3 Tips For Getting More Real Estate Listings

Show Transcript

Dan Stewart (00:14): Hello to our participants who are here. I'm sorry about the little technical hiccup we're having. I'm Dan Stewart, founder of Happy Grasshopper. With me is my friend, Chris Drayer. How are you, Chris?
Chris Drayer (00:26): I'm super, Dan. How are you doing? Thanks for ...
Dan Stewart (00:28): Doing really well.
Chris Drayer (00:29): Good to see you, man.
Dan Stewart (00:31): Likewise, likewise. It's always a pleasure. Like the rest of the world, we're working remotely. So, welcome to my detached garage, which is temporarily Happy Grasshopper headquarters. Chris, are we in your basement today? Where are we?
Chris Drayer (00:47): Yeah, yeah. You are at 6,000 feet, just outside of Golden, Colorado in my lovely basement.
Dan Stewart (00:55): Nice. It sounds like-
Chris Drayer (00:57): Really feeling fortunate that we got the basement done before the pandemic, so that worked out well.
Dan Stewart (01:02): Yeah. Yeah, good point. Good point. I see there's a whole lot of me on the screen right now, so if we're going to get that cleaned up here. We're having an issue getting this live on Facebook right now. Brian Rayl, a member of my team is sorting that out in the background. If you'll bear with us here for just a few minutes, we'd like to officially kick things off as we know for sure we're broadcasting. In the meantime, just a little bit of housekeeping. Chris and I have known each other for, I'm going to say seven, eight, nine years, something like that. It feels like much longer, of course, but it's only seven, eight, nine years.
Dan Stewart (01:41): The point I'm trying to make in bring that up is whenever I have a chance to invite someone to participate in a webinar, whenever I get invited to participate in another webinar, it always seems to go much better, be a lot more fun for the audience when there's a relationship there. So, I bring that up because everything that we do in our lives, every single thing that we get to experience and enjoy, it's almo st always more fun when we do those things with friends. Chris, I want to thank you for being here definitely.
Chris Drayer (02:19): Oh, thanks, Dan. I was going to say it's been more than 10 years that I've been fortunate enough to know you.
Dan Stewart (02:26): It's not possible.
Chris Drayer (02:28): When did Happy Grasshopper launch?
Dan Stewart (02:30): Yeah, it was 2011. So, can't-
Chris Drayer (02:30): Okay. Yeah, nine years.
Dan Stewart (02:34): ... can't be 10 years, yeah.
Chris Drayer (02:36): I was going to say it was at a RETSO event when we first met-
Dan Stewart (02:39): Could be.
Chris Drayer (02:40): Down in Atlanta. I miss that event, that was a good event. It's been fun to grow with you and watch you guys accelerate and dominate the world in a very nice manner.
Dan Stewart (02:53): Well, thank you. Thank you. People who are here, the audience, you guys, who are watching this, please go ahead and chime in something. Raise your hand, say something in the chat, let us know that you can see us and hear us. We always want these sessions to be interactive. So, the more engagement that you provide for us, the better off we'll be. I'm going to lead off here by welcoming Amy, and Andy, and Asma, and Barry, and David, and Deborah, and Donna Joe. Hello, Donna Joe. Dilma, John, Joseph, Karen, Laura, Laurie, Michael, Michelle, Robert, Allen, hi. Good to see you here.
Dan Stewart (03:34): Ryan, Sally, Sean, Sherry, Steve Reese. My man, Steve Reese's in the house, love it. Tim Burrows, Tim, it's good to see your name there on the screen. Todd Yorgenson, excellent. Valerie Blake, very cool, Zelda Greenberg. So there we go, A to Z. Brian, you're giving me the cue here to try to go live-
Dan Stewart (03:57): Okay, we're going to try to do that right ... It says stop live screen, when I click on the button. So, I will stop the live stream and we'll give this shot again.
Maya (04:15): Facebook just doesn't want to play nicely with you guys today. It's envious of your hair.
Dan Stewart (04:22): Stop, Maya.
Chris Drayer (04:24): Brian, actually, or Steve actually was commenting on your hair as well there.
Dan Stewart (04:28): Is that right?
Chris Drayer (04:29): Yeah, in the chat.
Dan Stewart (04:31): I don't know what to say, I can grow some hair.
Chris Drayer (04:34): It looks good.
Dan Stewart (04:37): All right. Let's see. It's still spooling for me like it was before, but out of respect for the people who are here, I just don't want to waste any more of their time waiting. So, let's dive in, let's get down to business. Let's have a good chat about what we can do right now in this environment, post COVID, pre COVID, who knows? Is it going to get worse, is it going to get better? We have protests, we have riots, we have social unrest, we have all sorts of things that are going on in the world and yet people still have to live somewhere. That means there are people who need to buy homes and there are people who need to sell them. So, the purpose of us being together today is to give you guys some solid actionable tips that you can put to work immediately in order to go find listings, not tomorrow or next week, but literally now. So, the stuff that you get from the session today, you'll be able to use right away. Does that sound cool, Chris?
Chris Drayer (05:37): Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, let's do it.
Dan Stewart (05:40): Yeah, okay. All right, cool.
Chris Drayer (05:41): What's over deliver?
Dan Stewart (05:44): I know that, Chris, you're super well known, Revaluate a super well known. But if you wouldn't mind, could you take a moment and just let everybody know what Revaluate does?
Chris Drayer (05:55): Yeah, sure. Thanks, Dan. In the 30 seconds is, we identify who is most likely to move. That wasn't even 30 seconds.
Dan Stewart (06:08): You need four and a half seconds.
Chris Drayer (06:12): No. Previously we've been on projects with companies where I rated and ranked real estate agents. And then we worked on rating and ranking actual real estate. Now, we rate and rank prospects. So that typically looks like working with an individual agent where they give us their database of maybe 500, maybe 5,000 contacts, and we're going to score them and tell them who in that database is going to move in the next six months.
Dan Stewart (06:40): Yeah, I see. That's super awesome because I know a lot of the names that I see here that are attending are members of Happy Grasshopper. So you have your sphere, your past clients, you've got a database already loaded in our system. What Revaluate can do is indicate for you which of those people, who of those people are likely to move in the near term. So, I think that's super valuable. I mean, that's a good thing. It'd be really good to know that. So, I'm glad that we're able to help share that message a little bit for you, Chris.
Chris Drayer (07:14): I appreciate.
Dan Stewart (07:15): In terms of how to do that, if we break down these steps for people, there's a lot that happens behind the UI. There's a lot of data that has to be gathered, it's got to be crunched, I got to be turned into something that can be actionable for you. My personal view about technology is that it should make our lives easier. I think that rather than sifting through all the people who happen to live in an area or all the people have to be in your database, if you can get some additional insight that tells you who's going to be likely to move, it's great info to have.
Chris Drayer (07:58): Data by itself is boring and ugly or to some people it's even scary. So while yeah, you want it to be efficient and you want it to be seamless as an individual agent or part of a team or anything, you don't want to have to touch the data because that doesn't feel like productive time. Same with Happy Grasshopper, the automation and getting things to work for you in the background is really what you want to have happen so that you can be more efficient and you can have good conversations with people, which a chat bod can't do. So, that's what we really want to help with is teeing up those conversations. We can do that best if we can isolate those who are most likely to move. If we can then message them and get them to engage, that's what we're shooting for.
Dan Stewart (08:56): Yeah. Tip number one, if we're going to go about getting some listings, it'd be great to run it through a service like Revaluate, so you can figure out which of those contacts in your database and are likely to be thinking of selling. So that's a pretty easy tip. Chris, if you could mention that, just a little bit about your process, so people know where they can go if they choose to do that.
Chris Drayer (09:22): Yeah. What we realized is a lot of people get leads or collect information from, it used to be open houses, or from lead capture forms or wherever the soccer team, but they get a lot of junk in their database. That could be the Bart Simpson email addresses, that could be something with profanity in the email address.
Dan Stewart (09:48): I Santa di [inaudible 00:09:49]
Chris Drayer (09:49): Yeah.
Dan Stewart (09:49): Like really nasty stuff.
Chris Drayer (09:52): Right. But people also put Airbnb in there. There's info at email addresses and stuff in there. As far as our process goes, the first thing that we do is to clean all that junk out and really essentially shrink the database. Let's clean it up. We typically remove ... so people don't need to feel bad about having credit in their database, that's typical.
Dan Stewart (10:14): No, it's going to get in.
Chris Drayer (10:16): Yeah. But cleaning it out, we can typically remove about 16% of the database that's just junk. Some of that junk is other real estate agents because you're probably not going to be selling a house to another real estate agent across town. So, probably we don't need them in that particular database. So, we pull them out and ... Go ahead.
Dan Stewart (10:37): Yeah. I would say across town probably not. Yet I know a lot of agents who live in resort markets. A big c hunk of their business is this referral relationship.
Chris Drayer (10:47): Totally a different dataset. You want to have those over here as your referral partner.
Dan Stewart (10:51): Yeah. Well, this is a good segue into the second tip because even if you have the very best content available, if you're sending the wrong message to the wrong audience, it's not going to work. You can have the best call to action, the best call to conversation, the best content to generate a listing and if you send it to people who are looking to rent a home, it's not going to do you any good at all. So there's got to be some effort that's paid to simply organizing a database. My mindset here is really clear. I've been teaching this for almost a decade now. There are only really two kinds of people, they know us or they don't. So that brand new lead, they don't know you. Your past clients, your sphere, they definitely know you.
Dan Stewart (11:40): I believe that the best listing opportunities come from people you already have relationships with. That's what we see in our business, it's what we see in our members' business over the years. I would that, as you're thinking of taking steps today to generate listings with the people in your database, you begin by focusing on people who already know you. We'll break down some strategies here for that. I'm curious, Chris, do you have any data to share with us about things you're seeing in your membership that have been particularly effective for them.
Chris Drayer (12:17):
Well, certainly it's this whole thought process of, if this, then that. So, tailoring the message to the right person at the right time and again, like we just talked about, automatically. So, if we deemed them, from our Revaluate standpoint more likely to move, there's a different message that you want to send to them. Then if there is no chance that they're going to be moving or if they just moved, that's a totally different conversation. Would you agree?
Dan Stewart (12:51): I would agree, and I'd take it a step further because let's say we've got a data set that says the people who own these homes, these particular addresses are definitely going to move, how would it feel if you're those people and you get a message from a stranger that says, according to the data, it looks like you'll be ready to sell your home? That's that feels really creepy, it feels a really big brotherish.
Chris Drayer (13:19): [inaudible 00:13:19] doesn't cause people to move.
Dan Stewart (13:20): Yeah.
Chris Drayer (13:24): I've talked to a lot of people and they've never said, "Oh, the data made me move."
Dan Stewart (13:27): We are really happy here, and yet the data said it's time to go like that.
Chris Drayer (13:30): So we've to move.
Dan Stewart (13:35): Yeah. That'd be nice, I guess.
Chris Drayer (13:37): Yeah, it's life events. Life events cause people to move.
Dan Stewart (13:41): Life events cause people to move, for sure. I'm bringing this up because I want to talk about the sorts of messages that are likely to be effective with people who are identified by Revaluate as being ready to move. Thinking about it, those of you who prospect, expireds and withdrawns, for example, you can call someone whose listing has expired or who's withdrawn their listing and they expect that you have that data. Their home was for sale, and now it's not. So it's not going to be a surprise to them that they're getting a call from a real estate agent asking about that. Yet, if I'm just quietly living my life and maybe internally, I'm thinking, can be time to sell. And I get messaging that says something along the lines of ... if it's too closely aligned with that thought process, that's going to create a problem. It's going to seem very big brother issue, will turn people the wrong way.
Dan Stewart (14:43): A technique that I like to teach is that if we can join the conversation someone's already having, it can be very effective. That only works if they're seeking you out. If you're cold prospecting them and you enter the conversation they're already having in their brain, that's problematic almost all the time, okay? Let's talk about the kinds of messaging I would suggest for these particularly-
Chris Drayer (15:07): I'm really curious to how you would approach this, for sure.
Dan Stewart (15:09): Yeah, okay. We've got people that we suspect of being ready to sell their home. We don't know for certain that they are and yet, we also know that the prevailing psychology among human beings is that we tend to help people when they ask us for help. So if I were to send an email, if I were to send a voicemail drop, if I were to send a written letter, the perspective I would recommend taking with this elites would be to ask for help. My voicemail might go something like ... and guys who are worried about voicemail, it's got to sound super organic. If it sounds like, hey, this is Dan Stewart, listing agent calling you because it's time to list your home. People are going to hang up instantly, it sounds like I'm recording a commercial.
Chris Drayer (16:01): So stay away from the script?
Dan Stewart (16:03): I think the script is okay, if you can read it in a way that it feels organic.
Chris Drayer (16:09): Not a radio announcer, okay.
Dan Stewart (16:11): Yeah. It shouldn't be a radio announcer. For total clarity guys, if you make a mistake as you're recording this voicemail drop, that's totally fine. You leave voicemails probably every day of your life where you make a mistake and it sounds organic and that's okay. A message like, hi, my name's Dan, we don't know each other yet. I'm reaching out because I need some help. I'm a local real estate professional, there are a lot of people that want to live in your area. If you know anyone in your neighborhood who will be willing to sell, please just give me a call. I'd really appreciate it. Here is my number dah, dah, dah.
Chris Drayer (16:52): Oh, man, that's great. That's great. Now has this been used by some of your members already? Do you know that it's-
Dan Stewart (16:57): Yeah.
Chris Drayer (16:57): Yeah?
Dan Stewart (16:58): Yeah, very effectively. Asking for help goes over so much better, particularly when you have context. Like, I've worked with a lot of your neighbors and I need some help from the neighborhood right now. Do you know anyone who'd be ready to sell? If you could put your message in context with their daily reality, gives them some connection to you, some rapport build statement, it works effectively. Now, cold emailing. Let's talk about this for a moment because there are a lot of companies like Cole Information, for example. You could pull these great lists of people who live in a neighborhood. If you want to build a farm area and you want to get email addresses and phone numbers of everyone that lives in that subdivision, well, you can pull that information, it's out there and it exists. And yet, if you start just cold emailing that list, you're going to get a lot of complaints and it's really going to hurt your reputation and your deliverability.
Dan Stewart (18:02): In some cases, it's even possible that Google will penalize you. In the US, we have something called the CAN-SPAM Act, which is rarely enforced. It's Google that puts the teeth in people who choose to engage in spammy behavior. They can go as far as to remove a domain from search. Imagine that, imagine having invested all this time and building your web presence, your SEO strategies, which take months and years to really accrue, all of a sudden, get erased because Google says, oh, the people at that domain send a lot of spams, so we don't want their website to be found in search. So the days of that Wild West activity or past for email and they're approaching for text messaging. One of the things we do at Happy Grasshopper is send text messages. I don't know about you, Chris, do you get spam text almost every day now?
Chris Drayer (18:59): Yeah. I'm pretty ready for regulation to come in on that. But certainly I'm sure most of the audience is pretty irritated by that stuff too. I mean, it's a valid tool.
Dan Stewart (19:10): Raise your hand audience, do you get more garbage texts than you want? Ding, ding, ding, I'm sure you do. A lot of people get that garbage in their phone every day. I'm getting election messages from both the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign. I'm getting, as a business owner, PPP messages every single day, the payroll protection plan. I'm getting these messages via text, which ... If you look at the data for text messaging, it's something like a 96% open rate. So, there's a school of thought that, oh, that open rate is so great, that's amazing. And yet here we are professional marketers, business owners talking about how irritated we are to get those messages.
Chris Drayer (19:57): Open rate is not the right measurement-
Dan Stewart (19:59): It's not.
Chris Drayer (19:59): ... of text messages. I don't know why anyone would say that, "Oh, well that proves that this works." That can't be what-
Dan Stewart (20:07): Because they're selling text messages.
Chris Drayer (20:09): No, I get it. Hey, the stat's good, let's push it.
Dan Stewart (20:13): That's exactly right. 96%, it's that awesome, let's go now.
Chris Drayer (20:17): That's way better than another percent.
Dan Stewart (20:20): Yeah, some other present. There's a time and a place though. A lead has captured, a text message going out automatically to that lead is fantastic. A text message to your past clients and your sphere on their birthday, on a holiday, on the anniversary of their transaction. All of that feels great. So there's a time and a place to do I. I'm bringing it up here because I would not recommend that people say, "Well, I've got this list and I want listing, so I'm going to send text messages to a bunch of strangers." I would prefer that you use the voicemail drop for that rather than sending a text. Of course, direct mail can work well for that sort of thing too. If you're already farming that area, you can just have a sentence focused on that.
Chris Drayer (21:12): Market to people the way you want to be marketed to, like conversationally and not robotic. If it's something that is irritating me about that text message, that's not appropriate and not timely, then it's a fail. So you got to be looking at yourself, I would think, to say, "Is this a good fit? Is this going to work?" And then yes, it will drive leads.
Dan Stewart (21:41): I mean, just to put it in a nutshell, the reason we get irritated by the text is because it interrupts whatever it is that we're doing. Like ding, our train of thought is shattered, the conversation we're having is shattered. Our attention is pulled away by that, and you want to be cautious of that as a marketer. So, the use cases that I know work would be immediate lead response during normal waking hours. Just because someone registers on your website at 2:00 AM, doesn't mean you need to send them a text at 2:00 AM. You're probably not up ready to take care of them. So you want to have it set up to do that appropriately.
Dan Stewart (22:21): Second, I would say that if you're sending a text messages to your past clients and sphere for things like birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, that's fantastic. You can do that on mass,. For example, from our system, you can write one text message, you can send it to that audience of people and then you'll immediately start getting replies from them. So, you can use that as a great conversation starter. Now, carrying this concept a little bit further, I've said earlier that one great way to generate listings is from your past clients and sphere. Right now, if you're a Happy Grasshopper member, inside the text message area of your account, we've put some messaging there that's ready for you to send that you can use to generate listings with. It's messaging that asks for help, very similar to the voicemail script I read, would be a text message approach that says something like, hey, Chris, if you have a minute, I could really use a hand. People reply to that if they know you They go, "Sure, what's up?"
Dan Stewart (23:28): And then you reply, "I'm looking for someone in your neighborhood is thinking of selling, do you know anyone who'd be willing to move right now?"
Chris Drayer (23:36): Man, it's so simple. I can see myself responding to that, that makes sense if I know the person.
Dan Stewart (23:47): Somebody thinks they're simple. It's simple to take vitamins, it's simple to do some exercise every day, and yet most people don't do those things. We need some help to get these things done. That's our purpose at Happy Grasshoppers to make it just effortless for our members to be able to send that sort of stuff. A word of caution, you mentioned automation before. There's a lot of things we do that we automate like sending that sort of text message to your sphere would be a mistake to automate. That would be like knocking on the door and not being there when they show up to answer. You've got to be there in that moment agreeing to send that message because it's a text, people are going to reply right away.
Chris Drayer (24:35): Correct.
Dan Stewart (24:36): If you're not there to engage in those conversations, you shouldn't send it. I'll also were to caution, you might have 1,000 people in your sphere, do not send 1,000 people in message all at one time. You'll have way more response than you can handle. In my account, I never send more than 100 texts at a time because I can't carry on that many conversations. The response that you get can be overwhelming. So I would say, this is something you need to calendar block for yourself. You need to set an appointment with yourself to send these messages.
Chris Drayer (25:09): We used to talk a lot about being authentic and not. It's definitely not authentic if it's 2:00 in the morning. It's definitely not, if it's something that you can't then ... If they respond and you can't reply back, I mean, that is taking that credibility that you had that, that initial conversation going and flushing it down the toilet because-
Dan Stewart (25:33): [inaudible 00:25:33].
Chris Drayer (25:34): That was more eloquent, pushing it away was better than my bathroom humor, sorry.
Dan Stewart (25:38): Ah, come on, Chris. Get out of the basement, man. Come to the garage, it's so much nicer in the garage.
Chris Drayer (25:47): [inaudible 00:25:47].
Dan Stewart (25:49): Crazy and unbelievable. We've got a question from Tim Burrows. He's asking, he would like to know about how many data points you guys are analyzing. His question, I'll read it to you is, how many data points does Revaluate evaluate the leads to determine the chance of listing, and how are those leads ranked?
Chris Drayer (26:10): That's cool. That is a great question. Thanks for that. That came from some marketing from another company that got purchased by Remax that's one of their talking points is we have X number of data points that we look at. But the reality is every single contact in your database is going to pull different amounts of data and information. From our standpoint, it's constantly evolving. We're trying to improve the algorithm and continue to work and get better, and it continues to learn. While I may get 1,000 pieces of data back on one day for Dan, a few weeks later, I might get more or I might get less. So it's constantly evolving per contact over time. Also, in addition to the entire algorithm is getting smarter as we go along. And then I think the second part of the question was, how are they ranked or ... say that again, Dan?
Dan Stewart (27:08): I will scroll back to that. Yes, how are those leads ranked?
Chris Drayer (27:13): They're ranked on a zero to 100 scale, and what we call them as very likely movers. So once that contact receives enough input from us that we believe that they are now likely to move the score continues to climb, they pass that 80 threshold. This is actually where the integration with Happy Grasshopper through Zapier works. Once it hits 80 or above, we deemed them very likely to move in the next six months. That tells Happy Grasshopper, hey, this prospect is now more likely to move. And then from what we were talking about earlier, if this, then that, that's where that kicks off from.
Chris Drayer (27:58): Ideally, what would happen when we identify this person is likely to move, and I'll get into what causes that, what causes them to get the score up in a couple of minutes, but what would you do at that point, Dan, once their score goes above an 80 that would even them likely to move in the next six months?
Dan Stewart (28:14): Yeah. I think that's the time to start sending those ask for help messages about, do you know anyone who's thinking of moving? Because that's a different approach. That's coming alongside them, rather than coming directly at them. If you approach with that direct approach here for people who don't know you, that you don't have a relationship with, their defenses come up immediately. Whereas if you simply ask for help, the internal psychology is where they're much more likely to give you the information that you need. Yeah, I think that's the right approach there.
Chris Drayer (28:53): Yeah, that makes sense.
Dan Stewart (28:54): Determine who those people are and then we send the appropriate messaging for them. We've got a few more questions coming in. Once a quick, easy, Happy Grasshopper question. Is there an additional text charge to use this service on HD? Valerie, the answer is maybe, it depends on the type of account you have. We have members who've been with us almost 10 years and I've never increased the pricing for those members. So, if you're one of those really old subscribers that's been with us a long time, you would have an additional fee to use this. If you're a more recent subscriber, you would not.
Dan Stewart (29:31): Now, we have some clients who too send a lot more texts than others. So, we sell them in lots of 1,000. If you need to add 1,000 text messages to your account, we do that for a charge of $49. And then those stay within your account for as long as you need until they're used up. So, hope that helps. Let's see here. Sally Roberts is asking you a question. I'm getting a phone call, that's interesting. Did you hear that?
Chris Drayer (30:03): Yeah, we can hear that. That was good.
Dan Stewart (30:05): Okay.
Chris Drayer (30:05): Do you want to take that?
Dan Stewart (30:06): Yeah. I'm not doing anything right now, sure. Sally Roberts asked, can you evaluate folks who are considering buying a vacation or second home?
Chris Drayer (30:16): Yeah. May I share a quick slide here, Dan? Would that be all right?
Dan Stewart (30:20): Yeah, absolutely. Do you have the ability to do that?
Chris Drayer (30:23): Not at this point, no.
Dan Stewart (30:25): Okay. I am adding that capability for you now.
Chris Drayer (30:28): Yeah. We get this question a lot for people in resort communities and coastal properties and mountain properties and such, we get that a lot here locally. So, I want to show you-
Dan Stewart (30:41): You should be able to share your screen now.
Chris Drayer (30:43): Cool. All right are you able to see the screen there, Daniel?
Dan Stewart (30:54): I am.
Chris Drayer (30:55): Cool. What we look for, these are called life event triggers, and this goes to the other question earlier as well. There are specific things that cause people to move and it's not the data. It happens to be these life event triggers, real estate agents already know this, intrinsically. But it's, we call them the data Ds, death, divorce, diapers, diamonds, diplomas, downsizing, the daily grind, discretionary income and even dumpsters. These things indicate with a high degree of likelihood that someone is going to move within a certain period of time. As you notice, discretionary income there or people getting a job.
Chris Drayer (31:39): When people buy second homes, they typically have some sort of windfall or something happening that has caused them to want to go and do that. So, absolutely is the short answer. We'll definitely look for people that are in a situation where they can buy a second home. That is a pretty good segment of movers actually. So, I'll throw that slide up there for that ...
Dan Stewart (32:03): I like it. Thanks for sharing that. That's good stuff. Again, folks, I see some more questions are coming in. You're always welcome to ask these and we'll get to them as we go. We've covered three tips, excuse me, two tips so far. We've got one to go here and then I think we'll probably even throw some bonus tips at you because we like to do that kind of stuff. First, would be to evaluate services like Revaluate. I mentioned Chris is a personal friend, I believe in their brand, I believe what they're doing and I'm happy that we have this integration of our services via Zapier. So, I'd encourage you guys to take a look there.
Dan Stewart (32:42): Second, you want to be able to send the right content. So we've talked about some things you can do for voicemail drops. Some things you can do with sending some messages to people in your database, how to use texting. We've covered a little bit of that. I think what I'd like to do next is a little screen share on my own. So, I can show you some social media posts that you guys can just grab and use yourselves. You just steal this stuff and use it on social media. So, let me fire my screen share up here. Chris, are you seeing that all right?
Chris Drayer (33:17): Yeah, that looks good.
Dan Stewart (33:19): I'm logged into my Happy Grasshopper account now. In the social media content area, our writing staff posts all sorts of posts. This is all refreshed once every two weeks. There's a ton of things in here. Now, my school of thought is that we want to start conversations on social media. It doesn't always have to be about real estate. We've put a lot of inspiring quotes in the system right now, because I believe now is the time when people need to see some inspiring words. I want to put that message out into the world. Now I'm going to scroll up and we're going to take a look at some listing generating posts, things you can post that will create these conversations that can lead to listings.
Chris Drayer (34:08): Good looking images too.
Dan Stewart (34:11): Well, thank you. All right. I'm going to come up here to the top, we're going to look at this first one. The content reads, research time, who wants to participate? Rating on a scale between one and 10, how likely would you be to sell your current home, if I told you I had a buyer ready to pay you an acceptable price for it?
Chris Drayer (34:31): That's very solid.
Dan Stewart (34:33): Who's going to engage on that post other than people who are interested in selling. Maybe they'll tell you zero, that's okay. They don't want to sell it all, at least you know that. But those people who are in your social feed, they know what you do for a living, notice that there's no real estate branding in here. We're trusting the Facebook algorithm to put this in front of people in notes. A lot of us have friends that are spread out all over the country, especially in all the internet. So, you want to make sure that you're posting things with the local flair. Part of what we do with our system is we give you a copy up here, which you could just copy and then of course, you can download the image or you can use your own, that's totally fine.
Chris Drayer (35:22): That's easy. Personalizing it makes a lot of sense because you wouldn't want to have a Palm tree picture in the mountains-
Dan Stewart (35:29): Yeah, yeah, exactly right. If there's snow on the ground and you've got beat shot, that's probably a mistake.
Chris Drayer (35:35): That snow melted yesterday, Dan.
Dan Stewart (35:37): Yeah. I know it's June, sure. But why not have snow in Colorado, seems reasonable.
Chris Drayer (35:43): Yeah. That makes sense to have that beat switch out, I like that.
Dan Stewart (35:49): Next message, been locked at home a bit too long, I mean, who's feeling that way? Probably a lot of us. Are the walls closing in on you? You probably spent mo re time inside then in a long time, what are three things you must have in your next home that your current home doesn't have? We want to, again, start the conversation on real estate related topics, and then we want to have the conversation. As people comment publicly, I'm going to recommend that you respond to their reply publicly because that's teaching the algorithm at Facebook that conversations has taken place here, this is someone whose message we want expose to more people, share with more people. And then you also want to private message that person, hey, I saw you responded to my Post, Chris, thank you. What's going on? How have you been? Have some conversation, re-established some rapport. And then ask if you can help them sell their home.
Chris Drayer (36:49): So because they've engaged with your content, it's kind of a social contract, it's okay to reach out to them and DM them directly, message them directly.
Dan Stewart (36:59): Totally. Yeah, totally fine.
Chris Drayer (37:00): Do you find that people react to these type of things with complete seriousness, or is it sometimes humorous or ... how are people engaging with this in general?
Dan Stewart (37:12): Well, it's going to depend on the post. I mean, we have some downright silly stuff in here too. I mean, believe it or not, that's Thomas Jefferson's bed.
Chris Drayer (37:21): There's lots of jokes there. Yeah, for sure.
Dan Stewart (37:24): I don't know about that, but it's weird for sure. It's weird, for sure. A post like this, I know about Pokemon from my kids. I mean, I should have played the Pokemon game there a few years ago.
Chris Drayer (37:41): Sure, I believe it, but I don't know that everyone in the audience believes it.
Dan Stewart (37:45): Yeah. It's okay. The point guys is that you're going to get the response you get based on the rapport you have with the people in your audience. If I were to say something really buttoned down like a patent attorney or a tax attorney, and I'm posting stuff like this, there's a disconnect there. If I'm known as a guy who wears plaid all the time and all of a sudden I'm in polka dots and stripes, that might be a little weird to the people who know me. So, part of the reason you see this variety of posts here is because we want our members to have the option of finding something that feels right for them, okay? It's just a good rule of thumb that if the content that you're considering posting you don't personally like, you should probably post something different, which by the way, Chris, that's the number one reason we exist as a company.
Dan Stewart (38:41): The world is full of CRM tool, so we don't really need another one. But the CRM content, gosh, the messaging in most of those systems is just horrible.
Chris Drayer (38:51): Yeah, sure.
Dan Stewart (38:52): People the way it organizes their contacts, but they can't stand the messaging that it would send out. So-
Chris Drayer (38:58): I worked-
Dan Stewart (38:59): ... fill that gap.
Chris Drayer (39:00): I helped that company that was in the direct mail space exclusively years and years ago. At the time, they were still doing the postcards with the brownie recipes. I am shocked that I still get that nonsense, it's just terrible. On top of that, there's a lot of stuff that goes around that's automated, that's just completely tone deaf to the times that we're in. So, I really think that the thoughtful nature of the inspirational quotes and kind of, hey, this is what's going on in the world, and incorporating that into your marketing is important because being tone deaf right now and sending out stuff that could potentially be damaging, it's not okay.
Dan Stewart (39:48): We have a Facebook group we created called What to Say Now. The whole reason for this group to exist is to help people through these issues. I consider myself, for example, let's just talk about the issue. You may have noticed I'm a white guy, did that happen again? Not everybody notices that.
Chris Drayer (40:12): Okay, thanks for clarity.
Dan Stewart (40:14): What that means is that I've been raised in a privilege that other people have not been. My life is positively dripping with privilege. That's despite the fact that I wasn't raised in a great environment. My parents were alcoholics, me moved all the time. There was a lot that wasn't easy, and yet, just by the virtue of the color of this, I've been given advantages that other people just don't have. Now is a time when it's just not acceptable to not acknowledge that.
Chris Drayer (40:53): For sure.
Dan Stewart (40:54): It's a time for us all to turn inward a little bit and say, "Maybe I can't stand on the sidelines anymore, maybe I have to actually step into the conversation and say, I don't want the world to be this anymore, so I've got to do something to help change it." In What to Say Now, it's a place where people post their questions about how to have a conversation. What can I say, how can I say this? Here's the situation, they describe it. Either myself or my staff of writers, we go in there and we help answer those questions. So, that's a fun place guy. So if anybody needs any help with messaging, please just find us on Facebook. We're in facebook.com/groups/whattosaynow and it's totally free.
Chris Drayer (41:48): Now, do you have writers that are helping respond to that, is that you responding, is it both?
Dan Stewart (41:52): It's myself and my team of writers.
Chris Drayer (41:55): That's awesome, that's really cool.
Dan Stewart (41:56): Yeah. There's more there than one person can handle. I've got a really talented team, so I love that they pitch in there as well.
Chris Drayer (42:03): That's a really neat ... I'm glad you're doing that, that's very cool.
Dan Stewart (42:07): Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you to Maya for posting that there in the chat, I appreciate-
Chris Drayer (42:13): Oh, there it is.
Dan Stewart (42:14): Ding. Chris, let's talk about data detox, right?
Chris Drayer (42:22): Yeah.
Dan Stewart (42:22): I've just talked about a free resource Happy Grasshopper can provide. I want to make sure they know what to do to get help from Revaluate.
Chris Drayer (42:29): I'm going to share this URL real quick and maybe Maya can put this on to the chat as well. But basically what we talked about earlier is the .... Are we good? Is the detox process. https://www.revalute.com/detox - What we're offering is with this URL, you can upload any lists that you have of email addresses, of whatever nonsense you have. We will, very, very quickly turn around and remove the profanity emails, remove the Airbnbs, remove the other real estate agents, remove all of that nonsense that's not valid, so that you have a really clean CSV as an export from that then you can go and do any of your other marketing.
Chris Drayer (43:22): Dan talked about getting essentially blacklisted by using bad data. If you're sending messages to the wrong people and to bad addresses, that's a very significant issue. If you're wasting money on marketing to people that don't exist or Daffy duck, we can help you out with that. This will clean up the Daffy ducks from your database.
Dan Stewart (43:52): A little more clarity there, technically what happens when you send an email to an address that doesn't really exist, it's called a hard bounce. If you, as a marketer are sending to lots of people that don't exist, it's telling the internet service providers who deliver your messages that you don't have a clean list. And guess who doesn't have clean lists, spammers. So you get lumped in with that group of people and that activity causes your deliverability to plummet. I mean, it really makes a big impact. Yeah, you definitely do not want to be engaging in that kind of behavior.
Chris Drayer (44:33): Revaluate works, all of our scoring is based on email addresses. So I don't need social security numbers, or bank accounts or anything, I don't need your name or physical address, all we need are email addresses. So, this is a core function of Revaluate because we know that we're going to be scoring those contacts for you and telling you who is most moving well to start with a clean database.
Dan Stewart (44:58): Awesome. So there is-
Chris Drayer (45:00): Go ahead.
Dan Stewart (45:01): There's a great question coming in from Greg. He's asking about your use policy concerning these emails that are uploaded for detoxing. For example, do you retain any right to distribute, to use, to mine those emails in any way and how soon after they're uploaded are they fully deleted from all your systems? I love that question, wow.
Chris Drayer (45:22): The terms of service on this are on the footer of Revaluate's website on every page, so we definitely don't hide that information. We've built a product that we believe to be future proof in that we watched what happened in the EU with the right to be forgotten and with data privacy. We watched what's happening in California and the direction that that's going. We know that in time, that going to go across the entire United States and become law. So we have been very careful about building this product in such a way as to make it future-proof. So yes, we're compliant with all existing rules and regulations and laws and taking it a step further and going to the direction of, hey, we want to be overly cautious on this.
Chris Drayer (46:14): To that note, there is data that we deal with that is allowed to be shared and used and displayed that we ethically don't believe should be shared and used and displayed. In other words, if I knew that Bob was getting a divorce, I'm going to use that information and plug it into my score because divorce does definitely drive the decision to move. But we're not going to display the fact that Bob is getting a divorce in any way. The worst case scenario is that someone would pick up the phone and say, hey, Bob, sorry to hear about the divorce and perhaps-
Dan Stewart (46:56): Yes, could be [inaudible 00:46:57]. I mean, that is absolutely a horrible approach.
Chris Drayer (47:00): Terrible. The worst, worst case scenario is that Bob says, "A what now?" So if Bob wasn't-
Dan Stewart (47:10): I am? What?
Chris Drayer (47:12): ... and didn't know he was getting a divorce. So we're trying to avoid litigious situations. I think that's in general, what most of us ought to be doing is avoiding lawsuit, so that's the direction we go. We delete everything as soon as the account closes. I think I answered those questions. Was it Greg, is that correct?
Dan Stewart (47:35): Yeah.
Chris Drayer (47:36): Greg, you can reach out directly if you'd like to chat about that more. We'd be happy to talk about it.
Dan Stewart (47:40): Yeah. For what it's worth, at Happy Grasshopper, we've said since day one, "Your data is your data, it's not ours. Those contacts are your contacts, not ours." So we don't share them, we don't email them, we don't do anything with them except deliver the content that we've created for you to them.
Chris Drayer (48:00): Yeah.
Dan Stewart (48:01): Period. I think the fastest way for companies like ours, meeting software as a service companies to go out of business is to disrespect your data.
Chris Drayer (48:14): Yeah. We've been fortunate, Dan. In our years we started working with individual agents, then we did teams and brokers and brands. And then the brands said, hey, would you work on the mortgage side of things? Of course, they're regulated with a whole different set of rules. We said, "Well, we don't know if we'll work on the mortgage side, but let's give it a shot." So we did it and it worked great and we comply with those rules. In addition, it's all one product, all turnkey, the exact same thing. The mortgage businesses were now in all 50 States with our large banks and lenders that do this stuff. That led to custom channel partnerships, that led to some advertising agencies using this stuff. We're trying to keep everything cool and clean, and we're working smoothly for everyone for sure so we can stay in business.
Dan Stewart (48:58): Well, it's super cool. It's super cool. Guys, we're coming up to the top of the hour here. I really appreciate everybody attending today. Chris, thank you. Not many people are willing to be my friend, but you, sir, you are. So I appreciate that.
Chris Drayer (49:14): I'm happy to step up to the plate for you and pretend we're friends.
Dan Stewart (49:19): Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, ouch. All right. Here's, what's up, those of you who are attending this live, thank you very much for being here. Do not forget to follow that link and I can't see the link right now. It's revaluate.com/detox. You will want to go there and get your list cleaned up. Of course, if you need help with content, you need help delivering messages, Happy Grasshopper is here for you. Just go to happygrasshopper.com or join our Facebook group @facebook.com/groups/whattosaynow. Chris, do you have any parting words you'd like to leave our audience with?
Chris Drayer (50:00): Man, thanks for allowing me the time to hang out with you, Dan. It's always a pleasure. Guys, if there's a way that we can help you out, feel free to come over to Revaluate. We have our chat tool there with our customer care. People are standing by, so you can ask questions via the revaluate.com chat tool right now, if you have any further questions. Dan, thank you so much.
Dan Stewart (50:25): All right, you're welcome. Great to see you, Chris. Thanks for coming everybody.
Chris Drayer (51:02): Bye, guys.
Dan Stewart (51:02): Have a great day. Bye.