Text Message Marketing – The Next Trend in ‘Environmentally Conscious’ Real Estate Marketing Tools

Real estate agents are always searching for a leading edge way to enhance their marketing effectiveness while reducing their efforts. Cell phone flyers via SMS messages is the way to go!

Mobile Marketing is poised to see ten-fold growth during this year, and over 100% growth through the next three years (according to data from the Yankee Group). Through the use of cell phone short codes and keywords, Real estate agents can use this technology to deliver detailed information about their listings directly to prospective clients.

A sample of the use of the system would be if a sales agent marketing “Text HOME123 to 69302 for more details”. That will send back a message that will send the details on the property and provide a clickable link straight to the property landing page like this: 838 Carbondale St:5 bed/4bath. Great entertaining home! Call Sue: 00-00-00 Full MLS: [shortened link would be here] By sending the shortened URL address in the SMS text message, the real estate professional can provide a link to the MLS listing, or a Acrobat (PDF) document (text message flyer), without the hassle or our of pocket expense of printing huge amounts of flyers. Plus, the cell phone messages don’t use any natural resources, so you are using a ‘green’ solution as part of your marketing plan and the text can be easily forwarded to the buyer’s spouse, friend, or buying agent. Current green technologies are available by way of voice recordings or short distance radio broadcasts, but these methods of advertising have the following limitations:

Advertising Limitations

• They don’t allow the perspective buyer to save the information
• They don’t provide visual pictures
• The Real estate agents don’t get to gather the buyer’s contact information

With real estate Cell Phone Marketing, the Realtors gains the following benefits:

Realtor Benefits

• Always Working – A tool that is working for them while they eat, sleep, or close other sales
• Full Details – Can deliver a link to the MLS listing or custom digital marketing flyer
• Data Collection – Collect the cell telephone number of every user so that they can talk with them in person * Flexibility – Allows for real-time changes to the response message (unlike printed marketing materials)
• Cost Effective – Is far morebudget friendly than print (about 6.5 cents per message compared to 21 cents per printed flyer)

SMS Marketing for real estate is just starting to expand rapidly. Just as the world wide web has been a game-changer for real estate marketing, the use of mobile marketing as part of your comprehensive marketing plan is going to be required.