Even with the growth of social media and increased use of web searching by millennials, leads from real estate agents still represent the largest source of business for most home inspectors. So the more opportunities you have for engaging with agents on an on-going basis, the more likely that they will be including you when their clients have inspection needs. The challenging of staying continually engaged, of course, is that the communication needs to be valuable for them, otherwise it gets tuned out.
This is where 'Weekly Motivators' can be helpful.
Weekly motivators are inspirational messages that you send to your agent contacts each week to give them a boost, for helping them as they face the challenges of the upcoming week. When done well, they are helpful to your agents and appreciated, which keeps you favorably top-of-mind with them.
Here are some tips for making your weekly motivators effective:
USE STUNNING IMAGES: Images are not a place to go cheap by just grabbing photos off the web. You will want your images to be very attractive and high resolution. Plus, since you are going to be widely distributing them, you will want your images to have licensing rights for distribution.
INCLUDE QUALITY QUOTES: Each inspirational quote needs to be consistent with the image that it is being paired with. If they don't match it will diminish its motivational value. It helps if the quote is from a famous, easily-recognized person, but a great quote is still a great quote, even if the author is somewhat unknown.
FORMAT FOR SOCIAL MEDIA SHARING: You will want to be sure that the email for your motivator is responsive, that is, that it automatically adjusts to display properly in any device that the agent might be using. But also, you will want to be sure that your motivators are using the proper HTML 'tags' that enable your motivators to be easily shared by your agents on their social media platforms, as this gives an additional benefit to your agents from your motivators.
ADD CUSTOM COMMENTARIES: The impact of your motivators can be enhanced if you take the time to add your own comments and reflections about each motivational message that you are sending them.
PERSONALIZE AHEAD: And if you are adding your own custom comments, it can help to set aside time to personalize your motivators months in advance, and to then be automatically scheduled to go out each week.
SEND VIA MULTIPLE CHANNELS: Like most effective marketing techniques, more marketing channels are better than just one. So you will want to be making your motivators available through email, Facebook, LinkedIn, web BLOG, etc.
USE 'TEASER' SUBJECT LINES: Instead of having the same subject line week after week, an effective technique can be to use a shortened version of each motivator's inspirational quote as your subject line.
CHANGE BACKGROUNDS: And similarly, when emailing your motivators, consider changing the backgrounds, to help keep the format interesting to your agents.
ALLOW INDEPENDENT OPT-OUT: And finally, if you are sending multiple email communications to your agents, you will want to be sure to allow them the option to opt-out of your motivators without opting out of your other communications.
Regarding the day of the week for sending your weekly motivators, this is something you might want to experiment with for your your particular agents. Mondays can be a good choice, as it is the beginning of the week, when we all could use a motivational boost. Also, if your agents tend to have open houses over the weekend, they maybe thinking about home inspections on Monday. However, Monday's tend to be hectic days for most people's calendars and even the best motivator may not get full attention. Similarly, Fridays maybe a good day if your agents are looking to get pumped up for weekend showings, but on the other hand, Fridays can be a 'winding down' day for some people. So this is why some experimentation with different days of the week can be helpful.
