Spotlight On Clients For Life

Imagine free tickets to a Billy Joel concert or a ball game at Wrigley Field? Picture yourself as a grand prize winner sampling fine vintages during a wine tour. And it’s all because of your relationship with a Coldwell Banker independent agent. Terrisa Nevin, project manager who oversees Clients For Life, explains the importance of this exciting program.

Clients For Life says it helps agents live exceptional lives. How?
Clients For Life makes it easy for agents. All they need to do is upload their contacts into the system, and we do the rest. We send out more than 1 million emails a month letting clients know about the great things we’re offering them. In return, agents get something cool and exciting to take to their clients, such as giveaways, events and activity guides. It’s hard for agents to keep up with sending emails, so we take the heavy lifting out of it. All they need to do is nurture the business relationships we create through the emails we send and the events we put together. Our efforts are successful. Roughly one in five clients opens our emails when we contact them.

What do we offer?

• We give giveaways – They include home improvement gift cards, smart home devices and help with back-to-school shopping. Some popular ones are tickets to basketball and baseball games, and a coveted seat at the table during Sacramento’s famous Tower Bridge Dinner. Those giveaways draw an awesome turnout. Some markets, such as Philadelphia, do four $5,000 giveaways a year. To give you an idea of their effectiveness, an agent who delivered tickets to a client got this response: “By the way, I want to sell my house.” That’s exciting. These giveaways are an opportunity for agents to reach out to their clients and develop lasting relationships.
• We give back – We help charities, such as Soles4Souls, Toys for Tots and Ronald McDonald House, as part of the monthly offerings in Clients For Life. The neat thing about giving back is the local connection that comes with it. For example, our Homes for Dogs program is different in each community because each market works with its local shelter to find a home for dogs. We have markets where charitable initiatives were so important, such as collecting donations for Ronald McDonald House, they were incorporated into our Clients For Life yearly calendar of happenings. These initiatives enable us to maintain that local feel of giving back to the communities the agents serve.
• We give them fun things to do – We publish activity guides full of things to do and places to see, such as zoos, parks and hiking. Information and links let clients know where they can go for fun. These have the highest open rates for emails, and lots of visitors to the websites we promote.
• We give clients appreciation – The Night at the Rockies, when hundreds come out to Coors Field, is one way we show how much our clients are appreciated. Agents reserve space in restaurants the day of the ball game so they can spend time with clients. Clients call agents to ask, “Are we going to the game again this year?” Agents respond by buying extra tickets to keep their clients happy.

What’s next?
We are building on our successes by identifying ways to make things better. Analytics will help us determine what’s working and what needs tweaking. Feedback and testimonials give us an idea how well we are supporting our clients. Starting in January 2020, all markets will have the Clients For Life program and its calendar of monthly happenings that clients can enjoy and agents can promote. This helps build relationships that last a lifetime.