Building strong, personal relationships as a realtor will ultimately increase your conversion rates and contribute to your long-term success in the industry—and a well-developed real estate database is an essential tool in this process.
Your real estate database is a modern way to organize and manage all the unique contacts and insights you gather while building your luxury real estate business. Regular strategic communication with your database can help grow new relationships, nurture leads, earn repeat customers, and provide valuable market updates to your network.
In this guide, we’ll break down the usage, benefits, and strategies of using your real estate database, plus the factors that dictate how often you should be contacting your list.
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What should be included in your real estate database
Let’s start by defining a real estate database and what should be included.
This database is a structured collection of information related to properties, clients, leads, transactions, and the market. It allows real estate professionals to store, organize, and retrieve data efficiently.
Your database may include information like:
- Property addresses
- Descriptions
- Images
- Transaction history
- Client contact information
- Preferences
- Market trends
Its purpose is to provide a central repository for managing and leveraging critical market information. In other words, it serves as a powerful tool for growing your business and thinking strategically about how you communicate and market your services.
Additionally, a real estate database offers realtors:
- Data organization and efficiency: This simplifies property management by organizing information and streamlining transactions, client interactions, and listings workflows.
- Improved client management: A real estate database helps with lead generation by storing and tracking potential client information, allowing targeted follow-up, personalized marketing, and better customer service.
- Lead generation and conversion: Clear, consistent communication with your contacts helps you develop trust, grow relationships, and establish yourself as a reliable resource. This leads to stronger connections and more successful deals overall.
- Market analysis and informed decision-making: Active engagement with your real estate database is vital for obtaining valuable market insights and making informed decisions on investment opportunities, pricing properties, and adjusting strategies based on market conditions.
Benefits of regular contact with your real estate database
Now you have a better idea of what should be included in your real estate database and an overview of what it can offer you as a realtor. Let’s go ahead and dive even deeper into the benefits of regular contact with your database:
Building relationships
Effective communication plays a vital role in ensuring that everyone involved is on the same page and can work together toward a successful deal. Misunderstandings often arise without good communication—leading to delays, confusion, and lost opportunities.
Below are the three most valuable ways that good communication contributes to building solid relationships with luxury clientele:
- Personalized service: Luxury clients generally want a highly personalized and exclusive experience. Regular communication leads to a deeper understanding of their unique needs, preferences, and aspirations. Then, you can tailor your services, provide personalized recommendations, and create an experience that aligns with the client’s expectations.
- Trust and confidence: Successful real estate professionals build their businesses on a solid foundation of trust. Clear communication helps establish that trust in your abilities as an agent, which is crucial for luxury clients with both high expectations and the resources to quickly find help elsewhere. Provide regular updates to your clients, keep them informed of changes on the fly, and promptly address their questions and concerns.
- Networking and connections: Luxury real estate often involves high-net-worth individuals and well-connected clients. Creating a reputation for yourself as a reliable communicator will provide you with new opportunities to network, connect, and forge relationships. Staying in touch will help you tap into your clientele’s networks, score personal referrals, and expand your reach in any luxury real estate market.
Referrals and repeat business
Diligent communication and a follow-up contact strategy both play crucial roles in generating repeat business and referrals for any real estate professional. After all, the 80/20 rule (or the Pareto Principle) is popular in the business world for a reason—meaning 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your existing customers.
Practicing consistent outreach with your database can help you:
- Stay top-of-mind: Maintaining regular communication significantly increases your likelihood of being the preferred agent when your clients are ready to buy or sell a luxury property. Sometimes this means simply reminding them that you’re there. Having a consistent (but not overwhelming) presence in their inbox or on their feed reminds them that you can help with their real estate goals when the time comes.
- Enhance your customer experience: Regular contact allows you to continue providing valuable information to your real estate database. By sharing market updates, industry insights, and personalized property recommendations, you can further demonstrate your expertise and commitment to client success. This can also help you understand how your audience is (or isn’t) responding to market trends.
- Generate referral opportunities: When you provide excellent service and maintain frequent communication, clients will feel more confident recommending your services to their friends and neighbors. Referrals are the best leads, as they expand your professional network and place potential business directly on your plate.
Begin with referencing and utilizing your real estate database once a month to enhance your client engagement and build your business.
Factors that influence how often to contact your database
Paying attention to both micro (personal tastes and the unique nature of each relationship) and macro (trends and local market conditions) topics can help you determine the appropriate audience or frequency for each communication with your real estate database.
For example, factors that influence how often to contact your database include:
- Individual client preferences: Some clients like frequent communication and updates, while others prefer a less invasive approach. Have an open line of communication and ask for feedback to learn more about your client’s needs.
- Nature of the relationship: The nature of your relationships with each client in your database should impact the frequency with which you contact them. For example:
- Active clients searching for properties or engaging in transactions may require more frequent communication.
- Potential clients who have expressed interest may benefit from periodic follow-ups.
- Previous clients may warrant regular contact to maintain the relationship, offer additional services, and seek referrals.
- Market trends: More frequent communication may be necessary during a busy market with high demand and limited inventory. In a slower market, communication frequency may be adjusted to provide relevant insights and maintain engagement without overwhelming clients.
Regularly assessing and adjusting your communication strategy based on these factors will help build solid and value-driven relationships with your clients while maintaining a level of trust, expertise, and respect.
Five strategies for contacting your real estate database
Your real estate database will allow you to strategically map out topics, themes, and timelines based on each segment of your audience. Creating a content plan will help you organize how you provide this relevant and valuable information to each group within your network.
Here are five strategies to stay organized as you communicate with your real estate database:
1. Write an email
Email is a convenient and cost-effective medium that reaches a broad audience simultaneously. Routine email communication allows you to provide timely updates and share valuable information about new listings, market trends, and industry insights. It lets you personalize messages, segment your database, and track engagement through email analytics.
Additionally, email provides a documented communication trail, making it easy to refer back to previous conversations and maintain a history of client interactions. Email is easy to use, but it’s also nuanced. You don’t want to come off as spammy to luxury clients, so be thoughtful with your email strategy.
2. Connect on social media
By regularly posting updates, news articles, and informative content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, or LinkedIn, you can keep your clients informed and engaged—while also meeting new people. Social media allows for two-way communication through comments, likes, and direct messages, fostering a sense of community and encouraging clients to interact with your content.
3. Call clients directly
Direct calls are valuable for individual follow-ups with the clients within your real estate database. Direct calls offer a personalized touch and a faster opportunity to start deeper conversations. This leads to a better understanding of client preferences and building stronger relationships.
4. Send a newsletter
Keeping clients updated about the real estate market through a regular newsletter positions you as a knowledgeable and reliable resource in the industry. Share market insights and trends via a weekly or monthly newsletter (check out Mailchimp or ConverKit for easy-to-use email platforms).
A more personalized option would be sharing successful client stories to help build a library of testimonials. This is a great reference for potential clients when they are determining whether they should use your services.
5. Invite to events
Inviting people in your real estate database to informational events such as seminars, workshops, or webinars allows you to provide valuable educational content on the topics that interest your clients.
It also facilitates networking and strengthens the sense of community within your database. Inviting your contacts to these events can help you build credibility, establish long-term relationships, and increase client loyalty.
Analyze your communication metrics regularly
Adapting to client preferences and market changes is crucial. Regular audits of your outreach strategy will help you identify areas for professional improvement, and allow you to stay ahead of issues.
One of the ways to analyze your contact strategy with your real estate database is to focus on feedback. Pay special attention to social media responses, negative reactions from clients, and declining engagement over time. Refine messaging, timing, and frequency to align with client expectations and increase engagement.
Additionally, spend time regularly reviewing metrics like open, click-through, and response rates for outreach campaigns. This will help adjust your approach and make data-driven decisions using your real estate database.
Here are a few metrics to be aware of when it comes to analyzing your communication strategy:
Email campaigns
- Open Rate: A good open rate typically falls between 15-25%.
- How to improve your rate: Focus on the quality of your subject lines and how relevant the content is to your audience.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The average CTR for real estate emails is around 1- 3%.
- How to improve your rate: Try optimizing your email content and making your call to actions (CTAs) more compelling.
- Conversion/Response Rate: A good conversion rate falls anywhere from 0.5%-2%.
- How to improve your rate: This rate is very dependent on what you define as a conversion (filling out a contact form, scheduling a viewing, etc), but regardless—be sure to have some way for your readers to respond to your email and then track that metric regularly.
- Other email metrics to track:
- Bounce Rate: A healthy bounce rate is generally below 2%. Anything above that might indicate problems with your email list, such as old or incorrect email addresses.
- Unsubscribe Rate: Unsubscribe rates in the real estate industry are usually below 0.5%. A high unsubscribe rate might indicate that your content is not resonating or that you’re sending emails too frequently.
- Email Forwarding Rate: This is the percentage of recipients who share your email or forward it to others. It can be an indicator of highly engaging or valuable content. This rate can vary quite a bit, but 0.5% is considered good.
- List Growth Rate: This rate will depend significantly on your marketing efforts and the size of your current list. However, a healthy list might see growth of around 1-3% per month.
Keep in mind: Apple Mail prevents senders from seeing if a recipient opened their email and instead automatically marks those emails as opened. Because of this, those specific emails can skew your metrics, so always take these numbers with a grain of salt.
Social media campaigns
- Quality Engagement Rate: A good engagement rate is between 1-5%, but this varies depending on the platform.
- How to improve your rate: Pay attention to the content your audience is engaging with specifically. Do they prefer tips on how to stage a home or are they flooding your “Ask Me Anything” prompts? Tracking these pieces of feedback will tell you exactly what your audience is looking for from you.
- How to calculate your engagement rate:
- Take total engagement (likes, shares, comments) and divide by the total followers (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter) or views (LinkedIn), then multiply by 100.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTRs vary across platforms and depend on paid versus organic advertising, but the average CTR is between 0.5-0.8%
- How to improve your CTR: Similar to emails, think about your CTAs and how you can make them more compelling for your audience.
- How to calculate your CTR:
- Take the total number of clicks and divide it by the total number of impressions on your post, then multiply by 100.
- Conversion/Response Rate: Conversion rates can also vary depending on the channels, but a good conversion rate averages between 2-5%.
- How to improve your rate: Along with a strong CTA, utilize past success stories to show tangible proof to your audience.
- How to calculate your conversion rate:
- Take the total number of conversions and divide it by the total number of clicks on your post, then multiply by 100.
Additional ways to track successful outreach
- Phone Calls
- Call Duration: The length of your phone calls can give some insight into how engaged the contact is, which can help you determine future communication structure.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of phone calls that result in a desired action (such as setting up a meeting, agreeing to a showing, etc.).
- Follow-up Rate: The percentage of calls that lead to a follow-up call or action.
- Event Invites
- Attendance Rate: The percentage of invitees who actually attend the event.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of attendees who take a desired action, such as setting up a follow-up meeting or expressing interest in a property.
- Feedback Scores: If you collect feedback after the event, the average score can give you a sense of how well the event was received.
When to contact different segments within your database
When it comes to outreach best practices, here is the main point: It’s crucial to balance staying in touch and respecting clients’ boundaries. This means adjusting your communication levels depending on where your client falls in their real estate journey.
Earlier we touched on the nature of your relationship with the client, but let’s get a bit more specific:
How often you should contact new leads
New leads should be contacted as soon as possible and will benefit the most from a specific outreach plan, like Gary Keller’s 8×8 system—contacting the lead eight times over the course of eight weeks.
How often you should contact existing leads
Once the lead is in your database and you’ve completed your initial communication plan, you can then transition to a less aggressive, but still consistent approach. A common option is the “33-touch” campaign, which refers to contacting each person in your database 33 times a year (or roughly once every 10-12 days).
How often you should contact past clients
Maintaining an ongoing relationship with past clients is important for gaining repeat business and generating referrals. For past clients, aim for an approach like the ‘12-touch” game plan, which consists of making contact approximately once a month.
Remember: do not overdo communication. Too much contact can harm relationships and client perception. Respect their time and preferences. This means understanding when to share valuable information while still adhering to set boundaries. Relevancy and quality over quantity ensure impactful and meaningful communication.
Automate your outreach
Using CRM tools and marketing automation for outreach helps streamline communication with clients. Features like automatic scheduling, set reminders, and email campaigns ensure timely, consistent communication and efficient client information management.
To stay organized, use a digital calendar or task management tool. Enter important dates and deadlines, set reminders, and color-code tasks for easy prioritization. Review and update regularly to stay on top of commitments.
Grow your real estate database with Luxury Presence
Regular contact with your real estate database lets you stay aware of (and address) client needs, and provide timely updates on market trends and your offerings. It helps build trust, enhances client satisfaction and retention, and positions you as a reliable resource.
With the support of your real estate database, make it a priority to build a consistent and thoughtful communication plan with your professional network.
Ready to grow your real estate database? Level up your lead nurture strategy with Luxury Presence today.
