Creating your best real estate text messages requires a bit more finesse than texting friends and family. By following these best practices you can build text message conversations that keep clients informed, engaged, and prepared to buy.

The Anatomy of The Best Real Estate Text Messages

No matter what the message is, you can make it more effective by following these simple rules.

Stick to One Thought per Message
SMS text messages are limited to 160 characters before they are split off into multiple messages. To make sure your messages are clear, limit each message to one subject and one call to action. It’s better to send several related messages spaced out over time than try to cram everything into one text. Test your text by sending it to your colleagues to make sure it is easily understood and that the call to action is clear.

Keep it Professional
While your kids use a lot of slang and abbreviations when they text, using them in your business text can cause confusion and a lot of eye-rolling. It’s best to use professional language and spell everything out, but skip the $100 words. To make sure your messages are taken seriously, always be sure to double check spelling and grammar. Also, avoid the emoticons unless your buyer is using them, too.

This is especially important in your first communications with a buyer, as they may be working with multiple agents.

Make it Personal
Personalizing your messages makes them feel more human and assures that the recipient knows who it is coming from and why. Include your name, the name of your agency, and the recipient’s name in your messages. This is especially important in your first communication with a buyer, as they may be working with multiple agents.

Utilize Formatting
Thoughtful formatting can greatly increase message clarity. Using a return (paragraph break), for example, consumes only a single character in SMS and makes messages easier to read. Use capitalization for emphasis rather than squandering space on special characters, like asterisks. Also, capitalize important information such as the call to action and SMS keywords.

Give the Option to Opt-Out
No matter how well you segment your audience, some people will want to stop getting your messages. Be sure to offer opt-out opportunities (e.g. Reply ‘stop’ to stop messages) but you don’t have to emphasize the option by using capitals or bold text. Always ensure that the call to action is more prominent than the opt-out.

Integrate and Automate Text Message Conversations

Crafting the best real estate text messages isn’t just you firing off text messaging from your smartphone. Advanced messaging platforms like SMS-Magic rely on automating workflows and interacting with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database so you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting.

What’s a Workflow?
Workflows are essentially like automated templates that you build based on the expected interactions with your buyers. Using keywords (like texting “2201MAIN” to 55512) triggers a text with a link to the virtual tour.

• From there, the keyword “MORE” triggers a text to send more listings.
• When the buyer texts “TOUR” they get a message to schedule a home tour with you
• and so forth

While you can intervene at any time to answer a question, most of this conversation will happen automatically.

CRM Integration Ties it Together
You and your agency probably use a CRM platform like Salesforce to create a database of buyer information, track conversations, analyze performance, and to engage leads. Conversational text platforms like SMS-Magic integrate with your company’s CRM to help build your database and paint a more useful picture of all your leads and buyers.

Every time a text is sent, the content in the message is recorded in the CRM. This not only builds a record of your conversations, it provides accurate data about the client—the area they’re shopping in, price range, type and size of house, whether or not they’re first time buyers—and this allows you to precisely and effortlessly tailor communications with them that help make the sale.

SMS-Magic Makes it Happen

Companies that use text messaging to create conversations with buyers convert 40% more sales than those who don’t. The changing face of communications is being driven by the next generation of home buyers that make up the majority of your base. To stay connected with them, you have to use the right technology.

Using new technology can be daunting, but SMS-Magic makes it easy to start using conversational text messaging to communicate with digital-age buyers. To see how it works, text “DEMO” with the following details “NAME, COMPANY, EMAIL” to 36343 or click here to set up a personalized demo.