The Devil is in the Details & the Follow Up

This past January I had a goal to totally revamp our marketing program. In 201 9 we just didn't do the number of deals we wanted. And we tried a lot of new ways of marketing. This year was going to be different.

At several training events, the experts shared how they got the list. How they scrubbed it and skip traced it. How the sent direct mail. And how they uploaded the list into this fancy software that checked it against the do not call list and then using an autodialer they spent several hours a day or had their virtual assistant spend several hours a day cold calling all these random phone numbers that were found in the skip trace. They got tons of deals.

I attended another event, this guru had this amazing software that would again skip trace the list and send ringless voice mails (RVMs) to all those numbers. There was another guy who could do text blasts.

All of last year, we received numerous texts, RVMs, and cold calls on all of the phone numbers in the house about one of our sons properties, strangely he never got any of these, just us. It just seemed like that these automated systems were very annoying, very incorrect, and things I really would not want to do to people . . . BUT, I wanted more deals so why not.

Sure it's annoying, but if it's effective, maybe, just maybe we will give it a shot. That's why I was at the event to see how it worked.

Then we learned about REI Blackbook, a marketing and contact management system for real estate investors. It had a ton of cool features, some I would use, some I would not and it it did WAY more than the current system I had tested out in 201 9 and it cost exactly the same. Ten times the features for the same low costs. So we switched.

With that system came a TON of training on how to properly use all these automated calling tools and what the gurus were telling us was really grey or flat out illegal or soon to be illegal. A question I asked myself was did I want to revamp our marketing system on a house of cards? importantly, it had several case studies on what a follow-up system should look like and if done correctly, namely following up with a lead that had contacted me, then I could use all those automated contact systems.

We started our process by cleaning up our direct mail system. Then we were in the process of working on a very simple (read short) follow up system for old cold dead leads and COVID hit.

Lockdown started and we stopped any and all marketing. Our website was still up and running, but nothing else. We turned on the follow up system for our deal leads, and we got a deal. We sent it to more old dead leads.

We implemented their suggested lead capture process and follow up systems for new leads that our website was generating. We followed up and we got another deal. About a month into lock down we started sending a few letters and turned the Google ads back on for very limited times. We followed up, We got more deals.

Now, we are not talking 1 00s fo deals, just enough to tap out our Private Money Lenders and have our rehab manager pulling his hair out trying to keep up.

So this week as I am going through some of the training videos from Damon Remy, the founder of REI Blackbook and our July speaker I realized something very important. That by implementing processes that make sure no leads get lost, that they all get followed up with correctly, that we are doing more deals this year, with way less marketing that we did last year or the year before.

So before you blame your lack of deals on your bad marketing, maybe you need to revisit your system for capturing leads and your processes for following up.

Have a great July, may we see each other in person soon!

Kim Tucker Co-Founder of MAREI