Chasing down real estate leads can consume a lot of your time and marketing budget. But, if you cultivate lasting relationships with your past clients, you’ll improve your lead referral rate. With only 17% of homebuyers and sellers reporting that they would use their real estate agent again, there’s a huge opportunity for you to improve your customer outreach and build long-term relationships.
Because contacting past clients can sometimes skirt the line between a welcome intrusion or an annoying interaction, here are six positive relationship-building practices that make past clients happy to hear from you.
1. Become a Local Resource
Add value to your client relationships by becoming the go-to source for local and community knowledge. Whether you deliver this news in an email or a newsletter, you can include all sorts of interesting and pertinent information for your clients.
For example, you can:
- Send current home values for their neighborhood
- Share housing trends for your city or county
- Advertise local festivals, celebrations, or news
- Provide seasonal home maintenance information
2. Refer Them Business
As a relationship-based business, real estate professionals who help their clients connect into a network are more likely to see their own network grow. Is your recent client an electrician? Recommend him in your quarterly newsletter. Does your client sell custom birthday cakes? Skip the grocery store bakery and use them for your next celebration. As you build up your relationship with past clients, you’ll see an increase in your own referrals. You’ll be top-of-mind the next time someone asks, “Hey, do you know a great real estate agent?”.
3. Keep Them Up-to-Date on Real Estate Trends
When everyone’s favorite party topic is the state of the housing market, give your clients an edge by keeping them up-to-date on real estate trends with hard numbers and personal insight. For clients who aren’t glued to NAR updates, they’ll appreciate a quarterly look into where the housing market stands in their neighborhood. If they’re thinking of capitalizing on a seller’s market, the timely arrival of your newsletter may provide just the push they need to put their home on the market.
4. Throw an Annual Client Appreciation Party
It can be time-consuming to build personal relationships with all of your past clients. That’s why some agents choose to go big and have a yearly client appreciation party. For agents who have established an annual event, this celebration of their clients becomes part of their brand identity. Rent out a local water park, reserve a bouncy house at a centrally-located park, or host a massive BBQ, and bring all of your past clients together for one epic get-together.
5. Recognize Their Special Dates
Rather than sending a Christmas card that joins the pile on your client’s sideboard, opt to send them cards on occasions that will help you stand out from the crowd. Congratulate them on the anniversary of their home purchase, or wish them a happy school year. You could even recognize the local holiday and festival schedule by sending best wishes for the Irrigation Festival or the Peach Festival. You can include tickets to a local venue, or even just scratch-off lotto tickets for fun.
6. Send a Gift with Local Flair
Show a little state or city pride by sending a gift with regional flair to your clients. You can keep it small and consumable, such as a jar of local honey or cookies from the corner bakery. Or, you can keep it memorable by gifting them a piece of state-themed art for their wall, like this one from Etsy.
The Bottom Line
Whatever way you decide to keep in touch with your clients, remember that consistency is the best strategy. A real estate agent that sends off email blasts or sporadically calls up past clients isn’t building long-term relationships. Regularly communicating with former buyers and sellers builds a relationship of trust, and shows you care deeply about the community you’re helping to build. In return for the work you put in to build better client relationships, you’ll have more repeat clients and a larger pipeline of leads for future sales.
