3 Ways To Use Text Message Marketing For Real Estate Investors

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 cold calling and text message marketing and how to protect your business from expensive mistakes. Read the article here.

In today’s world, technology is constantly updating and changing to meet the needs of consumers.

Specifically, mobile technology has evolved rapidly over the years, and cell phone usage has increased drastically.

One of the biggest things cell phones are being used for is text messaging. In fact, text messaging has become a primary means of communication.

In this post we're going to be talking specifically about using text message marketing for real estate investors to help you close more deals. We're going to be talking about how to use it to close more deals from the leads that you're already generating.

We covered this topic in a training we hosted on our YouTube channel. You can check out the replay below if watching videos is your preferred learning style. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could convert more of the leads that you're already generating?

Being able to do this will give you confidence to go out and generate more leads. Especially if you have a full-time job or if you're just a busy kind of solopreneur, and you're doing this on your own, juggling a lot of balls. 

Best Practices For Text Message Marketing For Real Estate Investors

Text message marketing can help you do three things. The first one is it's going to help you follow up with new leads.

So we're going to show you how to help convert more of your new leads, the leads that are going to be generated in the future into appointments and appointments into deals. Because we can't typically buy a house without having some sort of an appointment.

Now, the appointment may be a phone call. It might be a Zoom call, a virtual showing, an actual appointment at the property, but usually there's some sort of qualification process that needs to take place.

Statistics show if you can follow up with your leads, especially if you're doing any kind of online lead generation or if you miss a phone call, if you can follow up with them within the first five minutes of them becoming a lead, the likelihood of you actually qualifying that lead goes up 100 times.

This is super important.

So we're going to help you plug that gap that you might have between the time somebody becomes a lead and the time you're actually able to contact them, which can dramatically help increase your lead-to-appointment rate.

Then from the appointment, that's up to you to get the offer made, get the offer accepted, and then get that property to the closing table.

Now, this is where this second type of text message marketing for real estate investors comes into place. 

Just because you're able to get a hold of them, and maybe you’re able to book an appointment, it doesn't mean that everybody's going to say yes. It doesn't mean everybody's going to agree to that offer, right? 

So you can also use text message marketing to re-engage with old or dead leads. 

We've had users who have had a lot of success re-engaging their older, dead leads. These are leads that they might not have talked to for three or four months. Sometimes this goes back as far as a year or longer.

A lot of people end up selling their house. Even if they tell you no, they end up selling their house at some point.

And if you're there when that switch goes off in their head, when suddenly they're more motivated or something happens and they need to sell that house instead of wanting to sell the house, because there's a big difference there between need and want. 

If somebody wants to sell the house, it's usually going to be harder to buy it at a steep discount. If somebody needs to sell the house, that's where you're going to be able to get better deals, right? 

So we want to stay engaged with those old leads.

Unless somebody tells you to completely go jump in a lake, tells you they're going to call their attorney and sue you, I would recommend following up with people, even if they tell you no. 

Even if they reject your offer and they're insulted, follow up with them. 

We're also going to show you how to automate this process. 

If you want to dive deeper into how to actually build automated follow-up campaigns, check out some of the other training videos on our YouTube channel. 

Then the third type of text message marketing for real estate investors is how to build demand for your properties. 

Because there's so much time and attention and focus put on generating leads and making offers on property, I don't think enough people really talk about this enough or put enough focus on the disposition side of your business. Actually getting those properties sold or getting your properties rented out, whatever your exit strategy is, ultimately being able to exit the property. 

There's so much attention put on the front end, which is super important of course. But if you have demand for your properties, then you know you can go and put more properties under contract because you have more buyers for those properties. Or you can go and put more properties under contract because you have more renters for your properties.

With that said, let's just dive into each one of these types of text message marketing. 

1. Follow Up With New Leads

The first one is following up with new leads. 

Now, most real estate investors are generating leads one of two ways, or I should say capturing leads one of two ways, either through their website or through an inbound phone call. 

Sometimes people will text in, and sure sometimes you might meet somebody out at a networking event or something, but the majority of your leads are going to come inbound from a website or from an inbound phone call. (If you're doing outbound cold-calling and things like that, that's different because you are getting in contact with them.)

Now, let's just talk about what happens when you get a lead from your website. What happens with most real estate investors when they get leads through their website, they might get an email notification. Maybe they get a text message notification. 

But it takes them a few hours to a few days, believe it or not, to actually follow up with these leads, which is a huge hole in your sales process, right? 

You want to be able to follow up with these people immediately.

In a perfect world, you'd be able to pick up the phone right when you got a notification about getting a new lead from your website and you’d call that person within the first five minutes. 

Now, we realize that's not possible for everybody. So one thing you can do is send an automated text message.  

When somebody opts into your website and immediately they get a text message that says something along these lines, “Hey, Bob. Thank you for requesting a cash offer on your property at 123 Main Street. Please be expecting a call from a member of our team in the next 24 hours. We look forward to presenting you with your offer.”

Now, if you can promise them the next hour, then that's even better, right? 

But sometimes you don't know when people are opting in. 

They might be opting in at 7:30 PM, and you might not be able to call them right then and there. The automated text message is a little stop gap and a little kind of relationship builder, because most real estate investors aren't doing this for two reasons. 

Number one it can be confusing to set up, unless you have tools like REI BlackBook that make it easy. 

The other reason is some investors don't know how to set it up. The tools that they're using don't allow them to do it. With REI BlackBook, since our websites are built to the platform, when somebody opts in to get a cash offer on your website, you can send them a text message immediately after.

The cool part about it is you've got their name, assuming you asked for it, you've got their phone number obviously, so you can send them a text message, and you've got their property address. 

You can merge all that data into a text message so it feels very personal. 

And you're setting the proper expectations, so they know to be expecting a call from somebody on your team. 

If you can say with confidence that you will be calling them, then let them know your name. If you can say, “Hey, Dan from my team is going to be calling you in the next 24 hours. Please be expecting his call,” then that's even better. Because now when Dan calls, Bob's ready to talk to Dan because the proper expectations have been set.

Now, that's with inbound leads to your website. What about inbound phone calls, if you're not able to answer the call? 

Again, ideally when calls come in, you're answering every single call or you're sending it to a call answering service. 

If you're not able to answer that call, wouldn't it be nice to be able to send a text message one minute after the call goes unanswered that says, “Hey, sorry, I missed your call. I'm in a meeting, but we'll be out shortly. Can I call you then?”.

Then you can also ask, “Is this about a property that you have for sale?” The goal here is just to get a response. The goal here in this type of text message is just to let them know that you got the phone call. For whatever reason, you weren't able to answer it, but you're going to be following up shortly.

Again, this is going to help you convert that inbound call into some form of an appointment. 

And that's all we're trying to do right now, we're just trying to move from stage one to stage two, so you can get more chances to make more offers. 

If you bolt this little function onto your business, where you're able to build these stop gaps into your business to plug the “holes in your leaky sales bucket”, piece by piece, you're going to start to convert more of the leads that you're already generating into deals. 

Which means you're not having to spend a bunch more money on marketing to close more deals because the money has been spent on these leads. 

Now it's your job, your responsibility, your obligation to squeeze the most amount of return on your investment, the investment that you're making in your marketing. 

2. Follow Up And Re-Engage Old Leads

Okay, so that's following up with new leads, that's making sure that you're giving your new leads a great first impression. 

Now what about old leads? 

What about the old leads that you have in your system? 

If you're not currently using a CRM, a contact management system of any kind, or maybe you're using REI BlackBook, but you just haven't followed up with your old leads for whatever reason, we’ve got a sneaky, little, very simple text message that works great. 

A lot of people call it the nine-word text message or the nine-word email. It's actually a little bit more than nine words. 

But what this text message is designed to do is to simply get a response. 

And so it may seem very simple, almost too simple, but don't mistake its simplicity for its effectiveness. 

What this text message reads is this, “Hey, Bob, are you still interested in selling your house at 123 Main Street?”

Super simple, right? 

What this does is it elicits a response and it gets a conversation started. 

Now, who can you send this text message to? 

And there's different variations to this, right? 

If you want to send this to all of the people that you made an offer to that did not accept your offer, then you could tweak this slightly. 

You could say something like, “Hey, Bob, still interested in buying your property if you're looking to sell,” or “Hey, Bob, I know our offer expired, but we're still buying properties in your area. Are you still interested in selling?” 

What that's going to do is, again, it's going to elicit responses. We have had REI BlackBook users share their success with getting responses from text messages just like the simple nine word text message. 

Here's one from Joey Strange, and this is a couple text messages down from that initial text. This conversation here that you're seeing was a result of just a simple text message that this REI BlackBook user sent to a list of her dead leads.

Here's another one from the same investor, Joey Strange. This was a text message that she sent that just said, “I just tried calling. When are you available to chat?”

So you can schedule text messages like this to go out after you send a ringless voicemail or after you legitimately pick up the phone and call people to follow up. And these text messages can be part of an automated follow-up campaign you built. 

At any time somebody either tells you no or is unresponsive, you can build long-term campaigns out that will send text messages and ringless voicemails and emails out for every two to three weeks for months and months and months and months on end. 

All it's designed to do is to get them to respond and to re-engage. 

The more conversations you can have, the more offers you can make. The more offers you can make, the more deals you get to close. And these are from leads you've already spent money on anyways.

And so you could certainly send a ringless voicemail out, and then right after that schedule this type of text message that says, “Hi, I just tried calling. When are you available to chat?” 

Notice, super short, asking an open-ended question, and it's eliciting a response. The lead Joey sent this simple text to responded four minutes later and said, “Later this afternoon.” 

So now you're just engaging in conversation with these folks. Here's another example from Marcy Martinez who's been a long time REI BlackBook user.

This was somebody who she sent an offer to that did not accept the offer. She just waited and waited and waited and continued to send text messages.

And for whatever reason, this one stuck. It might've been the right time, but she just says, “Hey, Victor, I got a notification that the offer expired. I wanted to reach out and see if you'd given any more thought on the offers. I'm still interested.”

So now you're moving these folks through the sales cycle, you're getting them from a dead lead to now a re-engaged lead. Now you can book an appointment. 

Here's another example from Marcy. What she does is she'll ask people to reply, “Ready.” She'll just send text messages every two to three weeks to all of her dead leads, set up automatically. 

So it just happens every two to three weeks, no matter what, because it's automated.

Some people say, “No, thank you. It's sold already.”

Some people say, “Stop.”

Some people say, “Who is this?”

But three people said, “Ready.” “Yes, I'm ready.” “Ready.” And so that sends a notification to Marcy to let her know that she's got three people that she needs to follow up with, three leads that were considered dead, but now they're reengaged, now they're revived.

That's the power of follow up. 

If you've been doing this, if you've been in the real estate investing world for a while, this probably is not the first time you've heard anybody talking about followup. But we wanted to show you some real results and a tactical how-to. 

When you use a tool like REI BlackBook all you have to do is pull a list of your old leads and send them all a text message at the same time. It's super easy to do. And then you just sit back and you wait for people to reply. 

Some people are going to say, “Never text me again.” Great, opt them out, delete them from your list, no big deal.

Some people are going to say, “No, it's already sold.” Great, opt them out, take them off your list. 

But some people are going to reply and they're going to say, “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am ready to talk,” or “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am ready to sell my house,” or “I've been talking to realtors, but nobody wants to list my house.” Whatever the reason is, situations change. 

Text messaging is a great way to do it because people read their text messages more than they read their emails. And most people check text messages a lot more than they check their voicemails as well. 

3. Build Demand For Your Properties

The third way to use text messaging is  to build demand for your properties.  

Assuming that you're buying a handful of properties a month or a quarter, it's always good to make sure you've got a list of buyers on the backend or renters or folks that are looking to rent-to-own. 

Again, whatever your exit strategy is, you need to have a list of those people that are ready and waiting to buy whatever it is that you have to sell. 

Now, this doesn't have to happen overnight if you're just getting started. 

Sometimes it takes some time to build this. But even if it's five or six people, having them all inside of a contact management system like REI BlackBook, give you the ability to pull a simple list and say, “Hey, here's all my buyers, here's all my cash buyers. I need to send them a text message to let them know I have a new deal.” 

You can see in the picture below, an example of text messages you can send out to your cash buyers list.

These messages are actually from a real estate investing company that uses REI BlackBook in their business.  

They send out text messages to their buyers list  every single time that they get a new deal. 

And you can see they say, “New deal,” or “Price reduction.” along with including the address of the property (which is under the red marks on this picture).

They also have a link to a page inside of REI BlackBook. It's actually a page on their website where you can go and you can see pictures of the properties. You can see a description of the property. You can see comps. All the information you would need as a buyer is going to be on that page. 

And then buyers can just reply and say, “Yeah, I'm interested.” 

You can see the text message says “Reply ‘interested' for more information.” 

So how do you build a list like this? 

The best way to do it is to have something on your website to collect cash buyer information. 

So most wholesalers, let's talk wholesaling for a second, most wholesalers will have typically about two websites. One's going to be geared towards motivated sellers. And that's where you're going to send all of your seller leads. 

The other one is going to be geared towards your cash buyers. And that's where you're going to send all your cash buyers.

You can see below, this is a landing page on a cash buyer website that just says, “Join our buyer's club today for immediate access to deeply discounted properties and all the tools you need to make fast decisions.”

So somebody would give me their name, email, and phone number if they wanted to opt into my buyers list. 

Again, over time you're going to build this buyer's list. 

You go to REI Clubs, instead of saying, “Hey, I got a property at 123 Main Street,” you can say, “Hey, text ‘cash' to this phone number if you want to join my buyers list.” So people can actually join by texting into your phone number inside of REI BlackBook as well, which is pretty cool. 

Or they can go to your website. 

You can say, “Hey, guys, I'm a local wholesaler here in St. Louis, Missouri. I've got three properties available right now. These are the addresses. If you want more information, just go to, stlcashdeals.com, and you can see all of my inventory there. If you'd like to get property notifications, you can sign up and join our buyers list.”

So they give you their name, email, and phone number. And then the cool part is they're taken to another screen where they can actually give you all their buyer criteria. 

This is a little bit more advanced, but I wanted to show you that it is possible. You can ask them their desired price point. You can ask them where they like to buy. You can ask them why they're buying. And then all of this data is stored in their contact record inside of REI BlackBook. 

And then if you get a property in South City, for example, you could just go run a quick search and say, “Hey, where are all my buyers in South City?” And then you're only sending properties to people that are interested in that property, so you're not burning out your list. 

This works extremely well on the rental side as well. 

You're going to ask slightly different questions. Instead of your desired price point, you might ask desired monthly rent, desired locations. You might ask their estimated credit score, if they've ever been evicted, stuff like that that would automatically qualify them or disqualify them.

And then you also, when you build that list, you can look at your data and say, “Wow, I've got a lot of people that are interested in buying in South City, maybe I should start marketing in South City.” They kind of give you a shopping list, then you have to go shopping. 

All three of these text message marketing strategies can be implemented in your business using REI BlackBook.

Our Marketing Director gives a  demo in the training we hosted on Monday showing you exactly how to do this. You can check out the replay to see how to set this up inside REI BlackBook. 

Text messaging is just one way to follow up with a lead. It's one way to re-engage your dead leads, and build demand for your properties. 

But there's a number of other ways you can do this, ringless voicemail, email, tasks for your virtual assistant to follow up with those leads are all great ways to reach out to leads. 

The end goal is to help you build predictable systems, build processes that you can put in place so you can start to remove yourself not necessarily from the day-to-day operations, but just remove the burden of following up on your leads. 

Let the system do it until that lead is good and warm and they've expressed interest in talking to you, because those are much more enjoyable conversations to have.

They're much more fruitful conversations to have when this person is ready to talk business, because they've been warmed up over the last two, three, four months from text messages from you.

SMS marketing (or text marketing) is a powerful tool you can put to work inside REI BlackBook. 

So if you would like to learn more about how you can re-engage cold or dead leads and convert them into deals with REI BlackBook book a demo with someone from our team today!