Ringless Voicemail: Real Estate Marketing Tips To Stay Compliant

Since publishing this article, we have released our Ultimate Guide to TCPA Compliance and A2P 10DLC Regulations. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about the changing laws surrounding things like ringless voicemail, cold calling and text message marketing and how to protect your business from expensive mistakes. Read the article here.

Are you using Ringless Voicemail as a follow-up strategy in your real estate business?

If not, you should be!

Ringless voicemail is a great way to stay in front of your prospects to let them know or remind them that you are there for them when they need you.

In this article, we're going to be talking about ringless voicemail. 

We're going to talk about what it is, the opportunity that you have in your business, how it can help you close more deals, and the risk you run if you use it in the wrong way.

Everything we’re going to cover in this article is discussed in the short video below.

So check it out if you prefer videos over reading.

What Is Ringless Voicemail?

Before we talk about how to use ringless voicemail, let's first discuss what it is and the opportunity that it presents you as a real estate investor.

Ringless voicemail, just like it sounds, is the ability to leave a voicemail message for a contact or for a lead or a prospect that you have, without actually calling them and without actually ringing their phone.

They'll see that they have a missed call and they will then see that they have a voicemail.

(For clarification some people call them voicemail drops, some people call them sly dials, and we call them ringless voicemails. It's all the same technology.)

What it allows you to do is to reach either one individual contact or a group of contacts and leave them a voicemail. 

So think about email blasts or text blasts. It's like that, but for voicemail.

So what is the opportunity here that you have? 

With ringless voicemail, you can send these messages to people that you have already come in contact with. Many times, these are seller leads that you have that might've gone cold, or they might also be people that are on your cash buyers list.

Or if you have a tenant waiting list and you get a new property that's available, that's going to become vacant soon, you can send a ringless voicemail to your entire list and let them know that a property is going to be available shortly.

How Can You Stay Compliant Using Ringless Voicemail?

Now, this is a great way to stay in contact with your leads and your prospects and to re-engage cold leads. 

But there's also a risk run if you do it the wrong way. 

There are attorneys across the country that are soliciting consumers, educating them about ringless voicemail, and about how if their rights are violated as a consumer, they have the ability to sue the business who sent them the ringless voicemail for $1,500 per ringless voicemail.

Now, we don't tell you that to scare you, but we want to educate you and make sure you know how to use ringless voicemail the right way. 

So it's pretty simple. 

It's pretty cut and dry. 

You have to have permission to send ringless voicemails to a list of contacts.

That means you cannot go to Listsource, or you can't go and skip trace a list, upload it to your CRM, and all of a sudden blast those people with ringless voicemails without their permission. 

That is technically against the law. It's not compliant, and you do run the risk of major, major fines.

So knowing that, how can you use ringless voicemail in your business to help you close more deals, to stay engaged with your prospects, all while staying compliant?

For starters, you have to make sure that you have permission. 

So what that means is if somebody comes to your website and they opt in, if you're using an REI BlackBook website (or many other website builders have the ability to do this as well,) you can put a little disclaimer below the web form when they opt in. 

And it's basically going to say, “I agree to be contacted by XYZ company, and I'm aware that these calls may be computer assisted.”

And if you're using REI BlackBook websites, we have the language built in. So automatically when you're capturing leads, you're going to have permission to send them ringless voicemail.

Ringless Voicemails Can Be Used To Communicate With Seller Leads

So what can you do with that lead once you capture it? 

Well, let's assume that this is a seller lead. This will be our first scenario that we're going to talk about.

So after they fill out a form on your website, you could send them a ringless voicemail, a couple of minutes after they opt in and this can be done automatically. 

And that ringless voicemail will basically just let them know that you got their information, you're working on their cash offer, and you're going to be reaching out soon.

What this does is kind of “bridges the gap” between the time that they opt in and the time that you're able to actually physically pick up the phone and call them. 

That's a crucial time since they're probably talking to other competitors as well, especially if they're Googling how to sell my house fast in XYZ market.

Your website's probably not the only one they're stumbling upon.

So if you can reach out and touch them, whether it be with a ringless voicemail, or a text message, the likelihood of you actually qualifying that lead goes up tremendously.

Now let's say that same lead doesn't answer the phone when you call them and maybe 15, 30, 45 days have passed. 

You could send them another ringless voicemail to let them know that you have their offer waiting for them, you just haven't been able to get in contact with them.

What this is doing:

It's re-engaging your past leads that you've generated, and so now you're able to spark that conversation again. 

So many times people just get busy. So maybe 30 days goes by, 45 days goes by, a few months goes by. Maybe the motivation wasn't quite high enough at the time that they opted in. 

They just might have wanted to see what the offer might be, but they never answered the call when you called them.

So you can set up a drip campaign.  (In REI BlackBook, we call them workflows,) where every 30 to 45 days a ringless voicemail drop automatically gets sent, and that's just staying in contact with them and staying top of mind.

This will help you close more deals from the leads that you're already generating, right? 

So, that's how you could use ringless voicemail on the seller side.

Use Ringless Voicemails On The Disposition Side Of Your Real Estate Investing Business

Let's talk about the disposition side. 

If you're going to sell your properties, or if you're wanting to rent out properties that you have, ideally you're building some sort of a cash buyers list, or maybe you have a tenant waiting list.

If that's the case, they've most likely opted in on your website where they might've said, yes, I want to join your buyers list, or yes, I want to join your waiting list.

Which means you have permission to reach out and contact them.

So when a new property is available, if you're a wholesaler and you've got a property under contract, then you can send a ringless voicemail out to all of your buyers list to give them the rundown on the deal.

If you have a property that you know is going to be vacant in the next two or three months, then you can send a ringless voicemail to your entire tenant waiting list, letting them know that a new unit in the building at 123 Main Street is now available.

This will keep your buyers list or your waiting list engaged.

Even if they're not ready to buy a house right then, or if they're not ready to rent a property from you right then and there, they know that you're actively doing deals, you actively have inventory and it will help you either sell your deals faster or get your rental units rented out faster. 

Which is going to dramatically reduce your vacancy rate, which helps you increase your profits.

And it also helps build up demand if you're a wholesaler because you know that you have a big list of buyers that are waiting for you to close more deals.

Again, we just want to emphasize, both of these or all of these scenarios that we just went through, you have permission to send these people the messages, to send these people the ringless voicemails.

Now, if you're going and you're just buying a list or you're scrubbing Zillow and you're uploading them to a CRM and you're blasting them, that is spam. 

That is against the law, and you do run the risk of being sued. 

And again, you can be sued at the time of this blog post up to $1,500 per ringless voicemail that you send, and that can add up quickly.

So we want to ask you a question. 

Do you have a list of contacts that have already opted in? 

Maybe these are your past seller leads that have gone cold on you. 

Maybe it's a cash buyers list. 

Maybe it is a waiting list for your rental properties.

If you've got this list and you've got permission, then ringless voicemail is a great way to reach out and stay in contact with them, and re-ignite that relationship and get a conversation started.

It's going to help you set more appointments.

It's going to help you sell more properties. 

It will help you get your vacancy rate way down because you're building up demand for your properties.

If you'd like to learn more about ringless voicemail and how REI BlackBook can help you implement this in your business, then check out this quick five minute demo.

And if you'd like, you can sign up for a free demo call where we can walk you through how using ringless voicemail in your business can help you close more deals.