How To Get Your Prospect's Contact Information, Right Away...

    Nov 21, 09:52 AM in Marketing

    Do you ever get frustrated with the bogus information your visitors give you when they fill out a form on your real estate website?

    You call the phone number and it’s not even real.

    You email them and your message bounces back.

    If you’re like most of the Realtors® I talk to, it probably happens a whole lot more than you would like.

    What can you do about it?

    Before we get to that, let me tell you a story.

    It’s a story I heard Gary Halbert (famous living copywriter) tell about a test that Claude Hopkins (famous dead copywriter from the early 1900s) ran in a bunch of NYC newspapers.

    The test was to see which call-to-action (the part of the ad that tells people to DO something) got the best response. The ad offered a f-r-e-e sample of a new product to anyone that responded.

    Here are the three options that were tested:

    1. Just write your name and address and send it to us and we’ll send you your free sample right away.

    2. Just call this number, give the operator your info and we’ll send your free sample right away.

    3. You can either write your name/address and send it or call us and give the operator your information. We’ll send your free sample right away.

    Which call-to-action do you think worked the best? The “write to us,” the “call us” or the “you have a choice” option?

    The call ONLY option brought in 3 TIMES the response of the other two!

    The important idea is that you need to vary your call-to-action on your website and in all of your ads. You need to find out what type of call-to-action will get YOUR prospects to respond more, with their REAL contact information.

    So here’s a simple idea for you to try…

    In your next promotion (doesn’t matter if it’s a postcard, a flyer or a print ad in a magazine), don’t use a website address in your ad.

    Instead, make your goal to capture your prospect’s email address right away by giving them only ONE way to respond to your offer. That one way is to email you.

    If you are offering a free information booklet about something, they’ve got to email you to get it. That’s the only choice they get.

    The email address you promote in the ad should be hooked into an autoresponder that will email them back, add their email address to your database and then automatically send out a series of 10 or 15 messages you have prepared in advance.

    This type of approach will help you ask for your prospect’s info when their interest in you is at its peak. Right away.

    Also, by limiting the number of hoops they need to jump through before they give you their contact info, chances are you’ll improve your response.

    But hunches aren’t enough here…

    There’s only one way to find out if this approach will boost the response with your prospects.

    And that is to test it yourself…