[00:21:01] So let's let's say you're going to do your direct mail piece. Let's say you get all your emails. Right, a couple thousand. Sure. So that's not digital. There's no marginal cost to send something but direct mail, it's like a buck apiece at lower volumes. Right. How do you choose who you're going to mail? Won't go Google Dunbar's number. Google it. It's called Dunbar's Number, which I'm correct. There's no cognitive limit to the number of people whom you can maintain a stable social relationship with. It's about one hundred and fifty.
[00:21:36] All right, one hundred to two hundred, one hundred and fifty, yeah, there's a there's a limit of how many human beings one human being can actually maintain a decent relationship with.
[00:21:46] And he defines it as it's actually a really good definition, is like if you ran into this person at a restaurant or you ran into a person with a bar, would you just go sit with them and it would feel OK? Yeah. So, for example, Brian Unsprung, if I ran into you guys at a bar, you're at a restaurant, I would just wouldn't even care if you're on a date. I would just come sit down and join you guys. Yeah, OK. You're that close to me.
[00:22:10] And we would and we would expect that.
[00:22:12] So yeah. So that's really what it is. Yeah. I think that's a good sort of like when you're looking at a list of names, it's, it's would you, would you do that. And if they passed that test then I would consider them like that's, that's somebody I would invest in touching them monthly with a piece of mail or we we we have several questions out there.
[00:22:32] I just wanted to ask you, so went viral. Do you guys automate this process? How do you do that? You do everything. I just need to help you determine what's the best piece to send out. And you guys are going to handle this for me.
[00:22:45] Is that relevant? Your direct mail videos? We have the videos. We read everything we do all there's a 90 day money back guarantee we will get business from your database. Ninety days to pay for us. We give you all your money back.
[00:22:55] Ok, what's the best way to get a hold of you guys drink.
[00:22:59] Yeah, go to get viral dotcom TV. Why are AOL dotcom pricing how it works.
[00:23:06] Everything is on there. It was just, it just built out of my own man. I mean like. You got to have some way to stay in touch, I don't want to send out crap. Yeah, what do I do or how far do I take this before I start getting diminishing marginal returns?
[00:23:20] What's the best system then? You figure out what the marketing plan is and then at some point you realize I need to hire someone, help me execute this. And I realized I could put together a business that can execute that well for much less than having to hire anyone directly, you know?
[00:23:36] So I thought, OK, awesome, maybe you can jump in the chat afterwards and answer.
[00:23:44] We've got some more questions coming in there. Maybe you can jump in the chat and answer those the chat. And it's just one of these comments. If you go to our. Yeah, there you go. You can answer them there.
[00:23:55] You can go to Facebook either way, but go ahead and address those. And thank you for for joining us in the summit today, Frank. Always, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right.
[00:24:08] Have an amazing day to carry on this one.
