How To Turn Your “Address Only” Leads Into Conversations

How many “address only” leads do you have?

You know.. those “leads” that you got with your home valuation website.

They clicked your link… they entered their address and then…

Stopped.

Perhaps they stopped for fear of being harassed by a REALTOR, or because their kid took their phone and ran away with it. While these are a very likely scenarios maybe they really don’t like giving up their information. Whatever the reason is, you now have a street address without much else to go on.

At this point you can’t really call it a lead, but it is a piece of data that can be used to start a conversation.

The Address Only Lead?

If you have done any sort of lead generation you know that any good lead system requires a solid follow up plan.

Normally with online lead generation, you would put these people into an email follow up sequence and let the automation help to build the relationship. And while that is all well and good, you don’t have an email.. you don’t have a phone number and you really don’t have a whole lot to go on…

So what is the best way to start a conversation with an ADDRESS?

You could, of course, use a database search that will chase down the owner’s information and return some results of what “might be” a way to contact them.

You could also just show up at their house and know on the door — telling them that you just wanted to track them down after they visited your website..

// That’s not at all creepy //

But you paid for that ADDRESS so you need to see some results.

I have used these website tools they would leave me with hundreds of “Addresses” at the end of the month. That is a lot of addresses and they added up. Month after month I would collect more addresses.

Now many might say that these aren’t the best leads, but an MLS search said otherwise.. Yes many of these addresses would go on to list and sell their home.

I had tried a few of those tactics mentioned before, but… I knew that there had to be a better way to start a conversation with these homeowners.

So. I wrote a letter.

The Perfect Welcome Letter

I wrote a letter. To be more accurate — I modified my Perfect Welcome Email for direct mail format…

Now a note… as a professional that focuses my energy on digital marketing, I want to point out that I truly believe in multi-channel marketing (as noted in our Omni-Channel Messaging Platform).

Now the great thing about this template is that, if you really wanted to you could batch this out quickly every time you get an “address only” lead.

So let’s start with a basic letter format.

Thank them for visiting your site, and give them a quick report. I like to use a quick MLS report with recent sold homes in the neighborhood, but there are also plenty of quick reports you can use from various providers.

So here is where we start to get creative with our message. We want to make sure that they get something in their hand, because well emails get lost.

Promise them there is more great stuff to come. Now say all this, knowing that they didn’t really take the next step. It opens a loop that will keep them reading to the end and ultimately lead to engagement.

And just like any other letter you would write, a quick close. You want to make sure they have your contact info, just incase they need anything…

Now.. the close.

This is where the magic happens.

One thing we all know is that the USPS, as much as we love them, sometimes has been known to not always deliver everything…

Working with that in mind, we get the homeowner to send us a quick Text Message to ensure that they receive the letter.

And you know the crazy thing? It works.

I was a little surprised when I sent out my first batch of letters to get a few texts that just said — “I got it”

But here is the best part — now you have a conversation started.

You can engage, find out who it is, where they live.. Build the relationship.

Oh, and you also have their cell phone number as well.

Adding it to your follow up

It is easy to incorporate this into your follow up, and you can even automate it a bit.

You could setup a Zap using Google Cloud Print and route your leads through to automatically print out the letter to your printer.

You could also use a service like LOB to automate the printing and mailing of the letter.

But start with your current backlog of addresses then begin moving it to your automation.

Take the template and personalize it to match your writing style.

You can even have the SMS number trigger a Bot conversation with your lead.

You can download the Perfect Welcome Letter template to make your own here:

Originally published at blog.sparkconvos.com.