Did you know that SMS marketing has one of the highest open and conversion rates than any other campaigns?
Even though most brands associate a negative vibe to SMS based marketing, it is the only form of marketing that has a 99% open rate according to studies. And the best part is that in 43% of the cases of campaigns, a response is achieved in the first 15 minutes of sending out the campaign.
These tempting facts make for a convincing case for players in the real estate sector to take note of the importance of using Bulk SMS marketing services.
The primary reason being that Real Estate marketing campaigns always have exclusive targets and they demand qualified leads in short time span because more their inventory stays unsold, more will be the price depreciation.
So how does bulk SMS marketing work for the real estate industry?
There are numbers of outstanding features that modern day bulk SMS systems bring into the picture. And these would particularly be of interest to real estate sector organizations as it helps them to improve their marketing efforts and achieve sales targets. Here are some of the key features that enable real estate players to sell better with SMS marketing systems.
Campaign Schedulers:
SMS systems allow you to easily schedule multiple campaigns that can be run on the same group of prospective customers or on a different set of customer contacts simultaneously.
You might have heard similar features in email campaign tools but today these facilities are available even in SMS systems. You can schedule the time and dates for running campaigns depending on seasonal and festive calendars.
Since SMS’s focus on very less text because of character constraints, it is quite easy to set up in a short time frame as well. You don’t have to plan and execute the content creation schedule in advance as even real-time campaigns can be fired.
Smarter URLs
The SMS’s allow text to be appended with smart URL’s that can offer real-time tracking of receiver engagement in addition to directing readers to optimized landing pages where more product and service information can be organized and displayed. With geo-tagging and many more properties, it is easier to identify facts such as areas where your messages have more prominence and better reach. This info is vital for further campaign plannings and brand positioning.
Auto Response
Bulk SMS systems can be configured to be autonomous systems and aid in customer info collection. You can send out a series of messages which collect responses in the form of text or numbers that indicate customer’s choices. In other words, it allows for more targeted surveying of your customers to gain more valuable information about them. These preferences can be loaded into your CRM system to enable agents to contact customers directly with richer information to guide their conversations.
Building Customer Databases
With more auto response enabled conversations through SMS systems, it is easier to build a list of buyers who are more likely to buy or rent a property from you based on their responses. Each SMS can be associated to particular executives and he or she can engage with prospective customers in real time to further nurture their interest into a buying decision.
Read Alos : 8 Benefits of using bulk SMS service
Detailed Reports:
It is easier to track open rates and responses made with smart SMS systems and you can visualize information collected in elaborate details with facts and figures.
Such a deep insight discovery is important to fuel further decisions at managerial level and also allows players to test different marketing and promotional offers for the same class of properties to see which has higher response indicated by more URL clicks.
Cool, so what benefits do these advanced features bring for real estate players?
There are numerous factors that would attract key real estate and property agents to utilize SMS marketing services to improve their overall ROI in marketing efforts. Let us have a look at 5 key benefits real estate businesses can derive if they utilize an efficient Bulk SMS marketing service for their promotions.
Lowered Cost of Marketing:
While an average field executive will demand anywhere close to a minimum of Rs 30000 to Rs 40000 in a metro city per month, an SMS marketing system enables you to communicate the same info as a marketing personnel would with one-tenth the cost involved and besides maintaining a lower workforce in the long run because these systems can be easily automated and scheduled.
Improved visibility of products and services:
Be it selling property or offering assisted premium services, real estate players can utilize SMS based marketing to propagate more targeted campaign messages that have more chances of being read by prospective buyers.
Once a clear database of customers or potential customers are obtained, sending in a tailored message for a customer group can offer greater responses than when you conduct an email campaign or any other digital or physical marketing efforts.
Better response rates:
As we mentioned in the beginning, SMS marketing has been proven worldwide to offer much better open rates than any other planned campaigns. If you are finding it hard to believe, it only takes a minute to check your phone’s inboxes to see how many unread messages you have in the SMS folder.
It will be a bare minimum or many a times there will not be any messages. Around 5 or 6 years ago, there weren’t digital alternatives like WhatsApp or the various internet powered Instant Messenger platforms and people used to have chat conversations via SMS.
Today people have a natural tendency to open phone SMS’s mainly because SMSes are mostly utilized only for important communication.
Shorter Content effort:
Every time you need to send an email campaign or prepare brochures, flyers, etc. the key challenge that props up is the need to prepare elaborate marketing collateral content.
It is a known fact that your potential buyer will only have a minute or so to spare for promotional content be it in their emails or when they get your marketing flyer or brochure in person. If they have to sweep through tons of text or get puzzled with too many visual elements, the interest factor goes down naturally.
The reason is that you are not narrowing down their experience to what is important – your property details in a snapshot. With SMS’s it is easy to create a short snapshot of your profile in around 100 characters and these characters are more than enough to ignite curiosity in buyers and trigger a response.
The response may either be a click on the attached URL in the SMS or a call back to the number associated with the SMS content or an inquiry over the web, all of which can be converted into sales deals in the near future.
Improved SEO traffic
Yes, you read that right! SMS marketing enables personal messages to have an URL attachment as well. This URL can be a customized landing page for your property wherein you can plan other targeted digital marketing activities.
Since SMS based URL’s have more click rate, they bring in more valuable prospective buyer traffic to your web properties and hence offer greater returns on your SEO efforts.
Are these benefits for real?
Just to give a quick fact check, Coca-Cola spends close to 75% of its mobile-centric marketing budget on bulk SMS marketing. Over 90 % of end consumers who have participated in an SMS based loyalty program have agreed that they derived some kind of value from the program.
With such benefits and high turn-around rates, it is quite a lucrative option for real estate players to give a shot with Bulk SMS systems. Feel free to let us know your thoughts about implementing an SMS based marketing system in your property business and our consultants will assist you in making the right decisions.
The commercial market relies much on the mobile marketing when it comes to promotion and marketing of the brands. Till date, response of any mobile marketing campaign was measured based on Delivery report (DLR) returned by Telecom Operator. Subsequently, companies started using URL enriched text message in the form of tiny URL (third party URL shortening service) for campaign analytics. The responses were measured in such campaigns based on number of clicks made on embedded link(s) in text message. However, such tools could only tell you overall response of the campaign. Capabilities of further drilling down of clicks on who has clicked over the links are not possible. Thus, the campaigns fail to figure out the hot leads interested in their products and services.
