Stay Top of Mind with a Monthly Newsletter / Prospect Square / Essentials

Hello everyone and welcome to today's workshop on staying top of mind with the monthly newsletter Prospect Square Essentials Class. Now before we go ahead and get started, just a reminder to make sure you are reviewing the requirements in your area with your broker, including those related to non essential business and telemarketing to consumers. The tools and programs mentioned in this demonstration are optional and discuss best practices for your consideration. Now with that said, let's talk about the value proposition. Now Prospect Square is built to help agents easily provide interesting and valuable content that their clients and contacts will enjoy. The reports and Campaigns available through ProspectSquare help affiliated agents stay connected to their contacts, not engage their sphere and grow their business through automated set it and forget it reports and campaigns that provide valuable information content their contacts will appreciate. And in particular today we are going to be talking about the Prospect Square newsletter which is a monthly campaign that goes out on the fourth Tuesday of every month and can include some great items including marker reports which we touched upon just ago, listings and current stories in not only the national media but at home as well. Emails must clearly state it is a solicitation and provide the consumer an opt out. So our agenda for today, we're going to take a look at how to update your Prospect Square profile. Quick overview of contacts and groups, editing the newsletter settings, customizing your newsletter, taking a look at the analytics as well. So with that said, today's workshop is really about this live demonstration. So let's go ahead and begin. Today we're starting out@mycbdesk.com and in particular the tile that you're going to be looking for is the Prospect Square tile. Now with that said, if you can't find the tile for whatever reason, there are a couple of quick ways in which you can find it. First, you can head on over to this find an app rectangle here at the top, click on that and then where it says Find an app, type in Prospect Square. One other additional route you can take if you can't find that tile up at the top here where it says what would you like to find today? Simply go ahead, type within there and type again the words prospect and square. And underneath our apps we'll have the ability to select Prospect Square. Now with that said, once you go ahead and select our tile, just go ahead, click on the white circle, you'll be taken to this screen, the Prospect Square home screen. Now with that said, if you take your cursor and head on over to the top right of your screen, this is where we'll begin Today's demonstration with a review of the profile section. You will go ahead, select your headshot and then from here select my profile. Now it's here where you can start going through your information. So you see we have our first name, last name, preferred full name. So as a example, if you are a Catherine and you go by Katie or Matthew, and you go by Matt, this is where you can type that in. So this way you would type in the full name that you're referring to. So as example. Additionally though, if you're going to be putting in a team name, this is where you can put that team name in as well. We have our professional title, which is here. So this is where you can talk about any of your accolades if you are using this account as a team account. This is also where you can put those license numbers if the state that you are practicing in does require that. Down below we also have the preferred email. So with that said, if you want your email to go back to something that is not the cool banker email that is assigned to you, this is where you can type that email in so that this way if somebody wants to reply to the newsletter that you're sending out, it'll go to the desired email that you want to have a go to. Now, as we continue to traverse down this profile page, you can see that we have our agent website, preferred agent website, and then the property search website as well. So with that said, if your website has an IDX feed that's tied to it, you can just send people directly there as well. And this is a great way to keep people within your ecosystem. As we keep heading down the line here, we have our preferred phone numbers. You can see that you can put up to three. And just note that you'll have to have your labels down there, whether it's an office number, a cell number, or something else. We have our license number that is coming in through the platform now as your profile image. If you want to change it, you can always upload the photo here. This would be a great example if again, you were a team and you need to change that out. And as we're hovering over some of these items, I think it's always great to point out that one of the great items about Prospect Square is that if you hover over a question mark, right, it'll tell you what that area is. This example, signature office. For sales associates who are assigned to a specific office but operate out of a separate office, this is how you can kind of change that signature there. Now with that said, we do have our social media links as well. You can see these include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or X, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, and if you have a blog, you can put that in there as well. Now with that said, you'll see that three of these platforms do have blue connect buttons. Facebook, LinkedIn and X. Now if you do want to go ahead and sync your social media platforms with prospectsquare, you can do that by clicking on the respective blue buttons and following the process. So when it comes to various aspects within prospects where this will enable you to share some of these campaigns automatically on your social media platform. And again, just another way to set it and forget and have a little bit more of a streamlined effort. Now if I keep going further down below you can also see that you can select your time zone. You can sync your contacts with a Google outlook or a cBoffice365, which you have of course by being a cold banker agent. This is a great way again just to have those contacts kind of sync into Prospect Square. So if you're adding somebody in, then it can come here as well. Now with that said, as we go a little bit further down, we have the designations and certifications if you want to add that as well. Additionally, we do have this opt in for all clients for Life and the opt in for all newsletters in this particular instance. So this way, if you select that yes option here for the newsletters, this will be then your activated newsletters within your account. This isn't necessarily setting up all of your clients for the newsletter, so just keep that in mind and we'll talk about how you can opt out of a newsletter if you do so choose. Okay, so now that we've all gotten through that, we can go ahead and hit save and close if we're ready to go, which I'll do here and go ahead and select. Okay, so now that we like where our profile is at, let's head on over to the contacts portion of Prospects, where of course this is where it's going to be where you would upload any kind of contact list here. So in this case I can go ahead, I can select contacts and select the contacts item right here. Now with that said, if I want to add a contact, I'm going to go ahead and select this blue button here up towards the center where it says new. And this is a great way if you just want to add a singular contact, maybe you met someone in open house, etc. So with inprospect square three things that you need to have first name a last name in an email. Now, with that said, you can add additional items if you want to. The one thing that I would point out, which is a great place to take a look at, is adding them to your campaign group. This is a great way just to keep everything organized. So if you're selecting who the newsletter should be going out to, it's just one simple click of the box. So in this case, let's go ahead and select our test group. Or we can just do new contacts in this area here. Of course, it doesn't need to have a specific name for the newsletter. You can call that contact report. So I'm going to go ahead and hit save and close. Great. So now you can see we have our Jane Doe contact here. And next up, what we're going to go ahead and take a look at is what's the process for adding a group? Maybe you've got that whole list of contacts there. How do I go ahead and do that? You can go ahead. You can select Import Import contacts. Now what you're going to go ahead and do is select your file. We want to take a look at what file type we would like to import. So we have our Outlook export file, the Gmail export file in Excel, and then we have our CSV, which is most of the time what folks were using any kind of CRMs, we'll have that file exported. And from here you're going to go ahead and check this box. And essentially what this box is saying is that these contacts are agreeing to receive email campaigns from you. One of those earlier slides within this workshop was about the do not contact list. And this is essentially making sure that, right, we're staying clear of fines or any violations in regards to that element. So with that said, we'll go ahead and select. Okay, so now that we've gone ahead and selected next, we're going to go ahead and find our config list. So in this case we're going to take our cursor over to our browse option and then select our contact list. Now from here I'm going to go ahead and match our contact list with our required items. So if you remember from our singular contact import, three requirements are first name, last name and email. And I will say that if categories already highlighted up here, it's already picked that out for you. If you need to add them in, go ahead, hit the drop down and match those up again for the email you're going to go ahead and make sure that it's the primary. So in this case, right, we have our Doe family and go ahead and hit next select ok. And then we get to the screen about how we want to handle duplicates. So we have our top one, which is update existing contact details for map fields only. Unmapped fields will not be updated. You can also replace an entire contact record if you so choose. And last but not least, and I think the most common one I see is that you ignore any duplicates and you won't import those contacts. So we'll keep it on there for today and select the next button. Now it's here where you can decide what group, if any group, you want to put these new contacts in. If I want to put them into a group that I already know exists, I can go ahead and select a group and put the contacts within that group. Now with that said, if I want to create a new group, I can type that new group in here. Now if I don't want to import them into a group, I can do that too. Although to be fair, I do kind of tend to unrecommend that. And that's just because with Prospect Square we want to have our contacts as organized as possible. So this way it helps you a lot down the line when we're trying to send out campaigns to groups. Right. It really makes it for a couple click processes to post something a little bit more complicated. In this case, I'm going to select a group that's already created, select the Doe family, then go ahead and hit next. Then at this point I'm going to go ahead and select Finish to import. Now we see our import results. The total number of contacts that we tried to import were 8. One was invalid. Total number of contacts that failed to import were 1. And the number of contacts that are important were 7. Now with that said, there are a couple of reasons why a contact might not have been imported. Could be a duplicate, could be a typo. There are a couple different things that are out there. Or maybe you've got a column that's missing out of that first name, last name or email. So a couple options there in play. So with that said, really important if we're having a contact that wasn't imported to go from right to left. Now we download our contacts that are not important. First, this will give us a CSV file to where we can take a look at that contact list. You know, the individuals that weren't imported and why they weren't. Right? So you take a look. Maybe you had a typo in there again, maybe you're missing a field that could be one. From there we can go to our view contacts not imported. And then you can see why in this case Billy Doe is already contact within this individual's account. So this is why they were flagged. And again, once we hit ok, we head back to our main screen here. And now that we're at our contact screen, the one thing that I did notice as I recalled back, is that when I was selecting which group to import the contacts in, I believe I accidentally double clicked on the Doe family. So you can see that the group didn't take here. But this actually provides me with a great opportunity just to showcase that if you do have a contact that is within a contact screen that doesn't have a group assigned to it, how do you go ahead and assign that group? So in this particular instance I'm just going to click on the members of the Doe family that I just imported in. And what I'm going to go ahead and do is take my cursor over to this action button here, hit the dropdown and then select groups. Now in this instance I'll see the Doe family right here. So I'm just going to take my cursor and check the box off. Now, when it comes to managing the contacts within a group, you can see that if a box is empty, so in our case the EDs for clients for life, that means that no individual that you have selected is part of that group. Now in this case we have the Doe family, which does have that check mark box there. That means that everybody that you've highlighted is in that particular group. Now the one option that's not here is the minus button. If you see a minus button in any of these boxes, this means that there are some contacts that are not within that particular group and some are. So in this case I'm going to go ahead select Apply and then we'll go ahead and hit refresh. And you can see that now all the does are within the Doe family group. So now with that said, now that we've got our contacts and our group set up, let's head on over to the Prospect Square newsletter. We're going to get there by taking our cursor heading on over to the left hand side and where we see newsletter and then select okay. So with that said, we're going to head over to our newsletter settings to start editing our newsletter and the things that will be repetitive within the newsletters moving forward. Now what we're going to go ahead and do is select our blue button that says Newsletter Settings and start there. Now, with that said, from our general area, this is where we're going to decide which individuals are going to receive the Prospect Square newsletter. And in this instance, right, I have the Doe family, so I'm going to go ahead and check off the Doe family right here. Now, as I move a little bit further down, you can see the preferences here. Custom header image. Right. This is a great plug for design concierge. They can create those headers for you that are also great for social media. If you do have that, you can just go ahead, select Attach file and upload your image there. Just a couple notes here. The file is going to have to be 600 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall and no larger than 1 megabyte in regards to a file size. And then again, we have our disclaimer box here that you would check off, saying that you do own the rights to that particular image or graph. Okay, so then as I move a little bit further down, we can see that we have the option to feature properties. And this is asking us how we want to sort or feature the properties that we want to have listed featured. And if we do want to have those listings featured, we're just going to toggle this icon over so that it's green as opposed to gray. We then get to our market areas and this is great because this is a easy way to showcase stats that are specific to individuals that are within your sphere. It's a great way to also add multiple reports so that you'll find a report in there for each sphere member that you've got that applies to them. Now to do this, we're going to go ahead and select our ad market area. We're going to start typing in some of these areas. So in this case, I'm going to go ahead and type in. CME as one, make this a little bit easier on myself and go a little bit broader. So in this case, you can see we've got all of Simi Valley here. In this case, I'm just going to go ahead and select on Turk county and take a look at Simi Valley as a whole. You can see within some of these MLS areas that if they'll have condos or single family homes, you can just select the one house type. Now additionally, if I want to go in and add multiple areas, I can start doing that as well. And then what you'll have to do is just add them one by one. They're not on the same screen. You could search just by an entire county as well. But I feel like this process is probably going to be a little bit faster if you're in a county that's got a lot of different MLS areas to pull from. So let's just say two more here. Okay, so now we've got all of our areas here. We also have the ability to reorder them as well. Maybe we want to go by alphabetical order. So Maybe I go 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and then I can go ahead and select update order. So this way then when we head to our actual report preview, we should see that order update. Now with that said, if I go to our social media sharing, if I want to have the newsletter automatically shared on my behalf, I'll on X, also known as Twitter and LinkedIn, I can toggle those over as long as my accounts have been synced with those. So once we're done here, we're going to go ahead and select Save and close. Go ahead and select okay, if I head back to the newsletter settings, you'll also see that this order has now been updated too. So now that we have our newsletter settings all set, ready to go, let's take a look at the current and upcoming newsletter. Now, before we go ahead and edit this particular newsletter, I will highlight that there is this opt out option. If you don't want to send out a newsletter for whatever reason, you can do that by selecting that link. To re opt in, just go ahead select the opt in option. Okay, now with that said, let's go ahead and edit our newsletter. I will make the note that the newsletter is going to be editable for you, the agent, the week before it goes out. So just keep that in mind when we're talking about timing purposes. So for today we'll go ahead and select Edit and this is where you'll be able to write in your own subject line the preview text. Again, we talk about the question mark box. If you ever have a question about what something might be right, this is what shows up in the inbox right after the subject line, whether that's to the right of it below it. Depending on which browser you have, you then have the ability to put in your own newsletter intro. So this is text, so if I go ahead and select edit, you can see I can just type in my notes here. You also have the ability to add in your video as well. Now if I scroll a little bit further down, I've got my display order and this is where I have the option to either pick a local set of stories to lead off or our national articles. Now with that said, the national article is always going to have that top spot. Now with local stories, they, if you do have those prioritized, they'll take up the second through whatever spots and then you'll have your national articles after that. Right? The, the question that comes of course after that is where do those local articles come from? These are going to be coming from the branch staff first. But with that said, you do have the ability to put in your own links within that local section as well to really help you tell the story that you want to tell. Now with that said, for our national content, you can see we have our articles here. If you're ever curious of what one looks like, you can go ahead and select see. Okay, so now with that said, we have our local content. So again, stories selected by the office staff. Once again, if you want to put in your own, you can just copy and paste the URL that you want to use within any of these areas. If you want to see what one of those office articles looks like, you can just select the preview option here and see what it looks like. Okay, so now with that said, if I keep heading down the line here, we get to our featured listings section. This is where you can add some of those listings that you want to have included within the newsletter. You can see up top here you have the ability to select up to six. So if I wanted to select add property, I could do that. Select our Stonewall circle listing here you can also add office listings as well, but just make sure that you do have permission to do that and select okay. Okay, so then we get to our real estate updates. These are the reports. So again if you do want to have these included, feel free, just go ahead, just click one, click them off. And with that said, as we talk about like the feature emails, then those will start getting updated as well, just because we put those in the newsletter settings. But for this one we're just going to go ahead and select our market areas. We have our groups that this is set to go out to. And if you want to send a test to see what it looks like, you can do so by typing in your email and then selecting Send a test. And then for the social media sharings again, for this one particular campaign, as long as that platform is synced within the profile page, then you can just hit the drag over and make sure that that goes out once this does go out for you. So again it would automatically post on the platform for you. So we'll go Ahead, we'll hit save. We'll hit. Okay. Now we could have gone ahead and selected the preview option there, but I'm going to do so here just by selecting the photo. This is always how you can see what that particular newsletter looked like. And then I can just drag down see our local stories, our national articles let off, we have our featured listings. Now if I scroll further down below we have our list of our area reports. Again, this is taking a look at an MLS area over the past month. And then if I take a look at the report, it's going to showcase those numbers. The great thing about these reports is that it updates on a monthly basis and again the individual can click on the area that applies to them, which I think is really helpful. And then additionally we have our search properties option and then this will go to the link that you've set up there. Now once we're done we can go ahead and just hit the X button here in the top right corner. Now if I want to see any of the past newsletters, I can click on the images of those newsletters just to see what that looked like. And as we're waiting for this to load, just you can see this appeared as we'll also start talking about the analytics as well. Now for this particular campaign hasn't gone out yet, so we don't have that ability to see its analytics. But you will typically I would say just check back in after 48 hours after it's gone out. But if we want to see what types of analytics we're looking at, if I select the view analytics of a past campaign. And then what we'll see is we'll see the number of newsletters sent out. The number delivered opens the open rate. So 50% open rate, that's phenomenal as far as metrics go. Our click rate so individuals clicking on the links within that total clicks, campaigns that were not delivered. This might be a great one to take a look at just so you can see why a particular campaign wasn't delivered. If I click on click rates right we can see who's clicked on those particular campaigns. So again just a lot of great items within here. So again you can really see in touch base with what your contact, what your sphere is doing with your newsletter. Okay now, now if you did want to just do a comparative look at how the various newsletters are comparing up against one another, you can do so by clicking on the analytics tab here on our left hand side. Take our cursor all the way over to the newsletter on the right. By default it'll go back to 14 days, but as you can see, you can go one month, three months, six months is great just because then you can take a look and how those campaigns have fared against one another. It's kind of the longest luck that we've got. So with that said, that wraps up the demonstration portion of today's workshop, but let's talk about a few other items before we wrap up today. Looking for More Workshops? Elevate your business with the best tools in the industry by attending future marketing workshops designed to help you grow your business, bring your brand to life, amplify your reach on social media, promote listings, generate leads, and more. Scan the QR code to visit cbmarketingworkshops.com this website is easy to use and provides you with a streamlined signup process so you can unlock sessions five days a week. If the upcoming workshops don't fit your schedule, don't worry. Our YouTube channel is a robust library of recorded workshops and quick tips available for on demand viewing so you can watch at your own pace anytime, any place. You can scan the QR code to visit our channel and don't forget to subscribe for easy access to our channel. Lastly, I want to remind you of our next available appointment service where you can book a 20 minute solution oriented virtual appointment with one of our 100 plus marketers in as little as two business hours. You can book these appointments for support on our core marketing tools@nextavailableappointment.com. with that all said, thank you for attending today's live demonstration. Have a wonderful rest of your day.