Marketing Ideas – Page 7 – Help-U-Sell® Connect

New Help-U-Mail Program from Excel Printing & Mailing

Starting Jan. 31, our friends at Excel Printing & Mailing will officially launch a new program just for us. Called Help-U-Mail, it is more cost-effective than door hangers, and the bulk of the work is done for you.

Excel will work with you to customize your 8.5” x 11” mailer and place their bulk rate postage permit on each one. You pay for the printing up-front and pay for the postage only when you mail out the flyers. You will be required to mail to at least one full carrier route each time you send the flyers, but you can choose to order as many flyers as you like ahead of time and mail them out in batches. After you take them to the post office, the flyers should be in mailboxes within two business days.

If you order 10,000, the cost will be $0.11 each for printing. If you order fewer, the cost per piece will increase. The postage per piece will be $0.142. However, Mike Paholke of Excel told us today to expect an “aggressive offer” on the launch date, so look for even lower pricing then.

John Powell of Help-U-Sell Galleria Realty and Craig Flint of Help-U-Sell Flint Realty have tested the program already. Powell is planning not to mail out half of his 10,000 order but to insert them into a local newspaper instead. You can see Flint’s flyer below. He has mailed out 9,000 so far and garnered several calls and a few likely listings.

Help-U-Sell Flint Realty mailer, side 1 — One side of Help-U-Sell Flint Realty's new mailer

Help-U-Sell Flint Realty Mailer, side 2 — The other side of Help-U-Sell Flint Realty's new mailer

To get started on Jan. 31, go to www.husmailnow.com.

Order Your Agent Recruitment Signs

Brokers, tomorrow (Wednesday, Dec. 21) is the last day to add your order to the agent recruitment signs print run. One of our new vendors, Alexander’s Print Advantage, is offering to print a batch for us at one time to reduce the cost of individual signs. Below is one of the options for the signs.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate Agent Recruitment Sign — This is one of the options for the Help-U-Sell Real Estate agent recruitment signs.

The signs will cost approximately $10 to $12 each if you order during the print run. Individual printings outside of the print run will cost about $20 per sign. You can place your order online at Alexander’s Print Advantage.

Alexander’s also has agent recruitment brochures available to print on demand. We encourage you to order the brochures and at least one sign (they are on offer in two sizes and two color schemes) to assist with your recruitment efforts.

If you have already ordered the signs, please let us know what you think of them and if they’ve garnered any success for you.

New Broker Website Design

To coincide with and complement the new Help-U-Sell Real Estate branding, we are updating the broker websites. Here is a sneak preview of the design in progress. The area below the featured properties will contain videos and other content that you will control.

Help-U-Sell Broker Sites Design Option — The Help-U-Sell Real Estate Broker Website redesign is in development.

We want to hear your opinions on the design. Please contact us directly or comment on this post to let us know what you think.

Also, we have added new business card design options, including ones that contain photos. Visit Alexander’s Print Advantage to review the options and create and order your business cards.

New Banners for Brokers

After we showed off our new banners from last month’s California REALTOR Expo, we heard requests from our brokers for similar banners aimed toward buyers and sellers. We’ve designed the two banners, one focused on buyers and the other sellers, for you to use at trade shows, events or even in your office.

We’re also working on business cards and two letterhead options, which we’ll get your vote on at next month’s Success Summit. Have you registered to attend yet? If not, go to our Seminars page, scroll down to the registration form, fill it out and select “Help-U-Sell Broker Success Summit” from the drop-down menu. We want to see you in Anaheim!

Winter Warm-Up Contest

While other real estate agents are hibernating until spring, at Help-U-Sell we’re planning to stay warm by heating up the marketing efforts. That’s why we’ve initiated a contest to challenge our brokers and their agents to keep momentum going into 2012.

The Winter Warm-Up is an 18-week contest, which will start Nov. 1, 2011, and wrap up Feb. 29, 2012. Help-U-Sell offices will earn points for each new listing, each closed buyer side and each closed seller side. The top three offices at the end of the contest win prizes in the form of admin fees, Help-U-Sell shirts and, of course, bragging rights.

Each new listing = 5 points
Each closed buyer side = 3 points
Each closed seller side = 2 points

There will also be prizes for the top finishers in three categories: Most listings taken, most closed listing sides and most closed buyer sides. Overall winners will not be eligible for these categories, so there will be six winning offices in total.

Winners will be announced during the March 7 Roundtable call, but we will be sending email updates throughout the contest on the 15th and the last day of each month during the contest.

We encourage you to organize a sales contest among your agents and kick up your marketing efforts in clever and resourceful ways.

The fine print: Relists and renewals don’t count. Neither does your personal property. The date the listing is entered into the OMS is the date that will be counted for this contest. First place overall wins a Help-U-Sell shirt and four months of admin fees. Second place overall receives a shirt and two months of admin fees. Third place gets a shirt and one month of admin fees. Each category winner earns a shirt and one month of admin fees.

Get ready to hit the ground running next month!