Whether you are building a clientele base to generate referrals or cultivating leads from the Internet, follow-up is the key. Here are ten ideas for following up on a consistent basis. You will probably want to pick and choose the ones that work best for you.

1. Semi-Monthly Marketing Update.

For your cool leads, try a marketing update. Send it once a quarter, or once every two months. For your snail-mail recipients it could be a postcard. There are companies that will manage these postcard campaigns for you you just upload your information to their web site and they produce and mail the postcards. For an e-mail version, just use the exact same data, in the same format. The entire message should fit in the average "preview" pane of an e-mail browser.

Try something like this:

"Lower Lost Valley Real Estate Update"
# of sales in the last 90 days: 210
Average sales price: $225,000
Average days on market: 95
Average sales price this time last year: $195,000

Two warnings:

A. Don't try to sell them anything. The point is to stay in contact. If they are no longer interested in your market, they will tell you eventually. If your "cool-lead" category is large, you may not have the time or energy to do anything more than an e-mail contact twice a month. For the post card portion of your campaign, you will have to follow up with a phone call. Simply say, "Hi, Jane, this is Bob Smith with Lost Valley Real Estate. I'm just checking in to see that you've been getting the marketing updates I've been sending, and to see if you have any questions."
You may get a "Yes, keep them coming," or a "Don't bother sending them anymore," or some variation. Whatever it is, just say "Thank you" and leave it at that. Unless, of course, they say, "Hey, I was just getting ready to call you." That will actually happen more often than you expect.

B. Find a system to send out individual e-mails rather than "spam" type mass e-mails or messages to "undisclosed-recipient" or "no-reply" or other impersonal recipient lines. A system like Constant Contact can send personalized e-mails to your database, even including a "Dear Jane," at the beginning.

2. Personal Notes

Regardless of where someone falls in your database, one of the most powerful gifts you can give someone still costs only a few dollars. Keep a stash of note cards handy, along with stamps. Send a note anytime someone helps you, calls you, helps someone else, is mentioned

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