Step-by-step advice for marketing to homeowners
Ellana Walker is the Chief Marketing Officer at a la mode. She leads the marketing department, consisting of events, shipping, product marketing and creative services. Her team executes all marketing and advertising, helps drive product and sales direction, conducts training and educates real estate pros about marketing and product usage. She loves spending time with her husband and raising her kids, Seth (4) and Grace (2).
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ou’d be hard pressed to recall a time in the appraisal industry any stranger than things are today. The HVCC has wreaked havoc on the business of many appraisers who are now taking an even harder look at ways to continue to generate orders. Meanwhile, other appraisers are busier than they’ve ever been due to the temporary boon of lowered rates, tax credits and refis, and many seem to have all but forgotten the need for sound, ongoing marketing plans. Regardless which scenario you find yourself facing, diversifying your client base to include non-lenders simply makes good sense. Marketing to homeowners in particular makes sense because there are literally thousands of potential clients, and having numbers on your side makes all the difference.
If you’ve been appraising for several years, you probably have several thousand reports in your database. Even if you don’t know who lives there, the address is still good. Why not mail them a letter or postcard saying something to the effect of:
"Our local real estate market has been in a constant state of fluctuation for several years. You know what you paid, but do you know what your house is worth right now? It's your biggest investment. I've appraised your home before. I'm an expert in your area and can tell you its current market value. Call me or visit my website to schedule a time for me to come out and appraise your home again."
I’d recommend you offer a special for these orders. You may run a 20% off special for re-appraisals when they respond to the letter or something similar. That gives your homeowners an extra incentive to act and offers you a way to track how successful your letter is. If you can, also include a link to your website which takes them straight to the homeowner page – i.e. www.xxappraisals.com/reappraise. With the unique URL you’ll have another tracking mechanism and your clients will have instant access to the information they need.
Combining printing and postage, you’ll spend about $.80 per letter. That means you’ll want to be very specific who you target if you don’t want to spend a couple of thousand on the letters. The other advantage of sending to a smaller group is that you’ll get an idea how effective your letter is before shooting it to a larger list. If you get any responses, great – send the letter to a bigger batch. If you don’t, revise and try a different approach or offer. To start, I’d probably send about 300 letters, which would cost roughly $240. That’s a small enough group for you to put together in an afternoon and follow up with, but it’s big enough for you to get some response.
When it comes to choosing your best group, you’ll want to look at your market and see what window of time had the wildest swings in home values. If that was 2003-2005, pull the list of these addresses from that time period because those people are most likely to have the biggest change in home value. Another option is to look at areas that you think will most likely respond well to the campaign, such as high-end neighborhoods.
Once you have your list, get your letter prepped and sent. Keep in mind that you’ll need to have your letterhead on the paper and preferably your logo on the envelope. If you have the time, your letters will be even more successful if you handwrite the address on the envelope. (A neighborhood kid or family members come in handy for this kind of work.) Then it’s off to the post office.
Next comes measurement and follow up. Your letter should start hitting mailboxes about three business days after they’re sent. Around that time, hopefully you’ll see some visits to the web address that you listed and/or get a few phone calls. But, if you don’t, you can’t get discouraged. It’s well known that it takes several impressions with a company before their message sticks. Sometimes you’ll hit it out of the park on the first marketing piece, but realistically, effective marketing takes patience, follow ups and repetition.
To boost your chances of success, follow up with your letter recipients. Take an hour or so a few days a week to make rounds to the houses to which you mailed your marketing. Since you’ve already introduced yourself with the letter, follow up conversations will be easier. You could simply say something to the effect of:
“You should have received a letter from me a few days ago. I appraised this house back in 2004 so I wanted to check in to see if you’ve thought about getting it re-appraised. It’s a common service, and the market has changed so much since then. I’d love to come out and take a thorough look at it and give you another report. It would only be $xx.”
The thing to keep in mind with this approach is that home values are a hot topic right now and most everyone is concerned. Think about it. If people weren’t concerned about their home values, Zillow wouldn’t be so popular, and everyone knows Zillow isn’t as accurate as a real appraiser. You’re the expert, so getting that across will open doors for you and get them talking about you to their neighbors.
Or, if you’re not a people-person, try door hangers. They’re inexpensive, yet highly effective. Those would basically reinforce the message of your letters. Simply print them off at your local Kinkos and hang them on the doors of the homes that you’ve sent the letters too.
To help you get these letters mailed or door hangers designed and printed more easily, all you need is WinTOTAL and our XSellerate marketing system. From within WinTOTAL’s Appraisal Desktop you can export addresses of the properties you’ve appraised in the past to XSellerate, based on a date range you specify. From there, you can use our pre-written letters and post cards advertising your services to “Current Residents”, and print mailing labels for the addresses you exported. For step by step instructions, click here. XSellerate also includes door hanger templates you can print and hang as well.
Whether your spend time marketing to homeowners, attorneys, credit unions, or any other non-traditional mortgage client, it’s important to remember that any business reliant on just a few lenders, or one that passively waits for business to come to them, is always going to be at the mercy of the market. That’s a scary place to be, as we’ve seen over the last year. Take control of the future of your business by taking control of your marketing, however you choose to go about it. Doing something is always preferable to doing nothing.
Related articles:
Blog Your Way To More Non-Lender Business
Grassroots Marketing With Door Hangers
Lawyers Tell You How To Sell Them Your Services
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