Gift cards are the perfect way to say thanks to your past clients. With thanks.io you can automatically mail handwritten gift cards on the anniversary of your client's closing that help ensure they continue to use you as their real estate agent.
The thanks.io business plan gives you:
Payment Deferral - Only pay for gift cards when they redeem them (saving your $1000s)
Gift Card Gating - Make your recipient watch a video or fill out a form before redeeming the card.
Only 30% of agents are used a 2nd time.
Did you know only 30% of agents get repeat business from their past clients. Want to know why? They only focus on their new deals and fail to stay in front of their sphere, which gives other agents access to them & thus kills your repeat business. In the tutorial we are going to show you how dramatically increase this repeat business rate by automating hand written gift cards that play a YouTube video before they get their gift card.
First we will design the gift card & provide Canva source files that you can steal/use.
Then we will show you how to build the message with the gift card & YouTube video.
Lastly we will show you how to build the campaign triggers that makes sending the cards completely hands off & automatic.
Design the Gift Card Image
The first step is designing the image for the card. Thanks.io has a direct integration with Canva, which makes its very easy to have your designs look legit but more importantly get your point across & convert.
Click "Design Notecard/Giftcard" (in the bottom right)
This will open up Canva, from here click More > Folders > All your designs & pick the template you just designed, then hit save in the top right to save it back to thanks as a giftcard template.
Design the Message Template & Gift Card Settings
The second step will build the custom handwritten message component of the notecard as well as configure the brand/amount & the recording & linking of your YouTube video.
Open up your message templates in your thanks.io dashboard & click "Add Message" in the top right.
Choose Giftcard & give it a title, than compose your message that shows your care, but also keeps your services top of mind. (We will show you in the next step how to merge in a custom greeting & extra tid-bids of data to make it more personalized.
Hi Mike & Sue,
I can't believe it's been another year since you moved into 4 Hidden Meadow.
Please use this Home Depot card to help you complete the next fun project around the house.
If you know anyone that may need my services please send them my way & if you guys ever need anything I'm just a call away.
Say Hi to Mikey & Tommy for me!
Sincerely, Justin Tracy (555-444-3333)
P.S. Just scan that QR code a watch a quick thank you video from me, then it will take you to your gift card.
actual example of the inside of the notecard/giftcard
Now choose your gift card brand & amount from the settings under the message.
Then you will see field called "Watch a Youtube Video Before Redemption", this is where you want to put your YouTube link in. For an example of a YouTube video we think works good please watch this video.
Remember your client has to watch the whole video before they redeem the card so its a great way to really get your point across, ask for a referral & re-solidify your relationship. Remember to change your video once a year! I would put a calendar event to remind you.
Create a mailing list & a campaign
The last step is building your mailing list & uploading your past clients into it. If you want to get crazy you can even Zap them into from your favorite CRM (but that's for another lesson)
Goto the mailing list section of your thanks.io dashboard.
Click "Add List" in the top right, choose "Upload from CSV" & give it a name.
Here is where you want to map the CSV columns to the fields in thanks.io I used Custom1 for the name's of the couple like Tom & Sue, so you could easily have a way to put that in the greeting. I also mapped Custom2 to a sentence in my spreadsheet that was specific to them like. "Say Hi to Tommy & Susie for Me" or "I hope your parents are doing well", or "I hope your dog Muffin is still loving the big backyard". If you do this you can use that mail merge field in your message template to give even more personality to the card.
Make sure you map the closing date to to the birthday field. This is the hack to get thanks.io to automatically send on that date.
Goto the campaigns section of thanks.io. Click "Add a New Campaign" in the top right.
Pick the mailing list, image and message template you just built. Than choose sending style "Birthday".
That's it your done. Now every person you add to your list will automatically get your gift card & watch your video on the anniversary of their home purchase. Please remember to test out your mail merge fields & to remake your video every year so it doesn't get old.
If you're looking for the team at thanks.io to help you accomplish what you read in this article, join the business plan today!
NOTE: The dashboard is best experienced on a full-resolution desktop.