"What I didn't realize is that what Vyral allows me to do is communicate with our past clients, our sphere of influence, people in our database. It's just great database marketing and there's something about being able to eloquently explain or even make it fun. Our videos are goofy. I don't want someone watching a video get bored. I want to be educational and catch their attention. I want to engage with whatever we're sending them."
-Vyral Client Wes Madden
[Full Transcription]
John: Alright, so I'm here with Wes Madden and he just sent out the Seller Lead Gen email. It was a week ago on a Friday. How many clicks did you get on the actual e-mail that you sent out?
Wes: Mikaela had told me that she was going to be sending it out. On Fridays, I leave to do a radio show from 12:30 to 1. I came back on the radio show and all my listing partners were standing in the hall. They asked, "What did you do?" I just had 90 leads come with 90 seller valuation leads. I was like, "I make it rain. Come on, that's what I'm here for." I started looking at it and I go, "We had an unbelievable response to that e-mail. I checked Google Analytics we had we have to put tracking links in there and it was we had 562 clicks on the seller valuation link which resulted in about 288 leads and counting last time I checked.
John: 50% conversion rate of people clicking to become leads is pretty good.
Wes: What I did was just put our prime seller leads/seller valuation page and so they definitely helped out with that as well. 280 leads are still working, and it's been great because I don't know something about the language of that e-mail and how it was actionable. I mean people definitely take note. We just rocked it and I couldn't believe that we were going back and forth all day long is great.
John: That's great, that's awesome. So has any of that turned into solid listings? I mean, it's only been a week.
Wes: It was really timing! Right now, we've been kind of pounding the market here with, you know, if you're looking to sell, now is the time. We have extremely low inventory basically across the entire state. So that's been our message with our Vyral videos. You know, "give us a call even if you're thinking of selling in six months." So that's really what people did and when you when you put that link on there, the language of the e-mail was very direct. I actually got on there to discuss the best market we've had in the last decade, which was true. That is my prediction. Last year was the best market we had last decade. I think 2016 will actually be better and it got a bunch of people to engage and that's all you can hope for with an e-mail campaign.
John: Let's talk about more a Vyral as a whole since you've been a client for a while now with a gap. Since you came back, what kind of results have you seen the second time?
Wes: I remember when Frank started the company. GO BIG RED, I'm from Nebraska. We had that connection and hit it off. I loved what his vision was at the time we started back when Vyral started. I was busy. I'm still busy. I'm not the guy to sit down. I'm so trained to engage in dollar productive activities and other things. My brain will not allow me to make time to write a script, shoot a video, and send it to Vyral. It wasn't working. However, now I give props to Mikaela and Andrea because they make it easy. They're my success managers. Mikaela calls and we jump on a Google hangout. I'm still not always sure how I need to record my videos, but she watches me do and ensure it's more conversational. We have fun with it. It's not such a big deal anymore. For 30 minutes, every two months, we're shooting four videos at a time and it's not a huge drain on our on my time. For what we pay Vyral compared to what our return, it's an absolute no-brainer.
John: Let's talk more about the return. I know it sometimes can be hard to measure with advertising campaigns like this, but what kind of return have you seen on your investment?
Wes: Great question! The thing with Vyral, as I know, I throw a lot of curveballs at you all. You all have always handled them really. I wanted things different. You worked with me on those things. You're working with me with the sales force integration which is awesome. Before I forget, there are other Vyral clients out there on Facebook. They ask me, "Hey, who's the best success manager there?" I admittedly told Mikaela and Andrea I didn't mention them because I didn't want them overloaded with other clients. They're fantastic at any given time! I can jump on hangouts if I have a question and they get back to me immediately. I don't think I've ever not had a response very quickly to my questions. You help me with our mailing list. We had a few glitches with our mailing list there. And John, I have to give you props because, from the technology standpoint, you've always helped me through that. So we had a nice 40,000 or 50,000 contact mailing list. If you asked about return on investment, we usually track it. On the buyer side, our buyer links are on Boomtown can track this. With their lead source reporting dashboards, I actually have a Vyral Marketing source on there. We're able to track that. I don't have an ROI calculation for you just yet because we're just we're probably three months into this. I suspect in a couple months as things start picking up, I'm happy to report back and let you know where we're at. That Alaska market email update that we sent out in January, we got nine listings off that. I think the average sales price is probably somewhere between 250 to 75, so do the math and I think we did pretty well. Right now, I think we're already ahead.
John: Okay so when you took a break, the company had three or four employees at the time probably the first time. Did you ever try to do any of this kind of stuff yourself, such as the videos and email marketing?
Wes: Yeah, it was terrible. I didn't put it up high enough. I get the importance of it. It wasn't like we were lacking leads. We've always had enough leads. What I didn't realize is what Vyral allows me to do is communicate with our past clients, our sphere of influence, people in our database. It's just great database marketing and there's something about being able to eloquently explain or even make it fun. Our videos are goofy. I don't want someone watching a video get bored. I want to be educational and catch their attention. I want to engage with whatever we're sending them. I'll even shoot a video and I'll go admit it's boring. Let's do it again! I'm going to make them more exciting, so I think that's the key. We spend too much time marketing and working stranger leads when we've got a gold mine of leads. Let's face it, I mean sphere of influence leads converted 100 percent. Why should I work Internet-based leads 4 to 5 percent conversion rate? A couple months into it, we've already got past clients in contact with us, that I kind of hit my forehead with my hand and go tease. I can't believe I haven't been following up this guy or I forgot that this person is sent me referrals. I haven't highlighted him and continued to make him a referral machine for business. Plus, I'm not going to read a long email. I'll watch a 2 or 3 video, but I'm not reading a long e-mail if you send it to me.
John: Were there any fears either time before you signed up with us, such as being on video or the cost?
Wes: My fear came from me dedicating the time to be able to make the videos. It's actually committing to with the program. Like I said, I got leads coming in. I got a run in my company. You're kind of in the whirlwind, with a lot going on. We don't take the time to actually do what's vitally important to the organization. We let Vyral take those thirty videos and you make them look fantastic. I couldn't do that editing that you do. It just looks awesome! They make me look good, which is half the battle. You take care of sending it out and sending me metrics on opens and clicks.
John: That's great. A lot of people are going to be listening to this, that are just checking us out. What do you say to those people that are on the fence about hiring Vyral?
Wes: If you're doing it on your own and you're making all your videos and you're communicating with your database, you're doing everything basically that Vyral does for you and you're killing it. I get to keep doing what you're doing but I would be doubtful that you're going to find anything in your arsenal that has the return on investment that our marketing has. I'm talking beyond what you guys do for us as far as shooting. You help us with videos and send them out and getting responses back. You know contents to help up witht subject. What subject I should cover here with a strategy over the year? If someone said some of those in that e-mail, it makes sense. There's like a rhythm to the story and the education that you're putting out to peopl. I got to say from Frank has always been a giver, one of the great givers, in our industry. I've always loved that about him and I think he kind of looks at it if get what you give. He's a wealth of knowledge, a visionary, and I think that you'd be hard pressed to find another tool or vendor out there that really would help you with your past client marketing as well as those for us.
John: Great. Okay, so you've been doing successful video shoots in thirty minutes. What are tips that you would give? Maybe it's someone that either is a client struggling or someone that's coming aboard unsure of what to focus on.
Wes: The first thing you do is sit down and come up with a battle rhythm for the videos you're going to shoot. If you want, one thing that will help you, come up with one of the topics that that we should shoot compelling videos. Think about the message that you want to get across in that video. Markets are different depending where you are in the country. A video I'm working on with Mikaela focus on how real estate commissions work. That's when it's really interesting. I got to be careful to make sure I'm not saying I shouldn't say. That's one where a script out would work really well. What's cool is you can actually watch the video and when they edit, they transcribe everything you're saying. It becomes a blog post, which becomes content for your website. You're able to follow along with the subject matter and people are watching and they're listening. The newspaper called me and needed a 700-word column in the real estate section. They said an e-mail was really good. I had sent out an e-mail only as my Vyral video blog. They enjoyed the market bit. I said okay -- it was really all the transcription you put together. The newspaper turned it into an article, actually.
[End Of Transcription]
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