Jesse Stein, founder and CEO of Audience.co and a digital marketer, discusses his experience in digital marketing. Jesse explains the importance of handwritten notes and why his software team build a robot that can write precisely like humans. Jesse also discusses how the card should be personalized to the specific client and how combining the old school method (handwriting notes) with modern methods like a you tube message could be very effective in building the relationships and adding value to the clients.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Jesse Stein can be reached at (844) 625-1847.
This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
How cool would it be if all of your digital marketing as well as your physical marketing could be done together and in sync? Wouldn’t that be great? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with marketing expert Jesse Stein. Before we get to Jesse, just a couple of quick reminders. As always, first, thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode. Thank you for supporting our podcast. Please check out our sponsors and also tell a friend about the show. Think of one other realtor that’s struggling right now especially with their marketing, send them a link over to our website so they can hear this episode. Keeping it real pod.com is where all of our episodes live. Of course they also are on every single podcast app there is out there so tell someone else in your office you’d be doing us a huge favor. So thank you and you know what, let’s just get right to it my conversation with Jesse Stein.
Today on the show we have Jesse Stein from audience dot c o let me tell you more about Jesse. Jesse has an impressive background as a serial entrepreneur. He’s founded, grown and sold multiple online ventures throughout his career. His notable ventures include sports memorabilia.com, also a skincare brand and dietspotlight.com. In addition to his entrepreneurial success, Jesse is a domain name expert who founded and sold Soho digital for $32 million. He’s made angel investments in several companies such as integral ad science TMR, W distillery, data world sketchy blanket and whereby Jessie Ansari and whereby also Jessie holds an MBA from the Wharton School an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Lotter Institute, and a BA with honors in sociology and Asian Studies from UC Santa Barbara, and Sofia University in Tokyo. Please vote for to learn all things, Jessie, check out his newest venture audience.co That’s audience.co And we’re going to be speaking about that today. Jessie, welcome to the show.
Jesse Stein 3:50
Thanks, TJ for having me.
D.J. Paris 3:53
It’s an amazing pedigree, your your background, your vitae as as they say I love reading back and I would really you know, this is a more unusual episode for us so traditionally we’re are normally we’re speaking just to real estate agents about how they became successful and very rarely do we talk to sort of experts out tangentially related to real estate but but not specifically out there producing but I’m really excited to chat with you because you’ve been a digital marketer for or Gosh 20 plus years and I am excited to learn some of your sort of success secrets and what you might suggest our audience part you know, start paying attention to in 2023
Jesse Stein 4:39
Likewise, really excited to add value to you guys. You can get your your money back, but you can’t get your time back. So I really appreciate all the listeners here and I just want to add I just want to add value.
D.J. Paris 4:51
Great Yeah, well, let’s let’s start I would love to hear about the start of your digital marketing journey. Like how did you get into the digital marketing space?
Jesse Stein 5:00
I just graduated from Wharton in the late 90s. And Right Place Right Time, beginning of the commercial Internet, New York City, I was just married, started a company called Soho digital, which you had mentioned, and grew it into a $30 million interactive agency sold it in 2005. And they’re really learn how to build sales funnels by online media, and do SEO, and all that became the foundation really for my digital marketing career. And after that, I got into Domaining. After I sold that you’d mentioned that. So I bought hobbies.com biking.com boating.com yachting.com. All these like really category defining domain names. And the plan was to take these domain names and build them into full fledged businesses the way that you would buy beachfront real estate and build a condo tower. But the one that really took off was sports memorabilia.com. And Rob bought that as completely raw domain in 2005. And with a group of people eminently smarter and more talented than me, which is a common thread that runs through my career, we built it into the biggest autograph store on the internet top 500 internet retailer and we sold it to fanatics in 2013. And along the way, I built with business partners, a skincare company, two 50 million bucks sold in 2009. And that was all direct to consumer via internet, and then started dietspotlight.com, which became one of the biggest nutrition and diet websites on the internet. And at sports meme, we were sending handwritten notes to our customers. And we noticed that the customers that received the handwritten notes now I’m kind of segwaying into audience dot code. Yeah, the company that sends handwritten notes on behalf of realtors to help them drive more listings, and we combine the handwritten notes with digital marketing. So it’s really cool. We use the handwritten note as a Trojan horse. But at sports memorabilia.com, we’re sending notes. And we noticed that the clients that received notes spent way more money with us. So if someone had bought a mattress, yeah, they spent way more money spent way more money with us. But there was no scale to it. Because we were having warehouse workers and consultants and admin staff send the notes, the handwriting was often embarrassing. So like, there’s no scale to it, we were waiting for someone to do this. And so three years ago, hired a team of software engineers, and we built these robots and the software, and they hold pins, and they write precisely like humans, and we can go into that more DJ. But that’s kind of the genesis of my digital marketing career.
D.J. Paris 7:57
Well, that’s really fascinating. So I want to go back to the handwritten note, just sort of metric that you were you were mentioning that, you noticed that so somebody would buy something, they buy a piece of sports memorabilia, you’d write a Hey, thanks for being a customer, we really appreciate it, you know, someone would write it, maybe it would look nice, maybe it wouldn’t. But regardless, those people would then return and spend more money.
Jesse Stein 8:19
That’s exactly right, we noticed there’s a direct correlation between and we would run these AV tests where the control group would be the customers that didn’t receive notes. And then we take a look at the lifetime value of the customers that did. And it was just way beyond any kind of statistical probability. Those that received notes spent way more money were more loyal left, better reviews were happier clients, and so on and so forth. But again, there was no scale to it. And that was key. And then there was no combination with the note and digital marketing, which is absolutely critical, which I can talk about a little bit later on in the show, if you want.
D.J. Paris 9:04
Yeah, that’s, that’s fascinating. I think this idea of the return to pen and paper is, well, I don’t know that we’ve returned to pen and paper, I don’t know that we’ll ever return to pen and paper as a society. But there is something maybe even more magical these days about receiving a handwritten note. I can count on one hand, the number of handwritten notes I receive from anyone, you know, I outside of birthday cards and things, but just in a year, maybe I get three or four, maybe, maybe that’s even high. But every single time I do receive what I believe to be as a handwritten note, whether it’s, you know, helped with robots with pens, or if it’s somebody actually using their hand I read every single word, because I don’t know I guess we’re just hardwired to sort of appreciate that more. I’m not even sure exactly why that captures my Attention more than an email, but we all know just intrinsically that it does. And it’s also a lost art. It’s something that, you know, obviously, you know, all a lot of industries have moved very far away from. But there is something very, I would say connecting about handwritten notes. It feels like it feels intimate, and it feels special, and it makes the other person feel very. Yeah, very, very grateful. I’d say. So curious to get your thoughts on why handwritten notes why, why do you think that’s working? So well?
Jesse Stein 10:36
Yeah, just like anything when you zoom in the devils in the details, so it’s the way that we engineer the note. And then the key is the way that we combine it with AI, and digital marketing, which I’ll talk about in a second. And all the components are key, just like just like anything. So what we do with the note is, we print it, I’m just holding up, obviously, the people listening sure won’t be able to see this. But we printed on a thick stock card. We there’s, as it turns out, there’s an ideal character length. So you want your notes, whether you work with us, or whether you try it yourself. You want your handwritten notes, if you’re a realtor, to be right around 650 characters, this is enough character length, to be able to tell your story about for example, how you just listed 17 Chestnut Street in Toledo, Ohio. And you can even include a short market report there as well in the 650 characters, then what you want to do is you want to create a graphic on the front of the note that aligns with the neighborhood, so it’d be a local landmark. And then you want to apply a filter to the graphic to make it aesthetically pleasing, like a water color, or an impressionistic filter. And then you want your note card to be we’ve learned all this through trial and error, you want to know, a bifold. Note. So what it does is, so the card is bifold. And of course the envelope is handwritten, as well. But never use pre canceled stamps. So the temptation is to save a little bit of money by using the pre canceled stamp. As it turns out, people really notice that so use a real first class postage stamp cost is 62 cents handwrite, the envelope should be fixed doc. And then that will get that will get the note from the mailbox to the kitchen counter. Okay, and then it’ll optimize for open rate, which is great. So you have it open, but now they crack it open, they pull out the note. And it’s needs to be aesthetically.
D.J. Paris 12:55
So they open the note they see something a landmark that they recognize, and that a landmark that is likely to make them feel good about their community or wherever their geography, geographical location, they see something they recognize in a cool way with a cool filter on it that’s on the cover. And then they’re like, Oh, I know what that is. And then they and by the way, we’re really talking in this particular example about a cold mail, mailer. So somebody somebody receives, you know, a handwritten note on on heavy stock. We’re real stamp, not a not a stamp machine. They open it up, they see something they recognize, they still don’t really know what it is, they open it up. And okay, I just wanted to sort of catch our audience.
Jesse Stein 13:39
Absolutely. So and we can also talk to how to use these notes. Again, whether you work with us or whether you try it yourself, how you use notes for both geographic farming and to nurture your sphere. So there’s two different ways. For example, Tom Ferry, who’s seen every single real estate tool on Earth decided to invest in us and he’s a very happy client. So as Chris Heller, who you’ve interviewed, he’s a charmer of Keller Williams, you can ask all these people, you can go to our site, there’s dozens and dozens of testimonials from top agents, feel free to reach out to any of them. But they’ve opened the envelope, they take out the note, they read it, there should be no bait and switch element whatsoever to to the note or any of the marketing you do for that matter. And remember, in general, your marketing should be about adding value right about guiding more about educating more about helping more about serving more about mitigating and answering questions more than any other Realtor in your neighborhood. So that’s why our template library which is vast and we’ve sent millions and millions of notes so we know precisely the note templates that work depending upon the touch so you’ve just sold a house we know have touched number one needs to look like touch number three. And in general, the common thread that runs through everything we do is it’s all about adding value. It’s all about educating. It’s all about helping that homeowner make the right decision whether they go with you or not. So they’ve opened, they’ve taken the, the note out that notice the beautiful graphic, they’ve read it. And then what’s really important is to include a QR code sticker on there, and you you can’t print the QR code sticker, you need to actually have a real sticker. You can’t just print the QR code on there, because that looks mechanical. So
D.J. Paris 15:35
write that it’s sort of the whole thing sort of falls apart at that point. Yeah, you got it.
Jesse Stein 15:40
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that the illusion kind of falls apart. So make sure that the stamp on the front of the envelope is slightly off kilter. Make sure that QR code sticker is slightly off kilter. And what you want to do is you want to record a short, either YouTube video or a video that’s on your brokerage website. That is not personalized to the individual homeowner, because that’s way too much work, but personalize it to their neighborhood. Hey, greetings, Key Biscayne residents. Gradients keepers camp resident, thank you so much for scanning my note, I just wanted to include a little market report, let you know I’ve listed a few homes, in your area on your service, I produce quarterly market reports, remember, give, give, give, give, then get later. So it’s all it’s all about adding value. So you add the value, you have the QR codes ticker, then here’s the real power of the notes. And the real secret. twofold. Number one, you can now use the note as a Trojan horse to market to that homeowner in a variety of different ways. Okay, that’s why I named the company audience.co. I didn’t name it something old school with handwriting or addresses or something else, because I knew it’s all about taking a cold audience. And it’s about warming up that audience. So now, you can even go door knocking if that’s your thing. You can next time you see them at a networking event. And by the way, run this experiment, send 100 of our handwritten notes or do them yourself to 100 households go door knocking, you will be completely blown away at how receptive and warm and welcoming those homeowners are because you’ve generated the most important thing of all, which is reciprocity. You have sent them a beautiful, aesthetically pleasing note that guess what, you’ve optimized for the second secret, which is they’ve kept and displayed it. So the decision to sell one’s home is a really high consideration high dollar amount very, very, among the biggest decisions any consumer ever makes. So what are the chances that they’re actually going to be interested in listing their home on the day you send the note very, very 00. So as it turns out, handwritten notes, and I’ve been a marketer now for almost 25 years. This is the one medium that defies the time space continuum. And let me let me explain that because it sounds a little bit esoteric. there as long as you make it aesthetically pleasing and engineer it in the way I’ve talked about with a fixed doc note the bifold. Note, the note will end up on their kitchen counter will end up on their home office desk will end up even on the refrigerator and a magnet even on their mantel. And they will remember you and their their will have a warm feeling. And they will feel this sense of reciprocity. And so when they are interested in selling their home, you are absolutely going to be top of mind, I don’t care if you’re new to the farm. If someone else has been farming that neighborhood for generations, the fact that you took the time to send these beautiful handwritten notes with a real first class postage stamp will resonate, then use them as a Trojan horse. So what you want to do now and what our platform does is we find first of all, our lead filtering database makes it so we only send notes to the most likely to sell households. So we have map functionality where you can freehand draw, and you can literally take a scalpel out and get super surgical with their leads. So if you listed a home at 17, Chestnut Street, you can then hit surrounding households with our notes, but only the households that are most likely to sell. So we have 200 plus filters. So you can filter by owner age, equity level, how long ago the CLO was issued, and so on and so forth. Then what we do is we find all the email addresses of all this is where my digital marketing background comes in. We find all the email addresses of all the primary and secondary owners, we find all their LinkedIn profiles and we find all their other social handles. And then we have an app that you go to and you automatically follow up. So it’s using the node as a Trojan horse over later from our system, the homeowner gets an email with a subject line that says, Did you receive my handwritten note? And this will, this will double or triple response? Right? So response is typically, all in after all of our follow up between three and 5%, which is 10 to 12 times a responsive normal to right. Yeah, yeah,
D.J. Paris 20:21
exceptional. That’s exceptional. So so let’s go through the I want to go through the workflow again, because this is, is you’re kind of blowing my mind with all this. So okay, so I just sold a home in a neighborhood, I am going to now farm the rest of that neighborhood, I want everybody to know that I just sold this home, I’m going to send them each a handwritten note through your company, we’re going to slice up the neighborhood, there’s going to have an aesthetically pleasing picture on the front so that they’re going to want to display the car just like they would a birthday card, on their mantel or on their thing, because it’s something that relates to their community. It’s also cool looking. And on the inside, it’s going to have a note with some sort of value add in there and introduction and a QR code sticker, which would then link them to a video, maybe you using Bom or loom or YouTube or whatever your record some sort of video specific to that neighborhood, like, Hey, guys, I am so and so I just sold blah, blah, blah, blah. And I would love the opportunity to work with you, here’s some information about your McPhee i or i can give you a market update or whatever, you come up with some sort of message in the video. And then and then your system is going to go in and also identify those homeowners, we’re going to we’re going to look we’re going to solve for social media accounts, we’re going to pair them with any information that you can find. And then you have an app that will allow you to then start to follow those people. And you can start to then, you know, reach them in other mediums, such as on the digital side is that where so it kind of goes. So you’re saying the Trojan horse is the the the physical, you know card that they’re that your team is doing. But you guys aren’t just the card company, you’re like, Oh, we’re gonna go way, way beyond that. Because now we’re going to, we’re going to go from physical to digital,
Jesse Stein 22:13
you got it. And we were even inside of your app, you’ll even find optimized LinkedIn content that you can post directly onto your LinkedIn account or on Quora, or other channels. Sure, that positions you as the authority. And that’s all included in the platform. So it really is a holistic marketing platform. And then on the back end, I didn’t want to get into the weeds too much. But this is super cool. So what happens is, that follow up email sequence that I talked about, after you send the handwritten note. It’s a very deliberate and intentional sequence. It’s been totally optimized. And the first rips the first one yet drips. And the first one is very simple. The first email comes a week after our notes are sent. Did we get the note kind of did you get the note and it says, I fear I may have sent it to the wrong address I sent. I sent it here. And and it lists the person’s address that gets an eight to 12% response rate, which for anyone sending cold email? No, usually, it’s amazing. It people lose their minds when they use the platform because it’s all been optimized. So now, the second touch is even cooler. So what we do is we use I’ve been using we collectively as a company have been using chat GPT for two years now. So we’ve really gotten a chance we’ve created 10s of 1000s of articles with it. So we really know how to use it. What we do is we take your bio, as a realtor, we combine that with information about the homeowners home, everything from number of bedrooms to do they have a swimming pool, you name it. Okay with that month’s market report for Toledo, Ohio, or whatever neighborhood or what we what we do is we combine all three, and it creates a letter that says, hey, I sent you an email a week ago, and just wanted to let you know that I really did my research. And this is why I would love to have a conversation with you to at least get you a sense of what your home is valued at. And then it says your home is this your home is that by the way, I always love to add value. Here’s what’s happening in Toledo real estate market listings have been down 21% Baba, bah bah, bah, bah, it’s very organic, feels very casual. And it blows people’s minds. And that gets a really high response rate, too. So that’s all part of the audience platform.
D.J. Paris 24:46
And I guess maybe the best part about all of this is it’s to some degree automated, right? Like there’s manual review of course of of everything before it goes out so that you know to make sure that it’s it you know, it’s in alignment with the brand handing and all that. But the idea that it really takes a lot of that leg well takes all almost all of the legwork off of the agent’s plate. And you were saying at the beginning, you know, the one thing you can’t get back is time, right? So this idea of this actually is, I mean, I can’t even imagine how much time this would be. It’s just incredible. It just for our audience, the and Jesse, you’ll know this, Ben, I, I believe the the average return rate on a on a physical mailer is like if you get 1%, you’re a genius, like, so you’re, we’re now talking about, you know, 10 times that possibly, depending on on how you do it. But it’s all sequential, right? It’s, these are not one offs, one offs, we find, you know, have a very limited return. So we’re talking about as a sequence, so we’re really just initiating sequence. So your your team does all of this.
Jesse Stein 25:56
Our team does all of it, we even say automatically detect when you list or sell a home. And we trigger an email to you. And we’ve already set up your campaign. And what we do automatically, programmatically, is we take the home that you just listed, and or sold. And then we take the cover image that you featured on Zillow, or realtor.com. And if the home is not aesthetically pleasing, which some are not necessarily, or if it’s the front of an apartment, or whatever, we apply a water color filter to it, or an impressionistic filter to make makes it look cool. Yeah, look cool. And then we give you some of our best performing just listed just sold templates, you literally click on the link in the email, it takes you directly to the map, where we’ve already pre selected the most likely to sell households around the house you just listed or sold, which you can you can edit and change to your heart’s content. And then within 30 seconds, you can trigger a mailer to 100 200 households. So what clients consistently tell us and they’ve used every solution in the book is just the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to drive listings. And then to form deeper relationships with my sphere. And that’s what everyone wants the one caveat mTOR is, it’s not for agents that want instant gratification, right? takes time, you have to be persistent, you have to be consistent. If you got a listing on our first mailer, or second mailer, it was probably just luck or the right place at the right time. This is for agents that want to sell dramatically more homes over the coming years. And this is not by the way, this is not for folks that are just dabbling in real estate. We’re just a hobby, this is really the audience platform is for agents that are super ambitious and want to make this a career and want to form real deep relationships with the folks in their in their farming sphere.
D.J. Paris 28:05
And so do the agents have direct edit editorial control over over the content, so they can put their final approval and touches on it in case, you know, there’s certain things that your team wouldn’t know to put in
Jesse Stein 28:19
100%. So you can go right into the app and do that there’s like a million ways to contact us, you can go to audience health.com. And there’s someone right there on a live zoom. And then we have a large, very talented Customer Success group. So we can work with you one on one to make sure your campaign is perfect before it goes out.
D.J. Paris 28:39
By the way, I want to just completely stop what we’re talking about just to share one thing about Jessie that was very impressive to me, which I want to give you a compliment because I can count. Also, on one hand a number of times this particular strategy has has even come across my desk in the last bit since I started this podcast, which was about six years ago. So for all of our listeners, one of the neat things about having a podcast that people listened to, is publicists find out about it, and you just start getting blanketed with every guest requests you can imagine, which is very fun and cool and neat. It means you don’t have to go out looking for guests, which is very helpful. But it’s also challenging because you get lots of guest requests you have to filter through there, almost 99.9% of them are email based. Jessie did something very unusual. And I think this is a really great lesson that you can take. It’s into your real estate practice. And he did something very, very cool. He was down in his in one of his factories where his robots were in the process of writing cards, you know, and I’ve seen this before, this isn’t this particular technology isn’t actually new robots writing handwritten cards is not really all that unique. How Whoever. So he was down in his, in his, in his workshop with all these different machines going around, he was like, Hey, man, I want to be on your podcast, here’s all the things I can talk about. And he literally didn’t say like, Look at how cool our robots are, he was like, here’s what I can do for your podcast, here’s what I can give to your listeners. So he employed the same exact strategy, that, that he’s actually suggesting, you might want to use in this case, you know, with a QR code on the inside of the, of the mailer that you send, that goes to a video, Jesse sent me a video. And it literally was, here’s what I can do for you, meaning here’s what how I can help your show. And usually, that’s not the way pitches come across. And immediately, as soon as I saw it, I just said, book it, immediately book it, and when we reject most of the requests we get, but because it felt like he was doing something special for me when she was he was making a video just for me, and it had my name in it and all of that. And I went, gosh, you know, realtors should be doing more of these kinds of video messaging. It’s something that I, you know, if you’re going to text somebody, turn the phone around, make a little video message. If I mean, if it’s just a text in which a one line texting, you don’t have to. But if you really want to say something to somebody, turn the phone around, send it as a you know, as a text, or as a video message. Boy, that really got me and I just wanted to congratulate you for that that really caught my attention. And and the other thing too, is you’re not just writing cards, you have this entire platform. Most companies that do this, just do the handwritten cards. And that’s it. You guys are like no, no, that’s just the beginning, we actually are using that as the, as you say, the Trojan horse to get in to sneak in under under the under the door. And then we’re going to now we have everything and we’re going to be marketing you for up to you know, indefinitely.
Jesse Stein 31:54
Oh, I appreciate that. DJ, that means means a lot to me. And yeah, so I would encourage anyone listening to just make sure that you like the best way to add value is to think about what are what do I do uniquely? What do I know? Do I know pre construction projects better than anybody else? Do I have, you know, a relationship with the head of admissions at a private school? In my in my area? You know, how is it that I can create content and give give, give, give and then get and then I think the mistake that I’ve noticed a lot of people make is when they do talk about what they know. They often comes off as preachy. It often comes off as you should, instead of I did. And so your outro is he talks about this a lot of Gary Vee and others. And it’s so important. It’s so easy to miss. But the moment you say you should everybody tunes out, right? So the difference like Alex or mosey likes to talk about is you know, you should have oatmeal for breakfast, versus I had oatmeal for
D.J. Paris 33:15
lunch, once a judgement and the others statement
Jesse Stein 33:18
1,000% And I know it’s it sounds obvious, but no, it’s it’s a it’s a good one, you’ll immediately differentiate yourself from everyone else I can tell you, among the top real estate agents in all of Miami, his name is David Siddons. He sold $600 million in real estate last year. Very, very talented guy. And he is all about adding value. And so he’s constantly interviewing, you know, the important influencers in the neighborhood, the heads of admissions for schools, he’s creating content on his blog. And I really encourage everybody listening to not build their businesses on rented land. And what I mean by that, and I’m getting far afield from from handwritten notes, but I told you I just wanted to add value is that even if you’re with an amazing brokerage at Keller, Williams, exp, Douglas, Elliman, whoever it is make sure that you build your own website, and you build an amazing content and by the way, the brokerages will love this and you’re driving leads to that website building SEO, building expertise, authority and trust. Because who knows if you’re going to be at that same brokerage 10 years from now and right. The important thing is to not build your business on rented land. And by the way, the brokerages love this because you know that you’ll take so much ownership over your own website, and you’ll build that out and you’ll only benefit that brokerage. So all the content that you build, think about at least the way that we do it is think about how can I add value how can I give give, give and make sure you don’t build that content? On rented land, ie on somebody else’s platform.
D.J. Paris 35:05
That’s a good point because Realtors move, they move firms, even if you’re, if you’re listening now thinking I am never leaving my firm, just assume that someday something happens and you have to leave your firm. So whether you want to or not, when you have your own assets, and you’re not reliant upon the company’s tools and technologies, then you know, a lot of times those go away when you when you move, sometimes you can port them over to the new firm, oftentimes you can’t you want to build your own assets. And that also becomes almost I think, could be a way to leverage a higher commission split to if you’re like, hey, I don’t need your stuff. I’ve got my own. I, you know, that could become a point of negotiation when you’re looking at other brokerages. I wanted to ask you, though, about back to audience.co, which again, I’m just completely my mind is spinning with all of these, all of the services you guys offer. Let’s talk ROI. Because everybody wants to know, what’s the ROI now, obviously, this, you know, what, what are you usually seeing from your successful realtor clients?
Jesse Stein 36:07
Yeah, on average. So we’ve done a retroactive analysis over the last two and a half years, across 1000s of agents. So 18 months, after 18 months, it’s about 16.2x. So what we do is we look at what we look at our actual sales, but not only actual sales, because we’re not the rooster taking credit for the sunrise. And so the easy thing to do would be to be the company that says, oh, yeah, we sent a note to that homeowner, and that homeowner listed and sold with you, therefore we take 100% credit for that sale. No, that would be the rooster taking credit for the sunrise. And so what we do is we go back to the realtor and say, Hey, where are we responsible? It’s kind of like in digital marketing, first touch, last touch, like how do you do attribution modeling on this marketing channel. So you have to be honest, you can’t sand off the truth and put varnish on it. So that’s why we go to our realtor clients. And we
D.J. Paris 37:09
just the manual part really like did this? Was this because of us? Yeah.
Jesse Stein 37:13
Many times, it’s, you know, it’s never one thing. Right? It would be arrogant of me to say that we you know, the handwritten note was the reason why they listed their $5 million home, whatever value home? No, it’s a combination of things. And that’s why we offer in our platform, this integration, this digital handshake, you have to follow the user journey from the mailbox to the inbox, so to speak, you have to follow them from the note to where they are, which is digital. And so that’s that’s what we do. And so we ask a realtor clients estimate, but to what extent did we assist in the sale and sometimes it’s 10%. Sometimes it’s 50%. Sometimes it’s 80%. But we take that percentage, and we multiply it across everybody, and we use the we throw out the high and the low and we use statistical analysis. And then we come up with the number which is after 18 months of working with audience 16.2 And you spend $1 with us, you’re gonna get 16 $16.20 back. And But the caveat is, you have to do the follow up the right word. The fortune is in the follow up. Not work with us. If you don’t use the whole, it’s not a set and forget. Nope, nope, nothing is and any market or any channel that says that you’re going to you’re going to you know, lose lose fat while you sleep or, or gain muscle mass while you sleep runaway. You’re a huckster, we’re not. We’re a very powerful integrated marketing platform. But you do you do have to follow up like anything.
D.J. Paris 38:55
Boy, you’re in I think, I think the industry is needed a service like this. And it sounds like I’m doing a commercial for you. And I’m not, although if you ever do need someone to do a commercial, I’m teasing. But, but But seriously, I have been in this industry for 13 years, and I’ve yet to see this exact process from from sort of a to z and it also incorporating AI, which, which, of course is big in the news right now. I think so many of our realtors have probably been on chat GBT and GPT and tried tried a few things and then gone okay, I don’t totally know what to do with this yet. I like that you guys have been working with it for years and have actually sort of extracted out some of the best sort of best practices for your particular sequences. And this idea of because like, I know for me when I when I use chat, GBT oftentimes it’s it’s good for like, certain things. It’s not it’s only gonna get smarter though. It’s only gonna get more sophisticated. But you know, right now if I’m like, oh, you know if I Well anyway, I’ve done I’ve done lots of different acts. specimens with it, I find it very interesting. But I use it in a pretty dumb way. I don’t really know how to elegantly extract good data out of there. You guys have been doing this for years. So you do know how to do that. So like if I say, hey, write me a persuasive recruiting email for this realtor that I want to recruit to our firm. It doesn’t come back with anything too impressive, because I’m not really giving it a very, super specific question. I’m just sort of going, hey, just kind of search around online, find something that that you think might make sense, and it comes back, but it helps maybe with creativity helps some starting points. But it isn’t really a set and forget product right now. It’s just kind of like, maybe gives me a few ideas. But what you guys have done is actually done, you’ve done all the heavy lifting to determine this works. This doesn’t work. Here are the metrics. You’re all you know, objectively based. So you’re looking across the board at the numbers. And I mean, gosh, if I could get a 16 times return on every dollar I spend on anything, I would be a pretty happy person. So this isn’t a inexpensive platform, however, of course, but it shouldn’t be and of course, it wouldn’t be for 16 times return. And of course it’s not going to be inexpensive but that’s why this you know, I can’t even imagine the amount of time and energy and money you guys invested into this entire system. If anyone wants to learn more audience.co is the place to go. Jessie, what else should agents Okay, let’s let’s let’s wipe the slate clean for a second I want to talk specifically about Instagram and Facebook only because I think Realtors tend to live on Instagram and Facebook and with their social media lives. Tik Tok is becoming more prevalent for realtors, but I still think most agents are are hanging out on Instagram. And maybe then Facebook, you know, I don’t know which probably Instagrams doing a little bit more traffic than than Facebook for realtors these days, but I don’t know what our agents doing wrong. And what would you recommend that maybe they could make a slight shift or major shift that would they get better results from?
Jesse Stein 42:14
Yeah, so tours, vertical video. This is the first time in the history of the commercial Internet, in the history of social media, that where you can take one format, and distributed out natively to all the platforms. So Instagram is now native vertical video. So that is holding your phone up like a phone’s not landscape. So holding your phone up and shooting a video, a video walking around the neighborhood a video of a listing a video of a new construction, you name it, right? That’s vertical video, as produced or unproduced as you want to make it you can then distribute that out to Instagram natively, Twitter, natively Facebook, and of course, the most important up and comer tick tock and so people just think oh isn’t tick tock for selling hoodies to 14 year olds. Not at all. It’s so beyond that. And there’s hundreds of really forward looking realtors who are silently crushing it on Tik Tok, because it’s underpriced attention because there’s very few people there. So what I always look for are the opportunities where there aren’t many people there and you’ve got two to three year runway now on tick tock, and the beauty is you can use social media management software tool like a Hootsuite H O T shirt, right, and you can use that tool, shoot your vertical video, and then you can blast it out. And guess what? I bet some of you are thinking, Well, YouTube isn’t that landscape, no YouTube shorts, which you may have noticed, if you’re a YouTube consumer, YouTube shorts, which are minute or less, that’s all native, vertical. So the world is going native vertical video. And it’s really, really important to get on that bandwagon. And the last thing I’ll say, is 800 to 1000 word articles on LinkedIn, car, rush it and you can now on LinkedIn. Okay, on LinkedIn. So algorithmically. LinkedIn has never been about video and I can talk to you about why because of all of its back in training and how they actually make their their money 800 to 1000 word articles about your neighborhoods, market reports and so forth. Try to send you a maximum of four hashtags on LinkedIn and you want to post these articles and then the key is you want to Connect with as many people as you can like when you subscribe to audience, we get you all the LinkedIn profiles of homeowners in your farm. So you’ve got those. And then what you can do is you can use an automated tool like an octopus CRM, which is a Chrome extension to automatically connect to everyone on LinkedIn. And then when you post your content, they all see it. So those two things vertical video and 800 1000 word articles on LinkedIn.
D.J. Paris 45:27
I love it, I’m going to I, you know, it’s funny, I’m going to reach out Jesse to you because I want to explore doing vertical video for recruiting purposes for our brokerage. So I want to talk about how to do that in LinkedIn offline. So I am excited. This is one of the most exciting conversations I’ve had over the years, I’m really, really thrilled I really want everyone to think about there, we know that realtors are dealing with lots of reactive stuff. So all day long, you’re getting emails, texts, phone calls, you’re getting just lots of messages or things you have to deal with in the moment to secure a deal to deal with a current client. You know, and, and all of that just is going to interrupt your day and take your time. We know this just happens happens to me, I don’t even practice real estate, personally, even though I have a license. And but we have 800 agents here. So I’m getting their their challenges all day long as well. So I know the challenges that Realtors face, one of the hardest things to do is to consistently eke out these marketing strategies and to be able to consistently get them running day in day out, because let’s face it, you just got a lot of things to do. turning this over to a company where you can just kind of oversee and make your final edits, I think makes all the sense in the world. This again, this is what top agents are using. So audience.co is the place to go to learn about how this works, again, about a 16 times return on your investment after 18 months. Yeah, that’s that’s a that’s, that’s beating what I’m getting in the stock market by about a million miles. So this is this is again, it’s not we’re not talking, what we’re really talking about is growing your brand. And by doing by utilizing tools like this, this will allow you to have more time to do what you do best, which I think is the more one to one, intimate relationships, you know, the vulnerable, intimate sort of connections that you want to have with your clients. This allows you to do more of what you do best. Speaking with clients hanging out with them, meeting their needs, allow Jesse and his team to do all the other back end stuff so that you guys can you can do what you do best. So I’m a huge fan. Go to audience.co. Jesse, is there anything else our audience should know about about audience?
Jesse Stein 47:49
Yeah, well, I just wanted to recognize you and what you do as a perfect representation of the way that we like to guide our clients in terms of just add value add value add value. And the reason why one of the many reasons why kale is so successful is because of what you do DJ and so you’re you are adding value guiding more helping more educating more solving problems more by just having experts on here myself nodding, I’m not positioning myself as an expert. Oh, no, you’re an expert. I think all realtors you have on here and others. And so you really walk your talk. And it’s the reason why Cale crushes it and is able to offer the kinds of amazing Commission’s versus its competition that it does. And I just wanted to commend you for that.
D.J. Paris 48:46
Thanks, and really grateful to all of our listeners as well for continuing to support this podcast. Please, as you are, as we’re getting close to the end here, please remember to tell a friend just think of one other realtor that is struggling with their marketing right now. And but guess what, in 2023, all realtors are struggling in some way. This is a tough year. Let’s be honest about it. And let’s face it head on. And let’s think about this is the time to actually step on the gas and do more, a lot of agents are going to peel back because they’re going to have to this is the year that you want to step on the gas and push forward and gain market share. So audience dot SEO is the place to do that. Guys check it out. It’s really cool. I don’t have to pitch any more for Jesse because he he did an perfect job himself, but I want to become a customer. And so I’m going to look into this for my own efforts around recruiting. So I’m going to be using the same strategies you will likely be using if you check out audience.co. So check out audience.co Jesse and his team are amazing. They’re legit. He’s got the track record to back it up and all the metrics and data. So Jesse, thank you so much for being on our show. You’ve just been an amazing hour. Really appreciate you And yeah, and for everyone else again, tell a friend, leave us a review to let us know what you think of the show. It really helps us know how to continue to improve to meet your needs. So, Jesse, thank you so much on behalf of the audience and on behalf of Jesse and myself, I want to thank everyone for listening. We will see you next time. Thanks, Jesse.
Jesse Stein 50:19
Thanks, TJ.
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