With over 45 homes their inventory at any given time, it’s essential for Josh Barker's team to connect with every interested buyer. Find out how text messages help.
Josh Barker has over two decades of experience in the real estate industry. In the last year, he and his team have sold over 700 homes. That’s more than any other agent in the Redding, California market. Not only has Josh been recognized as one of the top 5 agents in the RE/MAX network, but he is also ranked in the top 1% of agents in the nation.
How have he and his team managed to maintain success in such a competitive market? Josh credits it great customer service, and the fact that he provides as many channels as possible for leads to reach out.
As he puts it, “You try to give as many pathways as possible for a consumer to obtain information. That way they can choose which path is most convenient for them.”
One of these paths is texting.
A report from the National Association of Realtors found that most firms agree it’s important to stay up to date on new technology, but find it to be one of the biggest challenges. The same report revealed that 81% of older millennials, 80% of younger millennials and 78% of Generation X found their home on a mobile device.
Josh’s team created SMS keywords for all of the properties in their inventory. When a potential buyer texts in a keyword, they receive an automated message with a link to learn more about the property they’re interested in.
Josh advertises these keywords on his real estate sign riders and in print advertisements.
A study published in Harvard Business Review analyzed data from 1.25 million sales leads. Those who attempted to reach leads within an hour were nearly 7 times likelier to have meaningful conversations with decision makers than those who waited longer.
Have you ever waited a day before emailing a lead? Well, it may shock you to know that the study found those who wait 24 hours are 60 times less likely to have a meaningful conversation.
Josh used our API to create email alerts for his sales team. As soon as a lead receives the automated text with the listing info, he and his team are alerted by email and immediately follow-up with a phone call or personalized text.
Josh has a team of eight other agents, plus administrative staff. If you have a smaller team, you could use our autoresponders feature to automate this task.
A single lead from Zillow can cost as much as $60. SimpleTexting plans begin at $29 per month for 500 SMS messages and unlimited keywords.
When you consider that two leads per day come into Josh’s pipeline through text messages, the choice to invest in SimpleTexting is clear. If you haven’t used SMS marketing before, our text messaging guide for real estate is a good place to start. Once you have the basics set up, the rest is easy.
As Josh puts it, “We set this thing up five years ago and it’s been running on cruise control ever since.”
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