If you’ve been trying to contact leads and have noticed that they either never answer, or if they do answer they are in a rush and have no time to talk to you right then. They promise you they will call back, and ultimately you are the one calling them back. You may be trying to contact that person at the wrong time of day. So when is it best to contact a lead? The answer will always be the same: within the first five minutes of their registration. That is of course, in the ideal situation.

So let’s put this into a realistic situation. You were out showing homes to a different lead that evening, and you just aren’t available to call the new registrant until the next morning,. You call them, and it goes to voice mail. They’re probably at work. (Tip: It is still good to call them, even if it is just to leave your telephone number on their caller ID.) That way, when you call in the evening when you are available they will wonder “who is this phone number that has been trying to contact me all day?” If you call at the same time of day which they registered, you will notice better success in having a meaningful real estate centered conversation. This ultimately means your closing rate will go up, and you will have more success.

We are currently testing “call scrubbing,” where we call the leads as soon as they register. So far, we are finding great success with this. When people are in “home shopping” mode, they are much more willing to talk and respond positively about real estate.

By having a tech support person talk to the leads as soon as they register, we will greatly reduce the number of gimme leads that get lost because they need to talk to an agent now.

We’re hoping to have this call scrubbing service available by the first of April.

If you have any recommendations or are interested, please let us know.

I’ve recently started working with a lead that originally registered on our website in 2009.  Now, almost 3 years later, I am helping him find a home in Logan Utah.   Why is it that after such a long period of time, he has returned to me to help him find a home?  It’s because I worked the lead when he first registered.  I made calls, sent emails and followed up with him via listing emails.  Now, he is ready to buy and he turns to the real estate agent who hasn’t given up on him.

Did I really dedicate a lot of time harvesting this lead? No!  In fact, once I had emails being sent to him from the MLS on an automated schedule, I basically set it and forget it.  Don’t underestimate the power of listings being “dripped” to the leads when new homes enter the market.   Many of leads that recieve these emails don’t realize they are automated.  They feel like they are getting personal emails from someone who is putting their needs atop their priorities.   And, although we as agents do care about our clients and really want to give them great service, there really isn’t enough time in a day to do this for every prospect/client we have on a daily basis.

So, the moral of the story is, don’t give up on a lead, make sure they’re set up for automated emails, and make sure you work them really good during the first month of their registration.  Working them really good means to call them at least five time, email them, text them, do whatever you can to make contact with them and gain their trust as a professional.  Once they feel comfortable with you, they become reliant on your advice and experience to help with the home buying process.

As for real estate in Logan Utah, the leads are consistent and provide agents here much of their business as long as they are working the leads as I’ve previously mentioned.   It isn’t any different around other parts of the nation.  Work the lead, put them on drip listing campaigns and do everything you can to make contact and gain their trust, and you’ll have a great 2012.

Happy New Year everyone, and we look forward to a successful 2012 with all we work with.  Best of luck.

Our lead counts immediately spiked the day after Christmas. Compared with the previous week, lead counts more than doubled. Here are the actual results from one of our project managers:

The next few months will be the peak months for real estate leads. It won’t be the best months for closings, and agents won’t have nearly as many showing appointments as they will during spring and summer. Real Estate agents who effectively call and cultivate their daily stream of new leads will ensure a very successful 2012.

What we’re saying is that now is the time for hard core prospecting. Most agents have a little bit more “office time” this time of year. This office time ought to be spent making phone calls to internet leads, and building relationships that will lead to future business. Most potential clients use the first real estate agent who contacts them.

As an agent who receives internet real estate leads, you have a prime opportunity to be that first agent. When people start looking for homes online, they usually haven’t talked to a Realtor yet. The online home search phase is the first thing they do when “thinking about” buying a new home.

Don’t waste this opportunity. Work your leads hard now for a prosperous tomorrow.

If you are not a Boomerang Client yet, it’s a great time to buy real estate leads.

The best way to retain customers and a high amount of visits to a website? Automatic E-mail Updates!

This graph on the right demonstrates the direct correlation that automatic e-mails have with traffic visitors. This was a graph is of visitors who explore

Click for larger image

The advantage of a repeat visitor

In this case of automatic e-mail repeat vistors, these are people who are returning to the website are 1) already registered, and 2) are looking for a specific home/type of home. The beauty of the automatic e-mail, is that it completely fulfills the second requirement. It sends a personal e-mail, from you, which shows “this home just came on the market… it fits your criteria.” That information is gold to a prospective home buyer, and you can make it happen automatically with automatic e-mails.

How To Set Up Auto E-mail

Setting up auto e-mail is easy. Just a few steps will make it so your leads will receive e-mail every time you find a home you are interested in.

• Log into the IDXbroker service
• Go to the lead management
• Click on the name of the lead which you would like to set up auto e-mail for
• Review which properties the lead has saved, or which properties the lead recently looked at
• Login as the lead
• Perform a search that is similar to what the previously explored properties are for said lead
• Save the search

Once you’ve saved a search, every time a property is posted that fits the leads criteria, they will receive an e-mail letting them know of the listing. It’s as easy as that!

While it’s best to call your real estate leads within 5 minutes of registering, this isn’t always possible. Sooner is better than later, but lets be honest, even real estate agents have lives.

Here is a break down showing the time of day leads come in based on our Utah clients over the last three months.

The “Noon to 1:00″ hour sees the highest number of leads. Were assuming that a good number of people start their home search during their lunch breaks. The next highest times for lead registrations is the evening hours between 7:00 and 10:00.

The biggest block of time we see real estate leads register is between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM. This is the time people are generally at home and have leisure time for tasks such as searching homes for sale online. The hours between 11:00 and Midnight still get a fair amount of activity. Nearly 6% of all leads register in the middle of the night between Midnight and 7:00 AM.

Using our uniquely developed lead algorithms, we’ll be able to prioritize your leads on a daily basis so that you can have the highest level of success in your real estate business.   As you work your leads, add notes about your leads, and update their specific information and needs, our system will then analyze your leads and give you the best least to work everyday, along with stats, reminders, email templates, and continued updates and enhancements to the software.

We also have our eye on a future iPhone application that will allow you to be notified of new leads, allow you to call and email those leads from your phone and those actions will be logged into that lead info so that you don’t have to worry about tracking your actions with any particular lead while on the go.

Our system is also going to be integrated as much as possible with social media.  If there is anyway to integrate your leads with their Facebook and Twitter accounts, we’ll be using those capabilities in our software so that you can better identify with your leads before you even follow up with them.

We’re getting excited here at Boomerang Leads to start internal testing of our system in the near future, and hope for an initial release the first part of 2012.  So, if you don’t already use our service, or have been on the fence deciding whether or not to use us, hopefully this will encourage you to get off the fence and start improving your business by allowing us to develop a website for you that rocks your Google world, and produces organic leads that you can turn into clients and closings.

Sign up now or contact us to find our more about our service.  To read up on how we work, use the menu at the top to find out more detailed information.

The most efficient way to follow up with your real estate leads is to call them within 5 Minutes of their registration.  According to a study, you are far more likely to make contact with your leads within five minutes of registration than you are after even 10 minutes. Your chances of making contact with them within the five minutes is far greater because they are in “real estate mode.” They are thinking about real estate, and being that they are on the computer looking for homes, they might be in position where they have free time and can actually answer the phone.

When you call a lead this quickly, they aren’t going to forget that they registered on your website. They will know exactly who you are and why you called. When people enter their phone number in an online registration form, they are essentially saying, “I will allow you to call me.”

In addition, how impressed will a potential buyer be that a real estate agent contacted them that quickly?

Most real estate agents don’t get around at all to calling their leads, let alone calling them within a few minutes of registration.

If a Realtor is going to contact a real estate lead immediately, doesn’t that also indicate that the agent is on top of things, and that they will also be prompt when working with their clients? People, especially internet buyers, want good service and they want information now.

When my sister was looking for homes, she registered on a real estate website and an agent did just that. He contacted her immediately. She mentioned to me how impressed she was that the agent was that on top of things. She was tempted to even use him as an agent, even though I was her brother!

Some of the people that register on your website might be annoyed that you call them that quickly, but, the number of positive reactions will far outweigh any negative consequences.

Additional Follow Up

The trainer hosting the webinar also recommended:

Do lots of follow up within the first two weeks then back off a bit. If you can’t get hold of them right away, try back in a couple of weeks, and then again in six months. Also check what they are doing online, if they keep coming back to your website and searching for homes, then they are more likely to respond.

Email Follow Up: The best emails are short ones. If an email is long, it gets overwhelming for an internet users short attention span and they will just disregard it.

Text Follow UP: If they don’t answer the phone call, try sending them a text. It’s the way many people communicate today, and they might not be in position where they can make a call, but they might respond to a text.

How to Follow Up:

• Be Human
• Be Persistent
• Be Actionable

Include:

• Who You Are
• Your Contact Info
• And Emphasize that you are the person that they should call.

via Lead Training Notes.

Even more impressive than the fact that nearly all home buyers start their home search on the internet, is the fact that 37% of buyers found the home they wanted to buy online! Chances are that potential buyers are going to use the real estate company whose site they are using when the time comes to seeing homes and writing offers.

Search engines are the single biggest source of traffic for most Web sites. Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be simply defined as the process of getting found on search engine sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! On the technical level, SEO considers how these sites work, what people search for, the actual terms typed into a search bar, and which searches are preferred by your targeted audience.

Why Is It Important?

Well, here are the facts: According to NAR’s 2010 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 89 percent of home buyers searched the Internet frequently for a home in 2010. And the share of home buyers who found their home on the Web jumped from 8 percent in 2001 to 37 percent in 2010. Not surprisingly, that percentage continues to grow.

The next logical question is, “What exactly does SEO get me?” In a word, leads. And not just any leads, but qualified leads. These are the buyers and renters searching for certain types of properties in specific markets — and when they perform online searches, you want to be found at the top of the results on the first page.

via 3 Pillars of SEO for Real Estate Pros | Realtor Magazine.

The tricky thing is getting these good search engine rankings. We find that most Realtors have a hard time adding even basic content to their real estate websites. This is where Boomerang Leads comes in. We do the site design, content creation, and search engine optimization for you. We create real estate websites that people want to use. We get the #1 search engine rankings, we let you use our SEO optimized sites to drive traffic, generate leads, and then you convert to them to buyers.

2. Contact All leads immediately. Make phone calls, send emails, and even text messages. The sooner you contact a lead, the more likely you are to convert them. Most buyers will use the FIRST agent who contacts them. You want to make sure the potential clients know that you are a real person, and that you are there to help them. Sometimes it helps to do research. Look them up on facebook, reverse phone look-ups, or stalk them using Spokeo.

3. Send Leads Useful Information. The information you send your leads needs to be useful. It needs to be something of value. One of the most valuable things you will send the leads are home listings. When you send them emails, make them simple, but ask a question and do something to encourage interactivity. If you want to meet real estate leads you need to communicate with them first. Your initial goal with spur curiosity from your online real estate leads and make two way communication. Turn leads into prospects.

4. Keep Trying. Some Leads will respond to your initial phone call, text, or email. Some leads will contact you with a question about a house before you ever even try contacting them. Other Leads may take 9 or 10 attempts before they provide any kind of response. Spend lots of time in the first few days trying to make a REAL contact with the leads. One reason that many agents fail is because they rely on the “automated systems” to communicate with their leads. No automated communication will ever replace personal connections. Some other ways to try and communicate with leads after your other efforts have failed is to befriend them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. Assume that all leads will use you when they buy their home, they just need to meet you first. Keep Trying.

5. Schedule Follow Up Tasks. If you have a great conversation with a lead, you might think that you are never going to forget them, or when they are planning on buying. But after you get a few hundred leads, you will. Keep good notes and schedule follow up tasks that will remind you to follow up with your prospects.

6. Provide Value and be a Good Real Estate Agent. Once you make contact with a potential internet buyer, and win their trust, it requires good real estate agent skills. You need to keep track of homes on the market, provide service, and adequately follow up in a way that the potential buyer will close with you. The internet buyer expects information now. Do things for them immediately before they get impatient and ask someone else to help.

via Closing Internet Real Estate Leads.