Real Estate Closing Gifts for Buyers and Sellers

By Gabriel Hagstrom, Dotloop Guest Blogger

October 04, 2022 | comments

Retain Customers and Build Lifetime Value Through Post-Sale Gift Apps

Retaining relationships with your customers is one of the fastest ways to scale your business. You already did the hard part, which is win them over and provide an awesome home buying or selling experience.

So why do so many agents fail to proactively follow up with their past clients or leverage them for referrals?

While agents still need to keep their pipelines flush with hot leads, newly closed buyers typically don’t need to make a purchase for a long period of time.

Top performing agents, however, recognize that to scale, you need to turn past clients into raving fans who refer them to their friends and family members long after the initial deal. Then, when the client is ready to buy again, the agent’s name is top of mind.

The Appreciating Value of Real Estate Client Closing Gifts

There are some inevitable facts to consider. For instance, it takes 5 times more work and money to create new clients than it does to simply retain past clients. To scale efficiently, you have to retain past clients.

Seems easy enough, especially when according to a 2021 NAR survey, 90% of home buyers said they would use their agent again. The issue is that the same survey found that only 13% of buyers actually used an agent they had worked with in the past — likely because the agent failed to stay in contact.

When you consider the average homeownership duration is about 13 years according to NAR – or approximately three homes per a buyer’s lifetime, you’re only receiving one-third of the possible business for all that work you put into obtaining the client. It’s difficult for a business to successfully scale when they leave two-thirds of the revenue on the table.

One effective way top producers can address this issue of clients “forgetting their name” is through a proactive closing gift strategy. For many agents, the closing gift is just a nice cherry on top of the transaction and nothing more. But for top producers, the closing gift is the first touch in their campaign to be that client’s repeat agent for the next real estate deal.

Mastering the Art of Gift-Giving for Real Estate Clients

Many agents overlook the power of the closing gift because they believe it will become intensely time consuming. We’ve all shopped for Christmas gifts, birthday gifts and anniversary gifts, and as fun as that might sound, it’s also a great deal of work.

One solution is to give your clients gifts that will help them remember you, using one of several effective yet simple gift-giving techniques. Follow these steps for maximum return on your gift-giving strategies.

Step 1. Choose a direct mail app

API Nation and dotloop offer numerous real estate app integrations to make connecting with clients after the close that much easier. Mailbox Power and thanks.io, for example, both automate the client touchpoints with shipments sent on schedule.

Mailbox Power allows agents to create and send personalized gifts, food, cards and giftcards with a wide selection of gift items, ranging from a laser-engraved poker set to chocolate brownies.

Agents also like thanks.io for the ability to send handwritten postcards, letters, notes and giftcards to clients and leads.

Step 2. Connect the app to your database

Find your CRM, contact manager or transaction management system on API Nation and connect to your choice of direct mail apps. You can set up the connection in several ways:

Simple:
Sync contacts and hop into Mailbox Power or thanks.io to send a shipment whenever you want.

Intermediate:
Sync certain contacts into a specific group in Mailbox Power or thanks.io and enroll the entire group in an in-app automation to receive a shipment. If you tag contacts with *home depot* in your database, for instance, the contact will be linked to Mailbox Power or thanks.io and automatically receive a pre-written note with a Home Depot giftcard.

Advanced:
Set up Syncs to fire based on the status of the lead in your database. As your lead progresses through the transaction, they will automatically receive the proper shipments.
For example: *New* leads might receive a handwritten postcard. *Pending* leads might receive gourmet popcorn (the show is beginning), and *Closed* leads can be automatically enrolled in a 36-month automation of shipments to keep you top of mind until next time.

Step 3. Turn it on

Under less than an hour of setup time, your system can be ready to automate meaningful closing gifts to your clients, keeping you top of mind while growing a clientele for life.

Gabriel Hagstrom

Gabe Hagstrom has been designing and executing marketing strategies for over a decade across the real estate, tech, ecommerce and fitness industries. He gets out of bed everyday with a mission to make complicated ideas simple. Along with the rest of the team at API Nation, he has set out to build a platform where the complications of connecting and automating a world of apps are made simple. You can find him in San Diego, teaching hundreds of real estate professionals how to run their business and marketing more efficiently by connecting and automating their applications.