Why Drips and Listing Alerts Aren’t Enough to Get Deals From Your Database

We recently dug into one client’s database. We found almost 300 deals sitting in their CRM that they never captured.

They weren’t doing nothing. They had drips. They had listing alerts. They had home value alerts.

But that’s all their contacts ever got: automated messages. No timely emails about the local area. No personal follow-up with the people who were engaging.

If the only time your clients hear from you is through an automated message, you’ll miss most of the opportunities in your database.

So I built a free tool that answers one question:

How much money is sitting in your database right now?

Fair warning: your number is going to make you excited. It’s also going to annoy you.

Even a modest database of 1,000 people at a $650,000 average price has about $32.5 million changing hands every year. Most agents capture less than 5% of it.

The math nobody does

In any given year, only a small slice of homeowners in your town sell. But the people in your database aren’t average. They already know an agent. They raised their hand at some point.

That’s why database contacts move more often, somewhere between 5% and 10% a year. Let’s use the low end.

At $650,000 each, that’s $32.5 million. Here’s what your share looks like at a 2.5% commission:

Going from 5% to 10% doubles what your database pays you. No new leads. Same people.

How the calculator works

It takes about 30 seconds. You move four sliders:

1. Contacts. How many people are in your CRM, spreadsheet or phone.
2. Average sales price. What a typical home sells for in your area.
3. Turnover rate. How many of your contacts move each year. Start at 5% if you’re not sure.
4. Capture rate. How many of those moves you actually get. Be honest here.

Then it shows you three things: how much money changes hands in your database each year, what your commission looks like, and how much you leave on the table at 5% capture.

That last number is the one that stings. Most agents can tell you how many leads they have. Almost none can tell you their capture rate. It’s the number that decides your income, and nobody tracks it. Now you will.

4 steps to get from 5% to 10%

Think of these like legs on a stool. Take one away and the whole thing wobbles.

1. Enrich your database

You can’t market well to people you don’t know much about. Here are the five levels of a database:

Level 5 matters more than it looks. Call someone on the Do Not Call list and you risk big fines. Email bad addresses and your good emails start landing in spam. Your goal is level 5.

2. Sort people into real groups

Most agents sort contacts by where they came from: “Zillow buyers,” “Facebook sellers.” That doesn’t help you write a better message.

Sort by area, property type and price instead. Now 1,000 “leads” becomes something like 125 people who own $600K to $800K colonials in one town. You know exactly what to say to them.

Better yet, decide who your perfect client is first. Downsizers? Long-time owners? Luxury waterfront? Build your groups around them.

3. Show up in three places

Most agents only email their database. Add two more channels:

4. Follow up with the people who engage

Marketing gets opens and clicks. Follow-up gets appointments. This is where most agents stop.

Your newest leads aren’t new. Anyone who opened your email this week is a fresh lead this week, even if they’ve been in your CRM for two years. Most agents chase the lead that came in today and ignore the one who just raised their hand again.

So send them a quick “second touch,” usually a text. It follows the email they opened: an afterthought, a fact, then a question.

A few tips from 24,000+ one-to-one messages we’ve sent:

3 emails you can send your database this week

Short, plain and easy to answer. Copy them, swap in your details, and send.

When someone replies or opens, send a second touch. That’s where the appointments come from (step 4).