A "WOW" calendar that will get you more calls than you would get on your birthday
This article was produced in partnership with WAM! Interactive Information.
Desmond Devoy of Canadian Mortgage Professional sat down with David Greenspan, vice president of WAM! Interactive Information, about how their KiTS Cross Media Marketing Suite helps mortgage professionals keep in touch with, and front of mind with clients.
Want to reach your clients one-on-one, and drive repeat business?
You could take pen to paper and write hundreds of individual notes. Or, you could save your writing hand, and do a deep data dive on your contact list through WAM Interactive Information’s KiTS (Keep-in-Touch Systems).
“It is a suite of marketing tools that enables mortgage brokers to individually target their sphere of influence, past clients, as well as prospects,” said David Greenspan (pictured), chief executive officer and founder, MindShare101. “We want to help brokers drive a lot more repeat referral business. We also want to help them generate more leads.”
That’s where outbound marketing comes in.
KiTS delivers the expected direct mail and email newsletters as well as neighbourhood flyers, to be sure. But in 2023, brokers need to have social media content too, which Greenspan’s company does for its clients, as well as websites and landing pages.
Plus, KiTS has an innovative twist on “old school” calendars that “get brokers more calls than they get on their birthday,” he said. “It’s totally branded and individually personalized, so people go Wow! That’s why we call it the “WOW Calendar.” To get a personalized free sample, just give KiTS a call and mention this article.
How VDP can keep you in regular touch with clients
The company harnesses Variable Data Publishing (VDP) to help sales reps, for example, keep in touch with clients personally, on an automated, scheduled basis.
Having 500 people on a contact list can be daunting.
And then there’s trying to corral email and phone and social media lists and contacts, and then creating content.
Now imagine all that information coming together in one place, a CRM that delivers a coordinated multi-media marketing campaign. “We basically take everything and put it into a world-class CRM that seamlessly connects with a suite of marketing tools so we can have consistency with branding, and we create relevant messaging,” said Greenspan about WAM’s KiTS Cross Media Marketing Suite. “We’ve got it all in one, centralized place and we leverage it.”
Greenspan knows how to keep in touch.
As we speak, he is seated in his studio in the Greater Toronto Area, surrounded by memorabilia from the Toronto Maple Leafs and Blue Jays and motorcycle paraphernalia. The studio is used not only to record his real estate industry podcast, which airs live every Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET, but also for virtual group training, as well as one-on-one sessions through his sister company, MindShare 101 Inc.
But real estate agents or brokers may not have time for their own podcast.
What they do have is data in their contact lists, which KiTS can turn into relevant marketing based on as many as 675 psychographic data points, 27 languages, different relationship types, and property ownership types. This means that the message will be targeted more narrowly: renters versus homeowners, for example, which is important to know when opportunity or renewal time comes around.
“The message spins based on who we are talking to,” said Greenspan. “For one individual sales rep, we can literally send 100 different messages. It is the most personalized direct mail money can buy.”
How the system works
The suite automatically works the whole process for you, from concept, design, coding, print, bindery, and mailing, for dozens or hundreds of variations compliantly branded to an agent and then personalized to each client by where they live, the type of property, and the relationship the agent has with them.
The program sprang out of work they had been doing for Fortune 500 companies in the past.
David and his father Brian, who founded the company, “decided that there was a calling there, a need for this in the industry,” he said. “As salespeople, we’re running like crazy. We’re always out there.”
So, it was important to have a system that tapped the contact list, with a keen eye on repeat referrals.
The program was launched in 2007, and thousands have subscribed to it in the 16 years since.
But how does it work, exactly?
“Typically, it’s going to be a one-time set-up fee,” he said.
That means that KiTS will load up your data for you. Then comes creating the artwork, and making sure that all of the branding is consistent across the board – that your company’s shade of blue looks the same on the newsletter as it does on web.
“We’ve got templates built out for the direct mail, email, and social, and websites,” he said.
KiTS has a professional team of graphic artists, writers and editors, who oversee quality control. “You’ve got your CRM (customer relationship management) account, we’ve loaded all of your data in there and it’s connected to the marketing that we put out.” Like you’d expect with a CRM, you can always update, add, or delete contact info so your list is always up to date. That means your marketing is always current.
The size of your contact list will determine what the overall cost will look like. He has some clients who have between 30 and 40 people on their list – while others have more than 4,000, though the average is between 200 and 700.
“If you’re a client, we really want to take the best possible care of you,” he said. “That is something we get all the time from clients, just how awesome the team is. You’re not getting a robotic message that says press one for this, three for that. There’s somebody picking up the phone ready to help you right there.”
Having an automated marketing system running in the background, nurturing existing relationships, lets brokers focus on hunting for new business. But he is quick to point out that the messaging can’t be all marketing, all the time. There has to be the personal touch, like birthday phone calls, upcoming renewal dates, and other life events, which keep you “front and centre” in the minds of your clients, creating a rapport of trust. And every day, the KiTS CRM even helps you track who to call and reminds you when.
The company is based in Toronto and Greenspan points out that “the real estate and mortgage industries are our sandbox. We pride ourselves on the content we put out there in terms of the knowledge around interest rates, housing affordability, and the economic issues that are facing Canadian homeowners.”
