People almost always have their phones on them, but calling them isn’t necessarily the most effective marketing approach.

Cold calls tend to be ignored (or blocked), and trying to talk to someone during a busy day can be a good way to earn their annoyance rather than their business.

There is a better way for home builders to market their services, nurture their leads, and build connections over the phone: SMS marketing.

The Power of SMS Marketing

Text messages are powerful tools for engagement: over 90 percent of all text messages are opened and read within 20 minutes.

Open rate isn’t the only indicator of SMS marketing’s effectiveness. Consider these other SMS marketing facts:

• 99% of 18-49 year olds are capable of receiving text messages
• 18-34 year olds prefer texts from businesses
• Text messages are read 138% more often than emails
• SMS marketing yields 8X the number of responses as does email
• 47 percent of consumers who engaged with a business through text made a purchase

Fast, simple, and effective, SMS marketing can boost your home builder marketing ROI and save you time over crafting more complex email and paid marketing campaigns, all while helping you connect with target audiences in a way that appeals to them.

Uses of SMS Marketing for Home Builders

SMS marketing can benefit many industries, but home builders in particular can effectively integrate CRM with SMS marketing into many of their communications. Consider using text messages to accomplish any of these marketing, sales, and customer service tasks:

• Engage leads with links to videos, blog posts, articles, layout options, and other resources
• Set up client meetings or design consultations
• Send Open House invites
• Send reminders about appointments, task deadlines, or Open House events
• Check in with clients throughout the design and building process
• Follow up with clients after home completion
• Request feedback (e.g. Add to references list or request review)
• Earn leads (e.g. Announcing new subdivision or special offers)
• Follow up after online form submissions
• Communicate with realtors and brokers regarding newly built homes for sale

Business texting allows you to create a quick and easy line of communication that leads, clients, and your sales and marketing teams will all enjoy and use throughout the entire process of capturing, engaging, nurturing and converting leads.

Getting Started with SMS Automation for Home Builders

Texting is faster and easier than sending emails or making phone calls, but sending timely text messages to dozens or hundreds of leads and clients may still be beyond the resources of your sales and marketing teams.

That is why SMS marketing automation works best when integrated with a robust CRM for home builders. The right platform, such as GoCRM, can automate many of the SMS marketing tasks you have, streamlining the process while maintaining the personal connection your leads, clients, and team members need.

Here is a look at how you can use SMS marketing with GoCRM to capture, nurture, engage, and convert your leads.

Make SMS part of your automated workflows.

GoCRM allows you to automate many sales and marketing tasks, from engaging cold leads to nurturing or qualifying leads to onboarding new customers and following up with them when their homes are completed.

To set up these home builder workflows, you create a series of emails, phone calls, and text messages, arranged according to your company’s best practices and your target audience. You create the emails and text messages once, and activate the workflow, and GoCRM implements the workflow based upon your parameters.

SMS marketing can be an important part of these workflows. If you create a workflow to engage leads who submitted an online form, for example, you could use text messages to achieve the following:

• Confirm their form submission
• Provide a link to homes similar to the one they are interested in building
• Alert the lead to your newest offer or subdivision

Within GoCRM, SMS messages come from the assigned team member’s personal phone number. As a result, recipients can connect directly to a real person and seamlessly transition to a personal conversation. Simple, personal connections created through automated processes make SMS marketing a win-win strategy for home builders.

Use texting alongside emails and phone calls.

SMS marketing works best when it is paired with other marketing strategies. In particular, text messages combined with emails and phone calls create a powerful way for home builders to connect with leads and clients.

For example, say a lead submits an online form requesting a design consultation with your home building business. A text message can confirm that their form submission was received, but a personal phone call the next day from a team member can create a personal relationship with your business.

Together with emails and phone calls, SMS marketing makes it easier to build meaningful connections with leads and clients.

Use SMS messages to connect after leads take action.

Say a visitor to your website likes what they see and want to learn more about the homes you are building in a nearby subdivision. They submit a contact form. Unfortunately, it is late in the evening, and your business is closed.

If you use SMS marketing through GoCRM, you can still connect with your lead (and hopefully beat out your competitors).

GoCRM can automatically send SMS messages triggered by specific action from website visitors and leads. Use texting to respond to activity such as the following:

• Confirm form submissions
• Confirm appointments
• Send event and appointment reminders

Use SMS marketing to cut down on response times.

If someone requests information about your home building business, chances are that they are requesting the same information from other businesses. Prompt responses can be the key to capturing that lead’s business.

Text messages can help you cut down on your response times even when your sales and marketing teams are busy.

For example, GoCRM can automatically thank a contact for scheduling an appointment or send a text with your business hours and expected time of reply if they reach out after business hours.

Prompt communication through text can help leads to feel seen and begin the process of nurturing them even when no one is immediately available to respond to them personally.

💡Takeaways

GoCRM can help you to create a robust SMS with CRM marketing integration for home builders. Take advantage today by scheduling a free demo. We would love to help you capture, engage, nurture, and convert more leads with less work this year!