How to automate your marketing

A general overview of how to work your real estate leads autonomously

Where most investors fall flat is in the follow-up process after getting a new lead. A common selling point for the popular real estate software services is that they will help automate your follow-up for you, and while some of these programs will help, I haven't found one that offers the flexibility that will work for everyone in every market.

The good news is that there is a way to put your leads in a marketing machine that gets your phone ringing, and it's not as expensive as you may think. The bad news is that you can't just buy it. You'll have to set it up yourself so it works for your infrastructure and in your market, which takes some work.

The philosophy here

This structure will be centered around item tasks in Podio. They will be installed with the owner's name, mailing info, and phone numbers based on an imported spreadsheet. Then, as the first marketing task comes due, you'll open the task, perform the action the task calls for, and complete the task. On the completion of one task, the next will be created and come due with respect to your marketing schedule. This process repeats until you make contact with the seller.

The secret here is to utilize two critical components of Podio/Globiflow. The first is the "task", which is just an activity that is called to be due at a certain time within Podio. The second is called a "webhook". These are little message senders that connect one system with the next, like Podio and Clicksend. Using a webhook, we can set up a button in Podio to send a text message, yellow letter, post card, etc to a yellow letter in one click.

At every step of this process, the organization of the tasks and webhooks will be based on my opinion, and there may be better ways to do it. This is not the only way to automate your marketing, but it's what we use.

What you will need

  • Podio premium
  • Globiflow
  • Zapier
  • A data scraper or data provider
  • A skip trace provider
  • A google account
  • A clicksend account
  • A techy person*

    • By carefully daisychaining these softwares and services, you can set up the infrastructure to automatically:

  • Pull a property owner's name and mailing address
  • Skip trace
  • Text message marketing
  • Cold call
  • Direct mail (yellow letters and post cards)
    • ...and manage it all from Podio.

    * setting this up can be time consuming and difficult if you aren't comfortable with technology. It may be worth finding a techy person and showing them this guide, and ask them to do it.

    Piece-by-piece

    The scope of this article isn't to explain precisely what to click to set up each part of each software, that will be explained in the articles linked within each section. This article is meant to explain how to connect each finished system. I did say this would take work, didn't I?

    Podio premium

    Podio, on its own, is free for the first 500 items (500 leads). It has a limited but simple automation system that isn't robust enough for what we're doing. That's why we need Podio premium. With premium, the limit on how many items you can have is lifted and we can use Globiflow to automate just about everything. It may not be clear right now, but by combining Podio and Globiflow, you can build the best possible CRM for your investing business.

    Globiflow

    Globiflow is a project that extends Podio's automation capabilities. The user interface is ugly and there's a learning curve, but with a little bit of time we can make it do some awesome things.

    Zapier

    Zapier allows non-programmers to connect different apps. You can do crazy stuff with Zapier, but we're only going to be going over how it's relevant for REI.

    A data scraper or data provider

    Getting the most accurate names and mailing addresses is crucial. This is one part of your business that you have to get right, or you'll be mailing to the wrong address and person. When you've got a strong marketing system, that's going to add up to a lot of lost money.

    A google account

    Specifically, we'll be using it for Gmail, Google Sheets, and Google App Script.

    A clicksend account

    Clicksend lets you send text messages, post cards, and yellow letters automatically

    Part One

    Automatic tasks

    Every new lead that gets into your pipeline should be placed into your marketing cycle. For the purpose of this article, we'll give each lead the same marketing regardless of where it came from, but in practice you'll want to consider carefully how to approach each lead depending on the lead type. Driving for dollars leads should be treated differently than pre-foreclosure, for example.

    Let's assume you have a list of skip-traced leads ready for marketing, and you've already set up the basic Podio system detailed here