If you can’t navigate your contacts and work your database quickly and easily, you’re wasting opportunities. It’s easy to let database maintenance slip when your attention is focused on more immediate business, but with the right mentality and tools, even the largest and most overwhelming situation can be turned into a pool of potential.

Segment Your Leads into Manageable Buckets

Segmenting and categorizing your leads (AKA making that monster manageable) will help you sort your leads quickly and allow you to target specific groups for your marketing efforts. Start by creating categories to bucket your leads in based on similar situations (i.e. seller, hot buyer, long-term buyer, unqualified, etc.)

With an intelligent CRM, this can be done incredibly quickly and you’ll be able to sort and sift your prospect pool with ease.

Brandon Brittingham of The Brandon Brittingham Team in Maryland, says that using technology to segment his database was a game changer: 

“You can take 1500 leads and scale it down to 10 based on the segmenting. And that’s made our conversion rate go up significantly. It’s made our efficiency go up significantly. And I mean just the power of segmenting. What we can do with that– it’s crazy to me the amount of information that you can drill down to be so specific, which in the long run will create better conversion. But also that turns you into a full CRM. It kind of turns you into having knowledge of the consumer almost on an intimate basis before you even talk to them. Again, I think that’s an absolute game changer. And pairing that with the drip campaigns and custom drip campaigns. You can create a dataset and market specifically to them through segmenting”

In BoomTown’s system, we offer custom tagging to help you drill down even further into specific demographics. These tags are based on the type of response you’ve received from a lead, and should  focus on answering “where/who” a lead is, and not “what they want.”

Here’s an example of how a pipeline tagging system could be put in place:

• A lead signs a buyer agreement, and the agent assigns a  [Client] tag.
• A Lender completes the pre-approval and assigns a [Pre-Approved $225,000] tag.
• The agent and lead discuss ideal neigborhoods for the price point and need, and the agent schedules 4 property showings and assigns a [Has showings] tag
• The client loves the second house and makes an offer. The agent assigns a [Made Offer] tag
• When the seller accepts, the lender completes the loan committal and applies a [Closing Scheduled] tag. After a successful closing, the agent assigns a [Past Client] tag and the client is now filtered into the agent’s SOI.

When you apply the right categories and tags to your leads, your database becomes infinitely more manageable. You gain insight into what is happening with your leads, how your clients are being serviced, and who is getting things done.

Note: If you haven’t already adopted a system to help you intelligently manage your leads, now is really the time. Make your life easier when it comes to wrangling that database!  If you don’t have a system,  but still want to tackle your database, focus on your “Hot” leads to create tags. This will prevent you from spinning your wheels tagging prospects that aren’t properly qualified.

Revisit Your Email Drip Plans

Once you have ensured all leads are properly segmented with clear categories and helpful tags,  make sure everyone is on an appropriate (and active!) drip campaign. (Thanks to years of research and testing, we know a thing or two about high-producing nurture plans.) Filter your leads based on category and pay close attention to the paused drips and completed drips.

For paused drips, review the lead to see if the drip plan can be resumed or if another drip plan should be added. For completed drips, review the lead and determine if they need to be re-categorized and if another drip plan can be added. We recommend having all leads on an active drip plan except your HOT leads!

Remember, your organized database should be a mix of segments addressing those who:

• Want to act buy or sell now.
• Are looking, but not ready to act.
• Searching a few months out.
• Searching for a few years out.

All of these segments you should further tag each sub-group with labels such as “first time homebuyer,” “second home,” “investment property,” price ranges, and other important preferences for your area.

Each group needs to have an email drip campaign associated with it. If someone does not want to act now, but is actively looking, start then on a drip plan that includes E-alerts for their search preferences.

Set Up a Database Maintenance Schedule

Keep the momentum going and never leave a lead hanging. Whether it is quarterly, biannually, or even more frequently, dedicate some time to organize undefined contacts and spruce up your drip plans.

If you, like most people, don’t have a ton of time to patiently wade through unknown leads, then choose your slow time of year to address these contacts. Depending on your team structure, make this a team event, or create some sort of challenge to get everyone participating and setting a strong foundation for sales success.

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