Sunday, April 3, 2011

Automatic Prospecting

By Brian Nelson


Novel technologies are aiding marketers and sales people draw sales more effectively. marketing automation programs now play a great role in helping this process. Depending on the technology, each promotion automation system has the basic ability to improve lead prospecting and speed the sales process. To give you an idea of the flexibility of a promotion automation program, I have listed the following campaign that has been used productively by different real estate agents.

1) Lead capture - A prospect lands on a landing page that has a form to fill out in trade for free comps of their area.

2) When a possible client provides their contact information, they receive an email with the free report or give-away that was used to get their information. Google Adsense, geo-targeting advertising can be used to target specific areas.

3) Regardless of whether or not the real estate agent has called the prospect yet, the marketing automation system sends out a personal introduction by email that looks like it was from the agent. The email not only looks like it is from the real estate agent, but will go directly to the agent if the recipient hits reply. Included in the email is often a link to an automated ten slide presentation, narrated by real estate professional. For Real Estate Agents, this would be their online listing presentation.

4) The next day, another email mechanically goes out asking if the prospect has had a chance to view the web presentation. The email may also ask the prospect's communication preferences.

6) If the prospect has chosen to receive text, the system can set the system up to automatically send a text message to the prospect giving them some more information on current market conditions. It may sound tough to do in 160 characters, but it would be the same as a Twitter tweet.

5) As part of the program, an automated notification may go to the agent telling them to physically call the prospect.

7) Another component of the product may be direct mail. In that case, a postcard may mechanically be sent to the prospect.

8) A few weeks later, an email newsletter is emailed to the prospect. Once again, when the email is sent, marketing automation system puts a to-do action to notify you to call the prospect and follow up.

Marketing automation systems are fantastic tools to systematically walk a prospect down the path to becoming a client.




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