How to succeed with mobile marketing for real estate

Use SMS for Real Estate Marketing Campaigns

Today, over 70 percent of homebuyers look at properties for sale on mobile apps or websites. By connecting directly with your clients and target audience via SMS text message, you reach them where they already spend most of their time: on their mobile devices.

In fact, 75 percent of consumers want to receive offers via SMS. A text message marketing campaign enables your subscribers to interact with your brand’s sales, promotions, and other content whenever is most convenient for them. 

With an SMS marketing platform, you can easily schedule messages, send mass texts, and even segment your subscribers into specific groups for a more personalised experience.

Be Mobile Friendly

Having a user-friendly website is critical for any successful real estate mobile marketing strategy. Mobile web design, or responsive design, is when a website automatically adjusts its layout based on the device on which it is viewed.

For example, a website on your mobile phone will often have a smaller, slightly different design than the version you would see on your desktop computer. If your website is not optimised for mobile users, visitors will likely leave your site.

Consider using a mobile-friendly website template rather than manually adjusting the layout to work on mobile screens. Sometimes responsive designs remove some crucial features, so make sure that important information like your phone number, email address, and current listings are still easily accessible through mobile search.

Chat With Potential Homebuyers

Real estate mobile marketing is about making yourself reachable to your target audience. Scheduled messages and two-way conversations allow you to communicate with potential buyers via their preferred messaging apps (like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp), enabling you to respond quickly.

Generally, consumers feel more comfortable communicating with businesses using the same channels they use to talk to their friends and family. For example, you can easily send WhatsApp messages to your clients about upcoming open houses, appointment reminders, and new listings without adding more work for your real estate agents.

Consider Chatbots

Making yourself available to your clients 24/7 sounds like a great idea. However, you might be wondering, “How can real estate professionals respond to all their messages when they have other work to do?” Chatbots send messages that simulate human conversation, enabling companies to offer 24/7 availability without taking time away from their business.

For example, if a prospective client wants to buy or sell a home, you can configure a chatbot to ask specific questions, like which areas they’re considering or what their budget is. Then the chatbot can automatically send relevant listings, connect them with a real estate agent specialising in first-time homebuyers, or answer questions using pre-written messages based on frequently asked questions.

Use Keywords

An SMS keyword is a word or phrase that someone can text to a short code or business phone number to receive text messages from your brand. Successful keywords are short and easy to remember (like JOIN) and are included on marketing materials like flyers, open house brochures, for sale signs, and advertisements.

SMS keywords make it easy to segment your subscriber list into distinct audiences. For example, real estate businesses might use the keyword OPENHOUSE to create a subscriber list for prospective homebuyers interested in upcoming open houses. 

By segmenting your list into different groups, you can design marketing content for specific targets.

Send Appointment Reminders

One of the benefits of mobile marketing for real estate is being able to schedule messages to be sent out at a later time. In the busy real estate industry, you can’t afford to miss a meeting with a prospective client.

Using mobile marketing tools like an SMS marketing platform lets you set up appointment reminders about upcoming meetings. For example, consider sending a message three days before an appointment to confirm the meeting, then another text the day before to ensure they don’t forget.

Use Electronic Signatures to Save Time

Has your real estate business made the shift to using electronic signatures yet? Along with improved security and compliance built into the software, e-signatures streamline the customer experience and save your business time and money processing paperwork.

To learn more about why you should consider switching to electronic signatures, check out our guide to the benefits of e-signatures.

Use a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

A customer data platform (CDP) collects all the data you have about your clients and consolidates it into a single database, giving you a complete but simplified view of every customer profile. With a CDP, you can create personalised marketing campaigns targeted to specific audiences, such as first-time homebuyers, real estate developers, and more.

CM.com’s Mobile Marketing Cloud offers powerful omnichannel mobile marketing features, like a CDP that allows you to unlock the potential of your existing customer data. Mobile Marketing Cloud also enables marketing workflows so you can start automating your marketing efforts across all channels, from email to SMS campaigns and more. 

Contact us today to learn more about how CM.com can help you get started with mobile marketing for real estate and housing.