Follow-up email

[Doug Pretorius (ON) 9]

I'm getting a good response from my kijiji ad and am working out my follow-up email. I want to give them enough info to make a decision because I'm getting too much replies to have to answer a pile of questions from every direction. Here's what I've got so far, let me know what you think.

 

Thank you for replying to my ad! This is a just a little follow up email to give you a bit more detail on how I do business and what I can offer you. Whether you decide to sell your property to me or not is entirely up to you, you will find no high-pressure sales tactics or endless calls or emails here.

 

My name is Doug Pretorius and I am a private real estate BUYER, not a Realtor. I buy houses and other residential property in all 10 provinces across Canada and have been doing so since 2000. To date I have bought approximately 100 homes direct from homeowners just like yourself.

 

You may be wondering if your property matches what I'm interested in buying. Chances are excellent that it does because I buy all types of homes including detached and semi-detached houses, townhouses (condo or freehold), apartment condos, mobile homes...you name it. I also buy properties in any condition from brand new or totally renovated all the way down to complete wrecks that have been condemned. In addition, I'm ALWAYS looking to buy. So even if you are just curious right now and not quite ready to sell you can always contact me again later. Whenever YOU are ready I'll be ready with an offer in hand for the FULL market value of your property.

 

The reason I'm able to buy your property for as much as any best-case-scenario offer an agent could come up with, and do so at a time convenient for you, even in 24 hours if

necessary. Is because of the way I purchase. I use a technique called a Lease Purchase. This is in my opinion the best form of private financing in use today because it is so simple

to understand and use. It's a combination of a LEASE and an OPTION to PURCHASE agreement.

This allows me to begin making payments to you or directly to your bank/lender today, and complete the purchase of your property at a later date.

 

* Get FULL market value for your property.

* Get your payments covered.

* Get your vacant property filled quickly.

* Save thousands in commissions, closing costs and management fees.

 

That's the Lease Purchase Advantage and that's how I can buy your property for full market value in as little as 24 hours!

 

I hope this email contains enough detail to help you to decide if this is for you. If it has and it is just respond that you're ready and I'll have a contract in your inbox for your review shortly. Or if you have more questions please don't hesitate to contact me at your leisure. Even if you decide this isn't for you right now please keep this email if you ever wish to sell your property for full value quickly, or pass it along to a friend in need.

 

Thank you for giving me to opportunity to present my solution to your real estate needs. I look forward to purchasing your property.

 

Sincerely,

Doug Pretorius

[Jason (AL) 1]

Hey Doug,

 

Nice response email.

 

It would be perfect to use for an auto responder.

Have you, by chance, had the chance to look into an auto responder,

such as aweber.com? (around $30/month) Also, gmail (Google's mail) has a free, built-in

auto responder.

 

Once someone responds to your initial email, you can set up the AR

to respond whenever you set it for. Say, for instance, anywhere from automatically

to a few minutes or hours (even days, weeks, months) after they submit their info.

 

This would save TONS of time and make things a little more automated, so you

can focus on other things.

That, or drink some of Canada's finest.

[alexlocklear85 0]

Jason, how do I find the auto-responder in gmail?

[Jason (AL) 1]

Hey Alex,

 

I assume you already have a gmail account. If not,

it's super simple.

 

Anyway...

Your gmail account is set up.

There are 2 ways to do this.

The 1st is much simpler.

 

Once you're on your homepage:

First way: The Vacation Response

1. Click Settings

2. Scroll down to Vacation Responder. Turn it on. Set your Subject Title and

write your desired message. Something like the one Doug posted above, for example, would

be the message.

3. Done.

 

Now, if you're using this way, make sure it's strictly for an automated email

account that you're using for responding to emails only. Because if you do this for your

main gmail account you'll have everyone that emails you receiving the message you're

using to lease/buy/rent houses.

So I would just set up an account something like, lease2buy@gmail.com,

just for this.

 

 

 

Second Way: The Canned Response

1. Click Settings

2. Click Labs

3. Scroll a little more than half way down the screen til you see: Canned Responses

(You'll also see a TON of other neat applications to incorporate with your gmail account)

4. Enable it, then scroll down the screen and click Save Changes

 

Now, whenever you compose a message like the one Doug posted above, or now known as a "canned response",

you can save it as such within your gmail account.

You save it as a Canned Response by clicking the option you've now enabled, located just below

the subject line of the written...or about to be written email.

Create a name for it and save it.

It will now be saved as a Draft.

 

Once your Canned Response is saved, you can now set Filters for it.

Now, whenever you receive an email it will automatically send the Canned Response for you.

You can use this for your main gmail account should you have one you use

for other endeavors.

 

Does this help?

[Jason (AL) 1]

Just messing around with it by sending a fake email to my lease purchase only gmail account (set up on Vacation mode)

from one of my yahoo accounts, and I got a response within 2 minutes.

 

So, all those wanting to try this, scroll back up and do the Vacation method.

Don't know what to write?

Use Michael's LPA form as your response or see if you can

use some of Doug's content above.

He may charge you for it though.

[Doug Pretorius (ON) 9]

Cool, thanks Jason! I've got my canned response saved and will use that for now, if I really kick my ads into high gear (i.e. 3 replies a day x 20 locations) then I'll set up a separate AR-exclusive account to handle the heavy lifting.

[alexlocklear85 0]

Jason,

 

Good stuff!! Thanks for sharing.

 

I think it's a GREAT idea to set up an account just for AR. I'm getting ready to set one up here in a minute.

[MichaelC 160]

Doug, I like the response. It's thorough enough so the recipient should be intrigued to reply. If not, you've weeded out someone you don't want to speak with anyway.

Jason, cool idea with Gmail's autoresponder.

[Doug Pretorius (ON) 9]

Thanks everyone. The reply is doing its job quite well too, out of a total of 8 sent out 2 have come back from what looks to be very motivated sellers. Pretty good numbers so far!

[Doug Pretorius (ON) 9]

Hey Jason, I'm having a problem with the AR and Kijiji. I set up gmail's vacation thingy and when I send an email to it it responds no problem. Then I went an set up an account on kijiji under that email account so I don't have to activate ads everytime I post a new one. But when I try to email my AR through kijiji, it doesn't arrive and no reply is sent out Is it possible kijiji is detecting that there's an AR on the receiving end of those emails and blocking them?

[Jason (AL) 1]

Not sure what's going on behind the scenes over at kijiji with your AR account.

My guess is that the reply is going to kijiji because, if they're like CL, then

it's kijiji that's sending you a notice (via email) that you've got a response.

Make sense?

This is why you might not be seeing the AR email. --kijiji is

 

Unlike CL, whereby you have to option of hiding your email

or leaving it public (and it's clickable), kijiji has only the option of someone

entering their email manually to get in touch with you (to prevent spam),

it seems you would have to leave your email addy

in the message...or not use the AR altogether with them.

 

I'm sure this would also be the same case with CL if you opt

for the private email (CL would act as the middle man, thus you're

receiving emails from CL and not the person responding to you).

So, if you're wanting to use the AR on CL, then I would make the

email address public.

[Doug Pretorius (ON) 9]

Doh!