All Forum Posts by: Lexie M.

I'm speaking as a student who loved paying electronically. I doubt that many students or younger people like the idea of sending their rent checks through the mail or even dropping it off. I think there is even a monetary incentive to "go green" these days. Electronic rent just makes it easier. I would send a check electronically through my bank, so the landlord would still have to deposit it, but I knew a couple of friends who sent their rent to their landlords' account number. 

I've had to do research on a few of those companies. iContact was a good option as well as Constant Contact. Both come with helplines, email templates and are very user friendly. They vary on pricing but you can negotiate. 

I do not recomend Vertical Response Classic because it is an outdated system. Their new system works fine, but you are limited in how much you can design your emails. (no ability to html code them)

Smartphones and tablets are used highly to view emails. In the marketing world, responsive designs are preferred and highly suggested to be used. 

My question is what about for a typical property flyer? Would you rather see a flyer in your mobile email as a full page or a responsive design?

Design is incredibly important. It has to look the way you/your company want to be represented. Your website is most likely the first impression you'll make to your potential clients and it is going to continue to be this way for many many years in the future.

There is no reason you can't design it yourself, but dishing out a little bit of money for an amazing site that you could use for 10+ years, seems like a great investment to me.  

You are definitely fine with the sites you are using. These are just extra sites you can join if you want to...clearly you don't. Spend your time on your current social media sites because they are the most important ones anyway. This can always change, so make sure to keep up on the new trends.

You should look into Google +, high social activity on this platform contributes to how your business ranks on Google. 

You need to use the Google Keyword Tool.

It will help you decide how to best market to your area by giving statistics from the previous year on how many people clicked on "your keyword" + city vs. "your keyword" + neighborhood. 

Analyze the data and decide which is the best option for you to choose. 

Essentially everything you want would come with a free theme. If there are added features that you want, you can often just use a plugin. Premium themes come with more features, but it's nothing you couldn't create on your own. There are also a lot of free plugins, that can add those features for you. There are a lot of great free themes out there that are not real estate ones, it's just finding the one that's right for you. 

Creating pages, can be more difficult. I suggest getting a page layout builder plugin to help center content or create columns. 

WordPress is also thought of as a community of people with a lot of support forums. Any problem you have can be answered by someone quickly. 

I have become incredibly well educated in WordPress, themes, plugins, and coding the last few months, so if you have any questions, I can answer them for you. 

Best, 

Lexie

Most email marketing companies charge based on subscriber levels. For 4,000 subscribers, it shouldn't be that expensive every month. Your subscribers must have signed up for your emails blasts organically (you can't buy them). The best email marketing companies will ask you this upfront before they even tell you what they can offer you. 

Email marketing companies also have extensive spam filters. It is difficult in the real estate industry for every email sent out to not get trapped in spam folders. This is because we use terms like "buy now" or "need money?" If you work with a customer service based email marketing company, they will help you figure out ways to decrease the emails getting trapped in spam. 

I work in the marketing department for my company and also take the incoming potential clients. The majority of our leads have come from our email blasts. I don't have enough data yet to quantify how much, but it does work.

Hope this helped!

I've am currently building a website using Wordpress themes, so I've done a lot of testing. The best themes came from looking them up on Google instead of through the back end of Wordpress. Look for articles that list the top 10 or top 15 landing page themes. This way you know it has been tested out and get a brief description what the theme has to offer. 

@Ben Wuollet is right. If you are going to get a site, you have to put a lot of time and effort into making it great and SEO friendly. I am a marketing professional and I know how much effort it takes. If you don't have that kind of time, you still have to do something online. 

Imagine if someone received your information and were considering to work with you. The first thing people do nowadays is look you up and your competitors online. If there is no listing of you with positive recommendations and there is of your competitors, guess who they will choose?

I would suggest hiring an employee to run your entire marketing campaign if you can't do it yourself. It will be expensive, but it is something you have to do if you want a successful business.

I hope this helped.