If you haven’t been under a rock in the last few months, then you know that it’s a new age in the world of SMS marketing.
With new regulations in place, SMS marketing is now a maze of impossible-to-meet compliance and consent requirements; where getting consent from prospects seems like a catch-22. You can’t text them without their permission, but how do you get that permission in the first place?
These new regulatory barriers have forced most wholesalers to give up on SMS marketing entirely.
But what if there was a way to turn this challenge into your competitive advantage?
What if you can become one of the few remaining wholesalers still able to get your SMS messaging across, where others have given up?
How much market share do you think you can gain all to yourself when the only messages that your prospects see are from your business?
Other people’s challenges often come with fresh opportunities for your business, if you’re the only one that is able to overcome them.
In this case study, we will show you how you can combine the two leading wholesaling platforms BatchLeads and REI/kit, to become one of the few remaining wholesalers able to legally market to homeowner prospects via SMS.
Specifically we will cover the following topics:
- First, we’ll explore the specific challenges in SMS marketing today.
- Next, we’ll talk about the opportunities that this brings.
- Then, we’ll discuss what makes BatchLeads and REI/kit great separately.
- Finally, we’ll discuss how you can integrate BatchLeads and REI/kit to activate your lead lists through this innovative marketing automation.
Let’s dive into how these new approaches are flipping the script on SMS marketing in real estate wholesaling, turning other people’s SMS compliance roadblocks into your chance to be the only one able to connect with your property seller prospects.
Understanding the Challenges in SMS Marketing
SMS marketing, once a go-to for its immediate results and high reply rates, is now effectively dead for most wholesalers due to a sea of new regulations, often referred to as A2P 10DLC (Application to Person 10-digit long code) regulations.
Regulators and telcos have stepped in with strict rules to protect consumers specifically dealing with consent and message content compliance, leading to a landscape where every text sent is now scrutinized for compliance under these new laws, and few get through.
For businesses, especially in sectors like real estate wholesaling, this means what used to be a straightforward marketing channel, has now become a regulatory minefield, filled with potential penalties of $10,000 for non-compliance.
Specifically, these laws require companies to do two things:
- First, companies must get and track consent from all the people that they are messaging.
- Then, they must register their phone numbers and messaging content to allow those SMS messages to be delivered.
All other messaging will get filtered, and fines for non-compliance fines will get automatically given out.
The process to achieve both consent and phone number registration can be legally daunting, and nearly impossible without automated systems, and professional support.
Getting Consent
First there’s the challenge of obtaining consent from leads.
Gone are the days when businesses could freely send promotional texts to a broad audience.
Now, the focus is on getting explicit permission from each recipient before being able to send any SMS marketing.
This task is easier said than done, as it involves reaching out to potential leads through as many alternative channels as possible. The fewer the alternative channels at your disposal, the less likely you’re to succeed in getting consent.
Without an integrated omni-channel marketing crm, designed for consent generation and tracking, this is nearly impossible.
Registering Phone Numbers
Then of course, you have to meet the registration regulatory requirements.
Navigating the A2P 10DLC registration process involves understanding carrier-specific rules and regulations, which can be a maze of technicalities and fine print that is subject to interpretation by a human compliance officer manually vetting your application.
Of those who attempt this, very few get through this process without lumps.
Our compliance team has helped countless customers successfully navigate this frustrating registration process, helping them navigate several layers of bureaucracy.
With Challenges Come Opportunities
When it’s hard to do something, fewer people participate, and the ones that do, take all of the spoils.
For anyone who doesn’t use an omni-channel outbound marketing system like REI/kit, they can only turn to direct mail as their remaining marketing channel, one which is at a minimum 16X more expensive than SMS messaging.
That means that they can now reach only one sixteenth the number of prospects as they did before.
If the prospect of reducing your business by 16X scares you, well, it should.
Fortunately, you have two strategies that you can use to overcome this.
Strategy 1: Redirect Your Marketing Budget
The first strategy is to redirect your previous SMS marketing budget to an omni-channel solution that provides alternative channels at a similar cost.
This means that beyond direct mail, you should look at sending email messaging, as well as using a website for lead capture to which you can drive traffic using Google search and Facebook lead marketing.
Each channel has its strengths and weaknesses. You can read more about marketing channel effectiveness here.
Strategy 2: Overcome Registration & Consent Hurdles
The other strategy is to figure out how to become one of the few wholesalers who can maintain their SMS marketing abilities, by using systems to get consent, and getting expert help with compliance registration.
This will require the use of direct mail postcards, however combined with email follow ups, the likelihood of getting SMS consent goes up, and when combined with email, the spend to get that consent can get cut by as much as 50%.
With the combination of BatchLeads data and REI/kit omni-channel CRM, you can now employ both strategies, maximizing your opportunities to activate your lead lists with an optimal marketing spend, and getting over the regulatory hurdles most others can’t.
BatchLeads and REI/kit, a Tale of Two Great Tools
Let’s take a look at the strengths of both tools to see how we can combine them.
BatchLeads, The Ultimate Data Source
It’s no secret that BatchLeads has the best property owner data in the real estate wholesaling space.
You can filter up-to-date MLS data based on all of the filters that you can imagine, and skip trace owners.
But what do you do with all of that great data?
Yes, BatchLeads has a small selection of outbound marketing channels, mostly centered around direct mail, but it is not an integrated holistic marketing CRM designed for consent capture.
Its strength is data, and you can easily export this data both automatically via Zapier as well as manually via CSV.
REI/kit: Your Wholesale Real Estate Marketing Command Center
Where BatchLeads excels at data, REI/kit’s superpower is as an omni-channel marketing CRM.
Marketing CRM
Omni-channel means that you have access to 5 outbound automated marketing channels (Email, SMS, Direct Mail Postcards, RVM, and Calls), as well as an integrated Lead Generation Website that you can use for inbound marketing whether through SEO, or paid search traffic/SEM.
But that is not all.
Compliance Hub
REI/kit also is an integrated A2P 10DLC compliance solution, designed to get you SMS marketing again with tools specifically designed for you to capture consent and get into compliance with current SMS regulations.
Picture a tool so robust that it not only helps you jump through the hoops of SMS marketing compliance but turns those hoops into opportunities.
With its regulatory compliance hub, combined with automated outbound marketing campaigns, a lead generation website optimized for consent capture, and a CRM to manage every detail, REI/kit simplifies what once seemed an insurmountable challenge of connecting all of the pieces.
Automated Consent Capture Campaign
Building on these foundational tools, REI/kit has introduced its most important feature for SMS compliance: the automated Consent Capture Campaign for sellers.
This campaign is designed specifically to gain consent, and make text messaging a reality again, re-activating your dead lead lists.
The campaign weaves together multiple channels – eye-catching postcards, engaging emails, and inbound consent SMS to reach and convert prospects, transforming the daunting task of gaining consent into a streamlined, always-on process.
At the heart of the Consent Capture campaign are the bold yellow postcards, impossible to miss in any mailbox.
Each postcard offers not one, but three distinct pathways for prospects to give their consent to you: your REI/kit lead generating website, an inbound text message option for those who prefer the directness of SMS, or a call to your virtual number for those who prefer to talk.
This tri-fold approach caters to different prospect communication preferences, maximizing your chances of getting that all-important consent.
It’s about meeting your prospects where they are and offering them the convenience to say yes in the way they are most comfortable with.
But there’s more to this campaign than direct mail.
The campaign also uses email in a supporting role, designed to turn interest into action at the lowest possible price.
This multi-pronged approach, combining physical mail’s tangibility with digital communication’s immediacy, elevates the Consent Capture campaign from a simple marketing tactic to an effective strategy in securing SMS messaging consent from more prospects, and cutting the cost to do so by up to 50%.
The Combined Power of BatchLeads with REI/kit
Having access to accurate and comprehensive data is half the battle. This is where the BatchLeads software excels, as your partner in providing top-notch property data and insights.
However, for many wholesalers who use BatchLeads in the current regulatory atmosphere, the challenge lies not just in accessing this data, but in using it to drive marketing and sales.
That’s where the combination of BatchLeads and REI/kit proves perfectly balanced.
Where BatchLeads offers the raw property owner data, REI/kit provides the means to market to those leads in an integrated way.
REI/kit doesn’t just make using data easier; it turns prospects into profits.
To maximize the potential of these powerful tools, let’s explore how integrating BatchLeads with REI/kit can transform your lead generation and marketing strategies.
Integrating BatchLeads with REI/kit: Streamlining Your Consent Capture Process
By combining the comprehensive property data from BatchLeads with REI/kit’s innovative Consent Capture campaign, you can streamline your lead generation process, making it more efficient and effective with automation.
Let’s dive into what you’ll need to integrate these two powerhouse platforms.
The lead automation process requires several key components in place.
- A BatchLeads Data Account
- A REI/kit CRM Account
- Your REI/kit lead generating website
- A REI/kit virtual phone number
- Your virtual phone registered through our compliance hub
- The REI/kit Automated Consent Capture Campaign
- (Optional) a Zapier Account
- A Zapier automation of lead flow between BatchLeads and REI/kit
A note on Zapier
Zapier is an excellent way to completely automate the flow of your leads between the two systems.
However, if you’re not using Zapier, there’s no need to worry.
Both BatchLeads and REI/kit also offer a manual data import process that is just as effective.
It’s a simple process of exporting your leads from BatchLeads and then importing them into REI/kit, where they can be immediately added to the Consent Capture campaign.
Now that you’re set up let’s take a tour at how all of this works together.
Using BatchLeads and REI/kit For SMS Consent Capture
Here’s the typical flow for the SMS consent capture of home seller prospects using BatchLeads data and the REI/kit Consent Capture Campaign.
It consists of the following steps.
- Creating your BatchLeads list
- Optionally skip tracing it in BatchLeads
- Sending your list to REI/kit (in an automated or manual way)
- Optionally skip tracing it in REI/kit
- Adding the list to the Consent Capture Campaign
Create BatchLeads Dataset
The first step is for you to log into BatchLeads account, and create your property owner data set.
Once you are happy with your property owner data set that you will want to use for SMS marketing purposes, the next step is to either skip trace it or send it to REI/kit to skip trace it there.
Optional: Skip Trace Your Data in BatchLeads
You can choose to skip trace your list in BatchLeads or REI/kit.
If your preference is to do this in BatchLeads, you will need to select the leads that you want to skip trace, and use the ACTIONS button to select the skip trace option.
It is a good idea to assign your skipped data to a particular list, and especially assign a Tag. You will later use the Tag ids to organize your BatchLeads data in REI/kit.
Send BatchLeads Data to REI/kit
Now that your data set is ready, you can send it to REI/kit.
You can either send your BatchLeads data to REI/kit in an automated way through Zapier, or manually through a CSV export.
Automated With Zapier
There are a couple different Zaps that you can create to move data from BatchLeads to REI/kit in an automated way.
This normally depends on where you would like to skip trace your prospects, in REI/kit or BatchLeads.
If you would like to skip trace the property owners in REI/kit, then you would create a Zap based on a “New Property Added Trigger”, as documented in our BatchLeads Zapier Integration support doc.
With that trigger, any time you add a property to a list, the property owner information will automatically get zapped to REI/kit without you needing to do anything else.
However if you would like to skip trace the property owners in BatchLeads first, then you would create a Zap just like above, except the trigger would be “Property is Skip Traced (Phone Number Available).
In this case, the process of skip tracing your lead will trigger the zap, sending only those prospects with phone numbers to the REI/kit CRM.
Manually Using CSV Export + Import
Similarly, you can manually export/import your data from BatchLeads to REI/kit.
You can export your list by selecting the records that you’re interested in, and using the ACTIONS button to select Export to CSV.
First, name your export.
It is also a good idea to Tag it, so that you can use the Tag id to group your records in REI/kit.
Next, you can go to the Reports > Export section of your BatchLeads dashboard to download your exported file.
Notice that the extension here is ‘xlsx’.
After downloading the file, you will first need to open this file in your spreadsheet editor and re-save it in CSV format to prepare it for upload to REI/kit.
Once saved as a CSV, you are ready to import it to the REI/kit CRM.
Go to the CRM navigation menu on the left, and Contact Imports in the menu at the top right to begin the upload process.
Once you have imported the lead list, you can work with your BatchLeads list in the REI/kit CRM contacts dashboard.
Open Leads In REI/kit CRM Contacts Dashboard
Once you have imported your contacts into REI/kit, whether automatically through Zapier, or manually through the export + import process, you can now work with those leads, adding them to your automated marketing campaigns in REI/kit.
If you have tagged your leads in BatchLeads, then you can filter them in REI/kit by the id of the BatchLeads tag.
For example in this instance, the id of the BatchLeads tag ‘Tag 1’ is number 328345.
Optional: Skip Trace Leads in REI/kit
If you opted not to skip trace your leads in BatchLeads, and instead opted to do so in REI/kit, then you can do so at this time, by selecting all of your filtered prospects and running them through the REI/kit skip tracing bulk action.
You will receive an email notification once this skip trace is complete.
Add Contacts To Consent Capture Campaign
Finally, whether you previously skip traced the contacts in BatchLeads or REI/kit, you’re now ready to add them to the Consent Capture Campaign.
Add Leads to Campaign
Adding your leads to this campaign is straightforward, as long as you have completed all of the prerequisite steps, including generating the campaign.
You just need to select all of your CRM contacts filtered with your BatchLeads tag id, and add them to your campaign.
This campaign consists of 3 sets of direct mail postcards followed by emails sent over the span of 30 days.
Automatically Capture Consent in the CRM
As the campaign goes out, your prospects will have 3 ways to opt in to your SMS marketing messages.
They can either go to the Website URL that is on your postcard to fill in the lead form on your integrated REI/kit website.
OR
They can send an opt-in keyword via SMS to your registered phone number.
OR
They can call you and tell you that they would like to receive SMS messages from you, in which case you can set the opt-in right from their CRM profile.
Optional: Other Ways To Reduce Opt In Costs
In addition to the postcards and emails that are part of the Consent Capture Campaign, you can also use the more advanced strategies of Google organic and paid ad traffic to your REI/kit integrated website, to further reduce your SMS opt-in consent campaign costs.
Summary
Sending SMS marketing to your sellers is no longer a trivial task.
The requirement for getting consent, and registration compliance has put a complete end to this marketing strategy for any wholesalers not able to overcome these significant challenges.
Only through the use of new and advanced marketing systems and strategies, and combining the best of breed automated tools such as BatchLeads data and REI/kit real estate wholesaling software in new and innovative ways will you be able to re-activate your SMS marketing strategies, and breathe new life into your lead lists.
