Texting for real estate agents is another option similar to QR codes for realtors.    A question asked often is if text marketing is better than QR codes for realtors or the same thing and, will texting for real estate agents become more popular than QR codes? Well, they are similar but remarkably different in the way they work.  (You can read more about —> QR codes for realtors)  We will discuss the benefits of texting for real estate agents and how you can implement texting in to your real estate career.

Texting for Real Estate Agents

How a real estate agent/broker can use text marketing.  Within the dashboard of Yep text you configure your text auto-response to send out a text immediately upon someone texting in the Yep word you choose.  In that text you embed the link to that property.  What I did was I created a YouTube channel then created a slide show of the property, uploaded to YouTube then copied the URL in to the auto-responder text.  That way when someone texted “Duncan1″ to 41242 it automatically sent to them the link to view the property.  Pretty handy hey?  With QR codes you can’t do that.  If a person scans the QR code then they are redirected to the QR code providers site where the profile/information on your property resides.  Also, with QR codes you can’t capture the inquirer’s cell phone info.

What service to choose?  There are a lot of text messaging services out there which creates many options for texting for real estate agents.  Most are fairly competitive and basically do the same thing as the others.  There really is no great difference. The texting service I have used is called Yep Text.

Pricing:  Depending on how many texts you want to send each month determines the plan you want to choose.  Prices range from $9 a month to $149 a month and there are additional, higher volume packages as well. The $9 a month package allows you 150 texts per month + one yep word and $149 package allows 4000 messages a month + 3 yep words. Additional Yep words can be purchased and added to any package for $8.

Billing: You are only billed for outgoing texts and that rate is about 5.3 cents per text.

What is a Yep Word?  Texting services have a dedicated 5 digit number associated with their service.  Yep Text’s designated number is 41242.  You don’t own the number, they do.  What you would own is what they call the “Yep Word”.  Essentially, your Yep word is your keyword.  So, let’s say you have a listing on East Broadway.  Then you would enter that “yep word” in to the dashboard and see if that keyword is available.  If so, then you now own “East Broadway” for the 41242 number.

What Yep word do you choose?  We’ve all seen something like this before:  “text the word Subway to 41242 to receive our weekly specials”. You create your Yep word and add word to your website, business cards and, what I did was that I even created a sticker to attach to my signs.   I wouldn’t recommend using a specific name or number associated with each property.  I would use something like “YourName1″, “YourName2″, etc., for each of your properties and here is why.  Once that property sells you want to reassign that Yep word to your next property.

Texting for Real Estate Agents

Benefits: Text marketing allows you to capture the inquirer’s cell phone number so that you can resolicit to them a property that meets their criteria at a later date.  Much like an email data base, you are creating a “text data base” which is the most important thing in real estate; a list.

Texting for real estate agents definitely has benefits over QR codes for realtors.  Click the logo at the top to sign up now and get a 30% on your first month.

Hope this helps…Duncan

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