<![CDATA[WORDCOM Direct Marketing - NEWS & RAMBLINGS]]>Thu, 02 Oct 2025 04:54:57 +1300Weebly<![CDATA[Real Estate Professionals! and 'agents']]>Thu, 11 Mar 2021 22:53:44 GMThttps://www.wordcom.co.nz/news--ramblings/real-estate-professionals-and-agentsThere are Real Estate Professionals and there are ‘Agents’. 
Both may list and sell houses, have completed the same qualification, even work for the same ‘banner brand’ (as distinguished from their own brand), however the difference is quite remarkable.

Professionals have the highest work ethic you will find anywhere and treat daily activities as their own business – reputation, brand, and effort driving reward are always front of mind.  The customer is the centre of everything.
‘Agents,’ on the other hand, are OK employees, representing the company they work for, conducting themselves according to the company standards and with the leads ‘given’ to them by the franchise …zzzz…

It’s said, “the Sales Profession can be the highest paid hard-work or lowest paid easy-work there is,” which well summarises the difference.
We love and are inspired by working with Sales Professionals, as they view everything they do as their own business activity.
  • They achieve results through personal effort,
  • They understand the value of being personal (see the person rather than a transaction),
  • They measure return on investment (spend every dollar like their own … and it usually is)
  • They never lose sight of the fundamental fact that every interaction, every previous and past vendor/buyer, is their source of future listings – directly and referrals.
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Customer Retention Marketing (CRM) is vital to a Real Estate Professional, just as it is to every business owner.  The challenge they face as a very small business is how to regularly stay in contact – how to speak to and write to all of these future customers – when they are already working incredibly hard 24/7?

Professionals intimately understand the value in staying in contact, but just don’t have spare moments themselves.  They rue every put-off call and card (until tomorrow/next week/next month…)  
Fact: Real Estate industry email and social media has four times (4x!) the average unsubscribe-rate of other industries*, so a different personal approach is required to stay in touch.  Can you find time to phone everyone even once a year?
So Wordcom does it for them: “staying in touch with your customers as reliable as clockwork”, uncovering leads and keeping ‘your personal touch’ top of mind for your customers.

And they’ve been around long enough to know when times are tough, when listings are scarce, when ‘agents’ are being dropped by franchises … that’s when Customer Retention ROI pays dividends – many, many times over.
* "I've bought/sold my dream home so I may as well unsubscribe" thinks the customer 
]]><![CDATA[Email Trends 2020/21]]>Wed, 17 Feb 2021 03:48:05 GMThttps://www.wordcom.co.nz/news--ramblings/email-trends-2020212020 was such a different year in almost every way. Pandemic, lockdowns, elections and closed borders affected everything.  Email marketing was no exception.
Remote working and online/email fatigue played a huge part in trend movements in 2020. 
Trends didn’t change so much as accelerated. Here are just a few observed email marketing benchmarks useful to our clients, and which we use for our own benchmarking.
“Everyone is looking for ways to communicate in ways that feel more personal.”

Total 2020 email marketing traffic jumped 7% on 2019
You probably noticed it yourself and is why you might feel “digital fatigue.”  7% growth in email volume from 2019 is three times the previous years’ average growth rate of 2-2.5% per annum.
Interesting side note: USA investor reports 2020 as having the biggest social media unsubscribe (ie accounts cancelled) rates.

Open rates increased (against the trend) … then dropped back significantly…
As lockdowns and restrictions impacted on us all globally. March-May open rates increased 20% on 2019, however from there it was a steady “return to normal.”  By the end of the year, overall email click-to-open rates (CTORs) dropped on 2019 to 14%. 
For the first time ever the percentage of emails opened on mobile devices dropped - from 8.8% (2019) to 7.6% of emails sent in 2020.
Email and digital fatigue seem to have had an impact here, along with a constant barrage of ‘Covid Safety Procedure emails’ from every business under the proverbial sun.

Average click-through rates (CTRs) were consistent (2.6%)
However, the average was perhaps ‘dragged up’ by the Government, Media and Political segment experiencing a huge jump to 4% CTR.  Pandemics, lock-downs, wage subsidies and elections (USA and NZ locally) all played a part here.
Media and Government had a near-zero unsubscribe ratel… are we suckers for punishment or what…

Working from home… Friday became ‘Marketing Email Open Day… “a significant deviation from long-held email marketing wisdom.”
Missing face-to-face time, or Friday office drinks perhaps? In 2019, Friday afternoon became time to stop work and dwell on what the world outside was doing… Normally Tues and Thurs are the best days for email engagement - but not now. Remote working has shifted this, making Thursday the second worst (to Saturday) and Tuesdays became just like a Monday…
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Other 2020/21 Email Benchmarks
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Last thoughts
In 2021 Customer Retention is more important to business owners than ever before.

​More so than any other channel, email marketing must be relevant to the customer.  Customers are fickle and, for email, can unsubscribe permanently unlike any other channel.  Too often, or the wrong message, and they are gone forever.

As with all marketing, the key is to stay relevant and improve by tweaking things, and use different media for different customer types, and at different times of your customer's life cycle.

At Wordcom we utilise and recommend email, post, and phone for different contact times during your customer relationships.  

We thank our friends at Campaign Monitor for many of these insights.
]]><![CDATA[MINING OR PROSPECTING…]]>Thu, 28 Jan 2021 11:00:00 GMThttps://www.wordcom.co.nz/news--ramblings/mining-or-prospectingI was astonished recently to be phoned and offered a "New-Customer Only Deal" by an electricity retailer ... my existing electricity company...
Then, to be advised (by my caller) that I was “not eligible for this low-rate discount” due to my current ‘Relationship’ (yes, they even used the ‘R’ word to reject me)…

Overlooking the obvious
This is an all-to-common phenomenon: companies spend an inordinate amount on advertising, promotion and ‘customer win-back campaigns’, at the expense of their existing (goldmine of) customers.  They are like a goldminer abandoning an existing seam of gold to spend all their effort prospecting… 

​Are you '$0 to budget' each month, or 25-60% out of the blocks? 
Most businesses have wonderfully rich databases of existing customers.  As owners/employees we can grind away month-after-month chasing and discounting each next sale, clawing ourselves from $0 to budget every month or start each month with 25-60% of sales already on the board from our retained clients.
Acquisition, or Retention?
Yet, where the cost of acquiring a customer far outweighs the cost of retaining one, it is mind-boggling the lack of effort many companies (and their personnel) exert to retain customers.  Especially given the value of a returning customer (plus their referrals!) is greater than that of new customer, and the investment in retention is miniscule compared to the cost of acquisition.
When energy and priority is placed on Customer Retention a multiplier-effect produces an ROI reflected in budget-achievement, revenue, staff retention and profit.

80% Retention / 20% Acquisition
Of course, for a variety of reasons no business can retain 100% of customers and new customers have to be added to the ‘top of the funnel’ each month.  But, as I’m sure you agree, it is simply mystifying how so many businesses ignore their ‘pot of gold’ each month and search only for new ‘tenements’.

​Mining or Prospecting…
Which brings me back to mining or prospecting…  Perhaps only a small nugget to them, being out-of-contract and taken for granted, we left that retailer (ironically, with gold-coloured branding) for another – who promised to be ‘different.’
I guess we will see... 
By Mike Johnston​
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