Why Your Real Estate Marketing Plan Should Include Handwritten Cards

Real estate professionals help people buy and sell properties, but their business’s heart is all about relationships. Agents sell properties and find new business through their network of former clients, competing agents, and professionals in adjacent businesses like mortgage brokers, property managers, and real estate investors. Building and maintaining these relationships positions agents for success.

Handwritten cards are an excellent adjunct to your existing real estate marketing plan. In much the same way that a birthday card or a thank you card from a friend brightens your day, a handwritten card used for marketing purposes can enhance your communications’ emotional appeal. They take common mailers and elevate them, helping agents cultivate meaningful relationships and widen their networks.

If your real estate marketing plan already contains direct mail, it will be easy for you to pivot into handwritten cards. If not, this is the perfect opportunity to expand your marketing horizons. Handwritten marketing can be used in conjunction with a number of other tactics, including website lead generation, referral marketing, relationship marketing, and more. We’ll go over how you can use handwritten cards to amplify your existing marketing efforts to build your business more rapidly. But first, we should clarify what we mean by handwritten marketing.

WHAT IS HANDWRITTEN MARKETING?

Handwritten marketing is exactly what it sounds like — using handwritten cards and letters to promote a business, generate new leads, and close sales. But there’s more to it than that.

As odd as it might sound, handwritten cards don’t need to be written by hand. Companies like Simply Noted have developed sophisticated handwriting robots that use smart fonts and real ballpoint pens to automate handwritten cards, creating impressive results that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Businesses get the benefits of handwritten communications without the hassles. With Simply Noted, you can mail out 10,000 personalized, handwritten cards as easily as you would an email campaign.

Handwritten marketing takes advantage of software integrations to speed the creation of handwritten communications. You can use the same automation software and CRM packages you utilize with your digital marketing efforts to automatically mail handwritten marketing pieces. It’s technology that brings the warmth and immediacy of handwritten communications into the digital age.

A lovely stacked and bound selection of handwritten letters.

HOW EFFECTIVE IS HANDWRITTEN MARKETING?

Consider this. The average American gets only ten pieces of personal mail...A YEAR. Handwritten mail is rare, and getting rarer. Whereas decades ago you might get a handwritten card every few weeks, now you almost never see them. So when a hand-addressed card appears in your mailbox, you open it...immediately.

As a result, handwritten cards enjoy a 99% open rate. That’s a staggering figure. There’s no other tactic in your real estate marketing plan that comes anywhere close. Standard direct mail delivers a 42% open rate. And email clocks in at a tiny 23% open rate.

The fact is that standard direct mail and emails are too common. The average person gets about 120 new emails a day. You’ll find a sizable amount of “junk” mail in your mailbox as well. As a result, there’s very little to make a given mailer or email stand out. That’s why handwritten marketing is so effective. A hand-addressed envelope stands out immediately. Most importantly, it gets opened. And that’s good news for your marketing plan.

How Do Handwritten Cards Fit Into Your Real Estate Marketing Plan?

Remember what we said earlier about real estate being a relationship business? Well, what sort of mail do you imagine would help deepen some of these relationships — an email, a generic print mailer, or a handwritten card that feels as if it was sent directly from your hand? Surely the answer is number three.

Use Handwritten Cards to Follow Up With New Leads

Real estate agents have a range of lead generation tactics available to them. They rely on word-of-mouth and referrals, digital marketing, website traffic, and more. All of these produce quality leads, and all can harness handwritten cards as an effective follow-up method.

All you need to do is include a mailing address in the data you collect from new leads. Then you can quickly order a handwritten welcome card from Simply Noted and have it mailed as a warm introduction. You can even automate the process using your CRM. Design a workflow that triggers us to automatically create a personalized welcome note anytime a new lead appears.

New leads will be impressed by the level of engagement they’ll receive. Unlike a welcome email, and handwritten welcome note feels exceedingly personal, as if the prospect’s business is essential that the owner of the company responded to them directly. You’ll likely find a significant boost in lead conversions.

Elevate Your Referral Requests

As we mentioned earlier, real estate agents can derive significant business from their professional contacts. For example, they might have a good relationship with a mortgage broker that’s happy to exchange leads. The more of these relationships you can cultivate, across a range of positions, the more referrals you can generate.

Use a handwritten card to introduce yourself to new contacts. Cold emails are simply too impersonal to warm a fledgling relationship effectively. Agents need an edge — something that makes them seem simultaneously professional, honest, and approachable. Handwritten cards have all of them in spades.

Anytime you’re looking to establish a conversation with a newly-targeted professional colleague, have Simply Noted generate a convincing handwritten introduction card. We can even replicate your handwriting. You won’t find a more authentic way of establishing critical business relationships.

Handwritten Cards Can Help Keep You “Top-of-Mind”

The longer you’re in the real estate business, the larger your list of previous clients will grow. These are essential relationships that can be cultivated for future sales and referrals.

But you can’t expect your previous clients to think of you if it’s been years since you interacted. You need to stay around the peripheral of their attention so that they think of you when they think of real estate.

Having automated, handwritten birthday, holiday, and “just because” cards sent periodically is a cost-effective way to keep the relationship alive and vital. Best of all, you don’t need to do anything. Once we have your addresses and message text, we can automate all future mailings.