A Story That Highlights the Importance of Keeping a Clean Database

Today I want to talk to you about an “aha moment” my team and I recently had concerning our database. 

As many of you might remember, a few years back I decided to spend some serious time on my team’s database—cleaning it up, properly tagging contacts, etc. The end product was a cleaned-up ‘Met’ database comprised of 1,200 of our past clients, friends, family, colleagues, and people we know in the community or have had a real estate-related conversation with. For our Met database, we use a higher-level touch system than we would for databases containing contacts we’ve received minimal information from.  

That aside, let’s talk about the aforementioned aha moment: At the start of football season every year, we send out a football-themed magnet to our clients. Football matters a lot to us Oklahomans. To give our clients a heads up that their magnet is on the way, we film a fun video that goes to Facebook and to our database. 

Then, once we know all the magnets are out, we’ll go a step further and call each of our contacts to check that theirs came and to ask which team they cheer for on Saturdays. We make sure to weave our call to action into the conversation as well by expressing our team’s goals and asking the client if they know of anyone who may need help buying, selling, or investing in real estate. 

We sent this year’s magnets out last year and, as you can tell, a lot of them came back as return to sender—40, in fact. I then blocked off some time to determine where those 40 people moved, why they moved, and why we weren’t able to help them move. Probing a little deeper provided much-needed clarity and gave us a chance to clean up our database even further. 

From that situation, we learned a valuable lesson: Although our touch system already included mailing various items to our clients year-round, we weren’t always springing for first-class mail. Getting 40 magnets returned to us was a wake-up call for us to start spending a little extra on our mailing method, so we can stay on top of our database. 

I also used this as an opportunity to send an email out to our entire database (Met database and all), letting them know we had some leftover magnets and that if they replied back with their home address, we’d gift one to them just in time for football season. A handful of clients have already replied back with their home address, which means we can now move them over to our ‘Met’ database! 

As I’ve learned from this experience, you should never stop learning new things and refining your skills in this business. What might seem like a waste of money at first can turn out to be a win if you get a little creative.  

If you have any questions or would like more tips for improving and tweaking your business, please reach out to me. I’d be happy to help!