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How to Follow Up with Potential Home Buyers Like a Boss

by | Lead Generation & Nurturing, Persuasion and Conversion

how to follow up with potential home buyers

Wouldn’t it be a magical situation if, from 100 potential home buyers after a showing, you could close all of them on the doorsteps of their future homes?

Sometimes, it’s nice to dream, and there are those exceptions where you don’t need any follow-up after a showing.

But more often, you probably ask yourself how to follow up with them after a showing to close a sale.

  1. Use more than one communication channel (Omni channels) to follow up, and consider that you will need between 6 and 8 touchpoints.
  2. The phone is your first follow-up channel, ideally as a video call, then switch to texting.
  3. After having reached your potential home buyer, you can switch to texting and should send more than 3 text messages.
  4. Make some touch points via email. Use the recipient’s name in the subject line, between 50 and 125 words, and include between 1-3 questions. 

There are efficient and not-so-efficient ways, and if you have an efficient follow-up strategy, you can close more and increase your sales.

So, before looking at the right strategies, let’s first look at some hard data to have a better basis for making sound decisions.

 

What Is a Follow-Up?

My definition of a follow-up is the following:

In the context of (real estate) sales, a follow-up is a communication strategy including elements of persuasion to convince a potential buyer to move forward with a purchase by using one or more communication channels in a specific time frame.

Depending on the effectiveness of the communication channels regarding the closing rate, they can also be combined.

 

How to Follow Up with Potential Home Buyers in the Most Effective Ways

Now, let’s look at some stats regarding the effectiveness of different communication channels and following up in general. 

In this case, the one metric for effectiveness would be the response rate, engagement rate, or open rate.

As a real estate professional, you usually have these at your disposal:

  • Phone
  • Texting
  • Email
  • Video

 

Follow Up Stats in General

  • Almost half of the salespeople (48%) never make a single follow-up attempt (source)
  • Before saying yes, about 60% of customers say no four times (source)
  • You need about eight cold call attempts to reach a prospect (source)
  • 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up intent (source)
  • Acquiring a new customer via email is 40 times better than Twitter and Facebook
  • High-growth organizations have an average of 16 touchpoints per prospect over 2-4 weeks (source)
  • By using Omni channels (communicating on several different channels in contrast to just using one), the engagement rate is 18.96% compared to 5.4% for using just one (e.g., email follow-up, source)
  • The purchase frequency is 250% higher via omnichannel marketing vs single channels (source)
  • Marketers using three or more channels have a 287% higher purchase rate (source)
  • 98% of Americans switch between devices on the same day (source)
  • Between 6 and 8 touchpoints are necessary to generate a viable sales lead (source)
  • Most marketers send out emails (counted as touch points) two to four times per month (source)

 

Stats Regarding the Phone

  • 80% of sales require five follow-up calls after the meeting (source)
  • 41.2% of salespeople state that their most effective sales tool is the phone (source)
  • 55% of companies with high growth of a minimum of 40% over the last three years reported that cold calling is still alive (source)
  • Telephone outreach wins against email outreach in terms of conversion at 8.21% vs. 0.03% (source)
  • Call duration between 6 and 10 minutes converts better (29%) than calls that take longer than 10 minutes (22%) (source)
  • Voice mail response rates are, on average, 4.8% (source)
  • In 80% of the cases, calls go to voicemail and are never returned 90% of the time (source)

 

 

Stats About Texting

  • If you also text your prospects, the conversion rate is 40% higher (source)
  • If you send a text message to a potential customer before making contact on the phone, it decreases your chances of ever contacting that lead by 39% (source), and your average conversion of contacted leads decreases by 4.8%
  • Your average conversion increases by 19.6% if you text your prospects before and after making contact on the phone (source)
  • Your average conversion increases by a nice 112.6% if you only text after making contact on the phone (source)
  • If you send one text message after making contact by phone, you have an 89% higher conversion rate (source)
  • If you send two text messages after making contact by phone, you have a 74% higher conversion rate (source)
  • You will have a 328% higher conversion rate if you send more than three text messages after making contact over the phone (source)

 

Stats About Email Marketing

  • When you use all caps in your email subject line, it will hurt your response rate by 30% (source)
  • It’s a good idea to include the recipient’s first name in the subject line because it increases the opening rates by 29.3% (source)
  • If you write the emails on a third-grade reading level, you have a 36% higher chance of getting a reply (source)
  • The ideal length of an email is between 50 and 125 words (I was taken by surprise by that low word count) (source)
  • If you include 1-3 questions in your emails, you have a 50% higher chance of getting replies than if you didn’t include any (source)

 

Stats About Video

I couldn’t find reliable direct follow-up stats about video, only indirect ones, from which we can conclude what it likely means for sales and following up using video.

  • If you include a video message in your email, it increases your click-through rate by 96% (source)
  • 85% of U.S. internet users watch online video content monthly on any of their devices (source)
  • 54% of the consumers would like to see more video content from a brand or business they support (source)
  • 87% of marketing professionals use video as their marketing tool of choice (source)
  • 88% of the marketers using video are satisfied with the ROI of their video marketing efforts (source)
  • Marketers using video get 66% more qualified leads per year (source)
  • After watching a brand’s video, 8 out of 10 people have purchased a piece of software or app (source)

You might know that face-to-face meetings are far superior in closing rates than all substitutes mentioned above.

It’s almost common sense and can be assumed by your own experiences.

You can read the body language better and apply all your senses better during communication; thus, trust is built easier.

And the latter is necessary if you want to close a sale.
Some statistics do confirm this, too.

In-person requests are 34 times more successful than those made over email (source), and the close rate is 40% (source).

So by that, we can derive that the closer we get to a face-to-face meeting with the help of technology, the more effective follow-ups get. 

The same can also be derived from the video marketing statistics above. 

Video increases click-through rates, consumers want to see more videos from their brands, and 88% of marketers are satisfied with their ROI.

 

Key Takeaways Based On the Stats

how to follow up with potential home buyers

So, what do we make of all the above statistics?

I think now is the moment we can derive how to follow up with potential home buyers most effectively.

Maybe in the future, I will produce my statistics specifically for the real estate industry. 

But we can assume that these statistics vary only slightly between industries. 

For now, we will have to use the generalized data above and apply it to the real estate industry and potential home buyers.

This is what we can take away from the stats as a best practice to follow up with them in the most effective ways:

You want to use multiple communication channels to follow up and consider that you will need between 6 and 8 touchpoints. 

Use the phone as the first follow-up channel, ideally as a video call, then switch to texting. 

Be patient because you might need eight call attempts to reach your potential home buyer. 

After reaching them, you can switch to texting and send more than three text messages.

You can make some touch points via email before and between the texting. 

Use the recipient’s name in the subject line, between 50 and 125 words, and include 1-3 questions. Ideally, you should also have a video message in the email.

Oh, and don’t forget to manage and track your follow-up efforts with CRM software, which I already covered in this article.

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.

Tobias Schnellbacher
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