While in the process of updating my buyer and potential seller communication systems I have recently discovered an e-marketing system called Vision6.

Have you ever wished you knew how many people are opening your e-mail’s, or one better… see exactly who clicked on your links?

I used Vision6 recently to send out a price adjustment on a property, and then called every person who clicked to see ‘more information’ on the property. The response was great! Everyone knew what property I was talking about and thanked me for the call. I was touching base with people who actually cared.

I then decided to explore it a little further and consider other ways I could implement this system. Some of the uses I have already adapted include the following;

1. Send every new registered buyer a link to ‘the buying process’ with a link down the side to ‘tips on how to prepare your home for sale’ – as this will provide an early tip as to who’s selling.
2. Send all my database a quarterly report and again add the ‘tips on how to prepare your home for sale’ link
   In the process of allowing users to sign up to my e-newsletter automatically using the forms feature.
3. Will offer my next vendor an improved e-brochure service which allows us to track who clicks on the ‘more info’ link. Then call anyone who did not attend the open for inspection to understand why not or possible encourage them to attend the next one or discuss similar properties coming onto the market.

If you use Vision6 or similar systems what do you use them for?

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The weekly newsletter we put out from www.kirstydunphey.com is currently circulating to over 5,000 people weekly. We’re often asked how we’ve built our database to that size in just a few years given that this newsletter started as just an in house newsletter to around 20 staff! To follow are some of our best success tips on building your newsletter (or blog) database.

26 Ways To Build Subscribers

1. Have a sign up button or form on every page of your website.

2. Don’t make it too difficult for people to sign-up, people get bored if they have to jump through too many hoops. All we ask for is first name, surname (optional) and email.

3. Set up a facebook fan page for your email and encourage your friends / family and current subscribers to join.

4. To attract those ever present Gen Y’s have a presence on myspace. Some of my favourites:

• http://www.myspace.com/jackcanfield

• http://www.myspace.com/thebaileynetwork

• http://www.myspace.com/jimrohn

• http://www.myspace.com/thatguywiththenametag

• http://www.myspace.com/kirstydunphey (and mine of course!)

5. Link your facebook, myspace and linkedin pages on your website and newsletter.

6. Any time you speak at a public event, mention your newsletter and encourage people to sign up. By public event I mean everything from a keynote presentation in front of 2,000 to a networking group of 5 – just mention it!

7. If you do any regular public speaking, grab a box, bucket or any receptacle and allow people to simply throw a business card in at the end of any of your talks if they want to subscribe.

8. Promote your newsletter on the bottom of your email (in your signature)

9. Make it easy for people to recommend their friends signup and mention that you’d like them to join in your newsletter (in ours we say we’re aiming for 10,000 subscribers – can they help?)

10. I regularly submit articles to be used in other newsletters. Our two most exciting contributions to date have been multiple entries in Zig Ziglar (www.zigziglar.com) and Jeffrey Gitomer’s (www.jeffreygitomer.com) newsletters.

11. Allow people to reproduce your articles in their newsletters – and make it easy. We do this by having a statement telling people they can reproduce our articles in every newsletter and a whole page of articles they can use here: www.kirstydunphey.com/usemebaby.html

12. We submit our articles (which reference our newsletter) to online articles. Try www.ezinearticles.com and www.articlesbase.com, www.goarticles.com

13. Solicit testimonials from the people who currently read your newsletter (even if it’s just 5!) and use them on your website.

14. Allow people to see archived copies of your newsletters – to give them a better idea of what they’re signing up for.

15. Don’t sell or loan your database and make it clear on your website that you won’t.

16. Mention your newsletter as often as possible (media, tv interviews, social events, networking).

17. Consider mentioning your newsletter on your business card / letterhead.

18. Link to your newsletter in your blog.

19. Oh yeah – have a blog (see: www.kirstydunphey.com/blog) and if you don’t think you have time to blog read: http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/02/are-you-already-blogging-and-you-just.html

20. There are lots of online ezine directories that you can register your database at (we’ve not had a great response from these – but hey – if you’ve got a spare 10 minutes go for your life!)

21. Ask your friends / colleagues if they’ll mention your newsletter on their website (see: www.kirstydunphey.com/recommendations.html) More links to your website can also do great things for your search engine optimization.

22. You can pitch your product in your newsletter – but it can’t all be a sales pitch. Find a happy medium that works for you in terms of selling vs educating.

23. If you write a book (www.unleashedknowledge.com), mention your newsletter in it.

24. Make your database feel loved – have special offers that are only for those people who subscribe.

25. Use a reputable email marketing service to ensure a good delivery rate, we use icontact but there are several other options available.

26. Finally, the number one (and most simple) way to get more people subscribing is to put something out there that’s of value to readers. If people like a newsletter they’ll forward it on and it’ll grow without you having to concern yourself too much!

Kirsty Dunphey is an author, speaker and entrepreneur who started her first business at 15, opened her own real estate agency at 21 and retired a self made multi-millionaire at 27. To sign up to Kirsty Dunphey’s weekly email, go to www.kirstydunphey.com

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Are You Using One Of The Most Powerful Tools On The Internet – Twitter? If you’re not, then I hate to tell you but you’re missing out on something that can have a massive impact on your online success & help to spread your marketing message out all over the web at the same time.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing phenomena on the internet & it’s not just for the celebrities & politicians.

Lots of companies are now achieving great results by incorporating Twitter into both their marketing & their day-to-day online communications.

With people now spending more & more of their time on Social Media, it’s important that real estate agents & property managers start to become part of the online conversation.

What is Twitter & Why Is It So Good For Real Estate Agents?

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows messages (tweets) of 140 characters or less to be posted up onto the web in real time.

It provides the convenience of text messaging but with the additional advantage that the messages are posted up onto the web for others to see, plus it’s without the costs involved with SMS, because Twitter is free to use.

How Can Agents Leverage Their Marketing By Using Twitter?

Did you know that one single message posted onto Twitter can also be automatically sent out across to numerous other Social Media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Plaxo, MySpace, Blogger, WordPress, etc… all from just one single tweet.

Also, if other people on Twitter like your message then they will often share your tweet with their followers as well, and your friends on Facebook could share the message with their friends on Facebook too, etc, etc.

Which means that one tweet can not only be leveraged out across a number of your own Social Media accounts but they can also end up being shared amongst the Social Networks of your friends & followers to help you get your message out across the web.

For instance, there have been lots of times where I’ve posted a message onto Twitter which other people on Twitter have found interesting & subsequently they’ve shared the message with their followers by Retweeting my message.

And likewise there’s  lots of times where I Retweet other people’s messages that I think my followers may be interested in.

Here’s an example of how a retweeted message looks.

RT @GregVincent: Suncorp says Thank You Mr Hooker as they sell LJ Hooker to LJ Hooker ~ http://ow.ly/qQ6d

Sometimes, the people who retweet your message have only a handful of followers & others have thousands of followers who can potentially see your message.

And, this is only a small part of how Twitter can spread your message.

Here’s a snapshot of how Twitter works for me & how it could work for you.

As well as writing articles & posting them onto sites like GenYre = energy, each week I write the Real Estate Agent Newsletter for the Real Estate Agent Success Club & send it out to agents via email.

Prior to using Social Media, email was the only way that I could share my newsletters out across the web.

But now I can also share each of the Real Estate Agent Newsletters with my followers & friends across all of my Social Networks via a single tweet.

For example, here’s what I do each week.

Once I’ve completed my newsletter I email it out to my database. Then I simply post a tweet with a link to the Real Estate Agent Newsletter up onto Twitter for my Twitter followers to read. And then within seconds, that same tweet automatically appears as an update on my Facebook profile, Facebook Fan Pages, plus it also appears on my other profiles like LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Plaxo, etc.

On top of that, I also have a Twitter feed appearing on my websites which means that if someone is visiting my site then they can also read my tweets & potentially read the newsletter too.

Should Agents Have More Than One Twitter Account?

You may have noticed that the Twitter feed for this site appears on the right hand side about half way down the site & features updates from Twitter.com/GenYRealEstate & not my personal Twitter account.

Twitter also allows you to have multiple accounts & I’ve created a separate Twitter account specifically for this site.

The reason I’ve done this is because the GenYre site has been set up for multiple contributors & the contributors will also have access to update the GenYRealEstate Twitter account which enables them to share tweets that they feel may be helpful to the Genyre = energy readers & followers.

(Real Estate Agents could easily do a similar thing by having a personal twitter account for each staff member  & a company twitter account that each of their staff could tweet interesting real estate related content to.)

Since the Real Estate Agent Newsletter provides helpful tips for real estate agents which is good information for GenYre = energy readers & followers, I also send out a Tweet linked to each week’s newsletter via the Twitter.com/GenYRealEstate account simultaneously.

If you think this sounds a bit hard to do or really time consuming, check this out…

Now that I have this set up, all I have to do is write an article, email it to my database & tweet a link to the newsletter and within seconds I have shared my newsletter out to thousands & thousands of people amongst lots of different networks over the internet.

When I think back to what I had to do years ago to get thousands of people to read one of my articles & the expense involved, I have to say that spreading a message doesn’t get much easier or any cheaper than this.

Plus, there’s also an extra added bonus.

Because my articles now sit up on the web forever, people also come across them via Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Social Bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon & Delicious, etc.  People will often quote from my articles & link across to them from their own articles too.

If you’d like to find out more about how you can create a similar marketing strategy within your agency and how it all works, you may want to come along and catch up at one of the Social Media for Real Estate Seminars.

Here’s something else that works really well…

Before I go, there’s one more thing that I do with Twitter that I’ve found works really well & could work well for real estate agents too.

In a previous post I shared a YouTube video I did about The Password To Help You Achieve Your Goals & whilst it’s really easy to create & upload a video onto YouTube, the hardest part is getting a large number of people to watch it.

So, what I do is, anytime someone follows me on Twitter they automatically receive an email from me saying,

” Thanks for following me. Here’s a quick video tip I made that may help you to achieve your goals http://tr.im/lQg1 “

I set this automated email response up from my Twitter account about 4 – 5 months ago & before doing this I’d only had about 20 people who’d watched the video in the previous 2 months. Now the videos had over 650 views & I haven’t touched it since setting this automated response up.

So much of my marketing happens automatically for me now.

Note:  http://Tr.im is a URL shortening service that makes it easier to link to a website within the 140 characters available on Twitter & the links are trackable.

As of today I’ve had 339 people click open the link directly from the automated emails sent to my new followers. I don’t know where the rest of the other 300 views have come from. They could be from the previous blog post or from people simply watching videos directly on YouTube.  I’ve done the video once & the rest just happens.

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