What To Say Now

Adapting to FCC Email Changes with Chris Drayer

• Dan Stewart • Episode 6

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The FCC's recent announcement about email regulations is causing quite the stir. In this episode of Happy Grasshopper, we're tackling what these changes mean for your business and what steps you need to take. Email communication isn't going away, but we've got to get smarter about it.

I'm joined by Chris Drayer, CEO of Revaluate, to break down the FCC's new email regulations and what you need to do to comply. We discuss the importance of improving email deliverability and database organization, rather than just cutting down on emails. Chris explains why segmentation and sending the right content to the right audience is essential. 

We also touch upon the potential financial penalties for non-compliance and what real estate professionals need to know to stay ahead of the curve. 

Tune in to get actionable tips on engaging with your contacts and ensuring your email strategy is up to snuff.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • Database cleanup and segmentation
  • FCC email regulation impacts and compliance
  • Strategies for effective email communication and engagement

Links from this episode:

Happy Grasshopper helps real estate agents and brokerages grow sales and recruitment. To schedule a call and learn how we can help you, visit https://happygrasshopper.com/tour

Happy Grasshopper utilizes best practices to deliver emails, text messages, voicemail drops, and handwritten notes in order to help real estate professionals succeed and convert more leads to closings by building relationships through conversation.

Chris Drayer  [00:00:00]:
Before we think that this is another attack on the real estate industry. It's not. It's all leads that are being distributed. So car salespeople, insurance, mortgage, everybody is affected by this rule, which is good for us as consumers. So as much of a pain in this may be, and the pain part is going to come in your wallet, because if you're a large portal and you're trying to sell one lead to twelve people, and now you can only sell one lead to one person, guess what? They're still gonna try to make money off of that one lead. So the price per lead is going up. That much we know for sure.

Dan Stewart  [00:00:40]:
Hey, everybody, it's me, Dan Stewart, and you're listening to what to say now. Our podcast dedicated to helping real estate professionals do a better job communicating with the people they work with and serve. I'm Dan, and I've got a fantastic guest for us today. He's my good friend, Chris Dreher, founder of Revaluate. Most of you know him from his work in the Marvel movies. Hi, Chris.

Chris Drayer  [00:01:08]:
Just gonna go right, right out with the deadpool.

Dan Stewart  [00:01:10]:
I mean, I just led with the deadpool. I did. Yeah. Sorry about that. It happens.

Chris Drayer  [00:01:15]:
Did you enjoy it?

Dan Stewart  [00:01:17]:
Parts of it, yeah.

Chris Drayer  [00:01:19]:
It doesn't really matter to me because I don't get a dollar.

Dan Stewart  [00:01:21]:
Yeah. Nope. You don't. You don't.

Chris Drayer  [00:01:23]:
Not concessions or anything, but, yeah.

Dan Stewart  [00:01:25]:
All kidding aside, if you don't know Chris Dreher, you absolutely should. Chris and I, we've had some sort of professional connection. For nearly the entire 14 years, I've been serving the real estate industry. And for the past many years now, we've had a really great integration between our services. Happy, grasshopper, and revaluate. So this is a podcast where we talk about conversation. We talk about real estate, we talk about serving people. And I think our relationship, Chris, is really representative of the best of all those things.

Dan Stewart  [00:01:59]:
Right? We built some camaraderie and rapport that turned into a friendship. From the friendship, we've built trust. We've established business relationships, and we've helped each other grow over many years now. I mean, what more could we ask for?

Chris Drayer  [00:02:15]:
I remember meeting you the first time at the now defunct and I dearly departed. I miss it dearly. The retzo show back in the day. And we were both vendors in the small Georgia vendor hall for that event. And I believe you spoke, and I was blown away. As anyone that hears you speak, that guy can speak.

Dan Stewart  [00:02:36]:
I was blown away. He could walk and talk at the same time. Getchae.

Chris Drayer  [00:02:42]:
It'S true, though. So, yeah, really glad to be here. But more than that, I'm glad to have known you for a long time. And, yeah, we keep doing cool stuff together, so I'm excited about that.

Dan Stewart  [00:02:53]:
Yeah. In fact, in just the moments before this call started, we're talking about things we could do together that we can probably share with the public here in the near future, which is pretty darn exciting. Right? Lots of good things going on.

Chris Drayer  [00:03:08]:
Stoked.

Dan Stewart  [00:03:08]:
Okay, so as we record this, and I mean, those who are listening, you know how this works, right? It's not live today. We recorded this at some point in the past, and the date that this conversation is taking place on is August 13.

Chris Drayer  [00:03:25]:
And that's a lie listeners don't, don't believe. Now, Dan is very truthful guy, but for some reason, he's pulling a fast one here.

Dan Stewart  [00:03:34]:
Wow. Okay, nice. So is it not the 13th? My watch.

Chris Drayer  [00:03:38]:
It is.

Dan Stewart  [00:03:39]:
Okay.

Chris Drayer  [00:03:39]:
It is.

Dan Stewart  [00:03:39]:
So who's the liar, Mister Dreyer. All right, so the reason I bring this up is because, you know, on August 1, much of the country put steps in place to have their practices come in alignment with the terms of the Nar settlement. The deadline for that is August 17, which is just a few days away from today. As we're recording this, it's an interesting time to observe and serve the real estate industry, because I think we're seeing a lot of misinformation, a lot of unnecessary fear, a lot of confusion about what these changes are going to mean for the individual agent on the street. So I thought I'd ask you, Chris, what sort of things are you seeing or hearing from your members that maybe are worth mentioning to our audience?

Chris Drayer  [00:04:31]:
Well, yeah, I think there's a lot of concern with this 17th date. And when it passes, I can't remember the speaker. I think Mike said it on stage at Inman. I saw a recording that it's similar. Yes, similar to the y two k thing.

Dan Stewart  [00:04:47]:
Yep.

Chris Drayer  [00:04:48]:
So here's this big, gnarly thing out there, you know, and we're all worried about it. And what's going to happen are planes going to drop out of the sky? And things continued on. And there were some changes, and there were some fines and practices changed, but a lot of angst.

Dan Stewart  [00:05:02]:
I mean, that most of the world is going to wake up on August 18 and still need to live somewhere. Right?

Chris Drayer  [00:05:09]:
I believe that's the case when people.

Dan Stewart  [00:05:11]:
Need to buy, sell, or invest in real estate, they're going to need the help of a real estate professional. Right?

Chris Drayer  [00:05:19]:
So as I talk to people about it, I think where their concern is has been dealing with the, the documentation and the legal aspect of it. But now it's transitioning to, well, consumers think this already happened months ago and they think that there is no buyer compensation. So there's an education component and so that's a big issue.

Dan Stewart  [00:05:40]:
Yeah, I've noticed that on social media. I haven't heard that directly from a client yet. I did talk to a client just a couple of days ago in the Pacific Northwest. As has been my habit lately, I'm asking, well, hey, how have these changes been for you? And they're like, what changes? There's been no changes here. We've always had people sign a buyer's representation agreement. We're so used to not having a buyer broker compensation listed in the MLS. It's just sort of the way business is done. And then yesterday I talked with an agent in Texas and they were absolutely panicked about what these changes would mean because they haven't had the personal experience of practicing in a market where what will become the new normal is just the way it's always been done.

Dan Stewart  [00:06:29]:
I think we're going to go through probably a short period of time where the general public, the marketplace needs to learn. And here's how that's going to go. At least in Florida, where I live, people shop for houses because it rained and they don't get to go to the beach today. Right. It's, we're down on vacation. You know, I see real estate everywhere. Well, I'm curious, what does that place cost, right? So there's a lot of wasted time because agents get that phone call and next thing you know they're showing this family on vacation who has no actual intent. They're driving those people around and showing them properties.

Dan Stewart  [00:07:07]:
It's not going to lead to a transaction where in the new environment there's this tremendous advantage of having a whole market say, you know what, I'd love to help you. Let's go ahead and meet and we'll have a conversation about the structure within which I can help you. I think that's a huge potential time saver for agents.

Chris Drayer  [00:07:28]:
It was surprising to me to learn that there were actually 17 states that already had something similar to this rule in place. So the audience that is listening right now, yeah, there's a good chance that you are making some changes, but maybe not. And maybe it's just things are the same. As far as the rain comment goes, in Colorado, where we are, it's the opposite. If it's snowing or raining, people are not going to houses. So that's the last thing you want to do.

Dan Stewart  [00:07:58]:
Yeah, to get off the roads. Right. Get off the roads. Well, so, I mean, if we think about where we are just on the calendar again, it's August 13. As we record this, the change that real estate is going to undertake. It's really just starting this year, as you and I have talked about quite a bit. By the end of 2024, the FCC will have new regulations in place that will change the way agents can interact with their leads and interact with their database.

Chris Drayer  [00:08:37]:
I think this is a much bigger deal than the buyer story, but maybe that's because we've had a lot of time to digest the buyer story for the last five years or however long that that lawsuit started. And this is relatively new. The idea of fines and regulation and blacklists, people don't understand for the most part how that could impact their business. But they're starting to see it because their emails are starting to, nothing get opened at the same rate and their responses are starting to drop off. Well, why is that?

Dan Stewart  [00:09:09]:
Well, you know, it's funny you lead with email there because some members of the audience are aware of the changes that Google and Yahoo implemented. And I'll just give a quick summary here for people who are listening that might not be familiar, but in the US we have something called can spam legislation, and it's largely a toothless law that's very rarely even considered, let alone enforced. And the general public has gotten used to receiving bucket loads of unwanted outreach. Right? We get spam email by the drove every single day of our lives. And Google has sort of become the police of our inbox. Most email inboxes today are Google Gmail inboxes. And Google has said, you know what? We're tired of processing all this spam. So they and Yahoo implemented some things regarding authenticity in Q one of this year.

Dan Stewart  [00:10:14]:
And so a lot of people who weren't used to playing by the rules, they got found out very quickly. You know, it's not 15 years ago where you could upload a giant list of strangers and email them safely. Those days are gone. And segue from that over to text messaging. I think we're all probably going a little crazy by the amount of text message spam we get. And the coming changes from the FCC, I think, are really going to have a strong likelihood of nearly eliminating that in 2024.

Chris Drayer  [00:10:47]:
As they should. Absolutely as they should. I'm an old guy, and back in the day, we had a phone on the wall in the breakfast room. And the family would sit down. Me as a, I don't know, fifth grader or whatever, and the phone would ring every time at dinner and it was super irritating. And my parents would get pissed off. They'd go stand up and answer the phone because that's what you did. That was before answering machines, I guess.

Chris Drayer  [00:11:14]:
I don't know. It was before caller id. So, yeah, I think it was before answering machines. And they get pissed off. And the government stepped in and the FCC made rules to have the do not call list, which is still utilized today. Text messaging, email, all of this needs to be sort of, kind of regulated, unfortunately, in order to prevent people from abusing it.

Dan Stewart  [00:11:39]:
Yeah. So it really does change the landscape considerably. If you're listening to this and you sell real estate, I'm going to guess that we already believe some of the same things. I see real estate as being a relationship business. Most listings come through referrals. When people are looking to sell their home, their largest investment, they often ask people, hey, do you know a good agent, someone I should work with? They're trusting their network, they're trusting their relationships to find that listing. So whether it's building reevaluate, building happy grasshopper, or building your own real estate practice, I truly believe that relationships are the fastest way that we can create the results that we're looking for. I also very much believe that relationships really live inside conversation.

Dan Stewart  [00:12:32]:
We've known each other for 14 years ish. Right. And yet, if we stop talking to each other, like, if we fail to connect, those relationships fade. They just do. So what the silver lining of these FCC changes are, or that your relationships, like those people who actually know you and appreciate you and want to hear from you, they're not going to be diminished even slightly by these new regulations. Right? They're not going to touch that at all. So I really believe that there's a small window of time between now and the end of the year where there's a few things agents absolutely have to do. Step one, I think they need to clean up and organize their database and imagine that.

Dan Stewart  [00:13:22]:
Chris, that's probably something you can help with, I would imagine, right?

Chris Drayer  [00:13:28]:
I suppose we could go down that path.

Dan Stewart  [00:13:30]:
Sure. Chris, I'm going to give you kind of a shameless plug here, but part of what reevaluate does is issue a database grade. If you've got questions about the quality of your database, just head over to revaluate.com and find the right resource there. Chris, give us the link and we'll post it along with the podcast. The reason I think that's so critical to do right now is because if you're sending email, for example, and you're sending to bad addresses, everything else you send is likely to be sequestered in the future. You just have to start with clean data. It's really the first primary step, I think, to having any sort of success with your database nurturing plans.

Chris Drayer  [00:14:16]:
This can be kind of confusing. So I've got a sort of an analogy that sort of, I think boils it down to the nuts and bolts that real estate professionals will understand. And it's only 20 seconds. So forgive me if for 20 seconds here the email providers are scoring you as a sender, much like the credit companies score you as a borrower or one of your prospects. And you've got these three organizations, right, that score your credit worthiness to have a credit score. That's what's happening on the back end now. You don't get a free report to see what it looks like, right? No free credit report for your email sending grade. But every little thing that you do affects that score.

Chris Drayer  [00:15:07]:
If you send to Mickey Mouse, that is going to negatively impact your score. If you send to Chris Drehery fail.com, that's not a real email address that affects your score. All of these things negatively impact your score. And the only thing that you could do to get it back is to send good emails that people open and respond to and click inside.

Dan Stewart  [00:15:34]:
Yeah, that analogy I think is spot on. It definitely is. There is no credit karma for your email sending capacity. Like once you burn it, you burn it. And I won't name the name, but I have a very high profile client, a name that nearly everyone in this audience would recognize. And this individual is in gmail jail at the moment because they've attempted unsuccessfully to do what worked years ago in this new environment. And so they're changing domains. I mean, I mean, can you imagine the hassle of migrating everything, every place people are known? And the saddest thing is that we don't have certainty here.

Dan Stewart  [00:16:20]:
But it seems like Google is connecting their behavior at the prior domain to this new domain. So it doesn't look like that tactic has successfully convinced Google that this person will now comply with the rules. It's an incredibly interesting time, right? So here's what I would suggest. If you're going, oh well, what do I do with all these things? First thing you should really do is just take a look at your database. Do you have tens of thousands of people who are in there. How did they get there? I mean, are these leads that you've been collecting over your entire career? Did you buy a list to attempt to like, digitally farm a neighbor, a neighborhood? We see all sorts of crazy things that get imported to our system. We have to guide our members to do the right actions to get the right results. And I'm curious, Chris, from your perspective, right.

Dan Stewart  [00:17:25]:
We have some shared members. We have different members as well. Are you seeing any particular actions people are taking that everyone should be replicating.

Chris Drayer  [00:17:35]:
Right now in order to prevent the problem or that they are doing that's the cause of the problem?

Dan Stewart  [00:17:41]:
Okay.

Chris Drayer  [00:17:43]:
Sorry. For clarity.

Dan Stewart  [00:17:44]:
Well, for clarity, let's first identify behavior that causes the problem. We've given several examples. I think if you're purchasing a list and you're cold emailing people in volume, that's almost certainly going to be a problem today.

Chris Drayer  [00:18:00]:
Yeah. So one really common practice as an example is to buy leads from a portal. And those are buyer leads that come in and you don't know where they're coming from. And if you live in a beautiful location like the west coast of Florida, such as Dan, you're getting tourists that are coming in and they are requesting information about properties as a lead that you're paying for. But then they go back to North Dakota and you then have a whole bunch of people that are like that avatar all over the country that are coming and looking at property in Florida. And then you send out a market update for Florida or you send out a list of properties for Florida and they don't live there and they really don't have an intent on buying. They're going to flag it as spam and, and they're not going to open your emails. That's all going to negatively impact your email score.

Dan Stewart  [00:18:55]:
Okay, so what do you think they should send instead?

Chris Drayer  [00:18:58]:
Chris, I think it's valuable to have people that are interested in your area, but it's a different piece of content to send them. And it's more about the conversation than a market update. Or here's a list of properties that you may be interested in because they're not really interested in that. They're interested in the idea of moving there at retirement or whenever that time period is in the future. It's about starting a conversation.

Dan Stewart  [00:19:23]:
Thank you for saying that, starting a conversation, because there's really only two types of content that get delivered. There's content that informs. Here's everything that's happening in this zip code. This is up. That's down. The other thing sideways, we're having these events. If you have any questions, call us. That content is designed to inform the reader and that's representative of a typical real estate email newsletter.

Dan Stewart  [00:19:52]:
Check. Done like right and true.

Chris Drayer  [00:19:56]:
There are people that, that works for.

Dan Stewart  [00:19:57]:
There are people that need to get that. I want to be very clear about my remarks here. That's a choice to educate those people. Right. I want to invite you to consider the value of nothing, educating them and instead engaging them. Right. So what happens if you take that same news source, you know what's up and what's down and what's sideways and you pick one of those points and you send a message that's designed to start a conversation on that point rather than inform them of everything. Right.

Dan Stewart  [00:20:32]:
See, if you choose to engage the reader, you create the opportunity for a conversation where if you choose to educate the reader, you're probably answering their questions for them right now. I believe contracts come from conversation. If you can have more conversation, you're certainly going to also teach Google, teach all these email service providers that people want your content because they engage with it, they reply to it. That's a strong, that is the goal, strong indicator.

Chris Drayer  [00:21:08]:
So your email score will improve if you can get a reply or if you can get an open. And if it's the same old, same old and they've seen a market update for the last eleven months and here comes month twelve, they're not interested. Like that's not going to get open. It's not good for you long term.

Dan Stewart  [00:21:23]:
Well, so this is a good segue, I think, to the landscape from a data perspective that this lives in the, I mean, how geeky is that sentence? Right? That's ridiculous. But last year we had something like 170 million digital leads in real estate for roughly 4.3 million transactions. Right? That is very lopsided math. 170 million digital leads, 4.3 ish million transactions. What happens is that one lead, it registers somewhere and it got sold multiple times. So, you know, if you're listening to this, you probably had that experience, right? You called that fresh lead that you thought was just yours and you're like agent number ten to reach out, right?

Chris Drayer  [00:22:09]:
Yeah. Well that was the whole point of speed to lead, right?

Dan Stewart  [00:22:12]:
Yeah, exactly. You got to get to first, right? Speed to lead. That was the most important thing ten years ago. And you know, today because of automation, the proliferation of marketing automation, all these platforms do essentially the same thing. Every mls, every IDX in the country delivers a price change alert, right? Here's a property search update and people are just auto subscribed to getting the same thing over and over and over from all these different agents that their information has been sold to. So that also creates just a huge pile of unwanted, unnecessary content. So much like that buyer's agent is going to get a bunch of time back by not showing houses to people outside of a buyer's representation agreement. Right.

Dan Stewart  [00:23:00]:
Email service providers, email clients, Gmail, outlook, et cetera, et cetera. They're going to get a bunch of bandwidth back because the regulations in the FCC prevent a single lead from being sold more than one time. Right. It's got some pretty fancy language there. Explicit consent. Right? Those are the magic words before we.

Chris Drayer  [00:23:27]:
Think that this is another attack on the real estate industry. It's not. It's all leads in that are being distributed. So car salespeople, insurance, mortgage, everybody is affected by this rule, which is good for us as consumers. So as much of a pain in this may be, and the pain part is going to come in your wallethood, because if you, if you're a large portal and you're trying to sell one lead to twelve people, and now you can only sell, sell one lead to one person, guess what? They're still going to try to make money off of that one lead. So the price per lead is going up. That much we know for sure.

Dan Stewart  [00:24:06]:
Yeah. Just like as we're talking, I have a text here, an unwanted text that I have not asked for, and I'm going to do the same thing here with this message that you do. Right? You click report junk and it says delete and report junk. And I go, yes, delete and report junk. I hate. I'm talking to my friend Chris. I don't need this interruption about buying their whatever it is. Right?

Chris Drayer  [00:24:31]:
Hey Dan, what happens if we're both real estate agents and you get a text or an email from me? That is something about real estate and it comes to you as trying to get you to buy a house from me. What are you going to do in that?

Dan Stewart  [00:24:46]:
Yeah, sure. Can you imagine?

Chris Drayer  [00:24:48]:
I mean, everybody listening has done that report. I hate that person. Spam.

Dan Stewart  [00:24:54]:
Spam, right. Well, that reminds me, that reminds me of going to real estate conferences where, you know, my card is handed out a bunch of times and then I start getting market reports from places I've never even visited. I'm like, what the heck are you doing, people? That's just, that's not the right thing to do.

Chris Drayer  [00:25:14]:
You've got to remove the crud from your database in order to preserve your score. You've got to send messages that are inducing of conversations to improve your score. These things work hand in hand. It's weird. It's like we're working together on something that makes sense.

Dan Stewart  [00:25:34]:
Imagine that craziness. I have a little wrinkle to throw at this. You said you've got to get rid of the crud. I'm going to say no to that. I'm going to say you need to do something different with the crud. Right. You have to identify that segment of the database that's not safe to email to.

Chris Drayer  [00:25:53]:
I'm good with that.

Dan Stewart  [00:25:54]:
But what if you put a retargeting campaign in place for those people? What if you're using social media or tools like ad roll to follow these people around the Internet with your display ad? How cool would that be? Then they can click the ad. If they have a near term interest, they can opt in. You've got permission now to send to them and that's going to lift your send score.

Chris Drayer  [00:26:21]:
So segment. Don't get rid of the crud, but segment.

Dan Stewart  [00:26:25]:
Yeah. Right things, right order, right result. Right things, right order, right result. Business is just that simple. And you've got to start with organization. You have to segment properly to be able to send the right content to the right people at the right time. And I think segmentation is really best done based on the relationship. So let's use us as an example, Chris.

Dan Stewart  [00:26:53]:
Like last time I was in Colorado, you picked me up, we went and had beers together. You took me to El Dorado Canyon State park. We spent like this delightful afternoon together. I got to visit this park, very special part of the world that you live in.

Chris Drayer  [00:27:09]:
That was a good day.

Dan Stewart  [00:27:10]:
That was a great day, man. I need to come visit again. For sure. It was a great day. So the point is, this is a real, authentic relationship that's here. Now, if in between those visits, those real, like, live human interactions, the only thing I ever hear from you is reevaluate is on sale. Did you know revaluate has this and it has that, and that's the other thing. It is.

Dan Stewart  [00:27:33]:
So it's just. It's the wrong flavor. It's an. It's an off key song. Right. It just feels entirely disrespectful of the authenticity of our actual relationship.

Chris Drayer  [00:27:48]:
It's like a billboard.

Dan Stewart  [00:27:49]:
I mean, a billboard feels less disrespectful because that at least is intended for everybody driving by. Right. But my inbox is my inbox. My text is my text. And if I've let you into this. If I've said, hey, cross this threshold where we have a relationship, and then you abuse that privilege, I mean, that is just. That's not a good path forward. It just is.

Chris Drayer  [00:28:14]:
Love that. I love that. Yeah.

Dan Stewart  [00:28:16]:
All right, so I'm doing a little projection here, right? I want to give the audience a moment to, like, swallow all of these changes they're dealing with right now, brought on by Nara, and then understand that the FCC changes, you may have seen a video I put out where I'm like, did these FCC changes mean the end of real estate? Like, how's that for doom and gloom language? No. People are always going to need a place to live. Right? And yet, if you don't take the right actions, this absolutely could mean the end of your career in real estate. Because the penalties, the fines that are connected to abuses are astronomical. We've seen fines from sprint and t mobile and at and t as high as $15,000 per unwanted text message. That is a mind blowingly high number. Right? And guess what? Your eno is not going to cover that, agents. It won't.

Dan Stewart  [00:29:19]:
There is no protection for that. That is called you are screwed. So you just have to do it. Right. Too much doom and gloom, Chris? Or you agree with that assessment?

Chris Drayer  [00:29:28]:
I think it's the appropriate amount. I mean, the idea of doom and gloom is to inspire action and chain because you want to avoid that pain, and people will take action to avoid pain. So I think it's the right amount. And you didn't even mention the very large top five real estate brand and the multimillion dollar settlement that they had to deal with.

Dan Stewart  [00:29:53]:
40 million and Keller Williams. Yes. I'll fill in those blanks. Right. This is all public stuff. It's not like we're talking out of turn. You've seen the same headlines, dear listener, that we have this very few brands can withstand that sort of violation. They just can't.

Dan Stewart  [00:30:13]:
So, you know, if you're listening to this at the brand, the broker owner, the team owner, or the agent level, you need to understand that they will find the source that has the resources, and those will be the people who have to pay. So, you know, you can do it right or you can do it once. I don't think there's lots of second chances after these changes take place.

Chris Drayer  [00:30:39]:
The changes have taken place. Now it's up to us to make the. To comply, and then it's going to be up to the lawyers to seek the money and find where the money is and follow that trail to enforce it. So that's what's going to happen. That was the path that we just saw with, with Nar. That's the path that we're going to see most likely with the FCC.

Dan Stewart  [00:31:04]:
Well, so let's lay out a short list of things that people need to be aware of. First of all, just Google FCC changes 2024. There's been a ton that's written and published this. I think if I remember the date correctly, it was December 18, 2023 that they published. The FCC published exactly what the changes were. When they go into effect, this information is not hidden. It's out there. The question is what to do about it.

Dan Stewart  [00:31:36]:
And do we get so focused on y two k, the not so earth shattering change that many agents are struggling with right now, or do we pay attention to the real change that has that potential to just end the careers of agents who don't know better? So let's build a first list. Let's build a short list here. Chris, what are the things that you think should be on this?

Chris Drayer  [00:32:07]:
So FCC is at the top of your threat list and that's kind of how you're looking at this right now.

Dan Stewart  [00:32:13]:
I think that we have a unique moment in time right now where agents can create engagement with their existing database without fear of draconian penalty. Like now is absolutely the time to get that done. Because one of the provisions and the changes is that if a contact hasn't engaged with your messaging for a period of six months, you're supposed to stop.

Chris Drayer  [00:32:36]:
Messaging them or get them to re engage and say, yes, please keep sending me stuff that I'm not going to engage with.

Dan Stewart  [00:32:44]:
That's right. That's right. And our friends to the north in Canada have legislation for this already. It's called CASL, canadian anti spam legislation. And I love it. I mean, that's a term that makes a lot of sense. I mean, who among us hasn't signed up for something online in the past that we no longer really care about? And yet every day we're probably still getting junk, just filling up our inbox. It's nuts.

Chris Drayer  [00:33:12]:
Yeah. Like, I think it's going to be beneficial to our inboxes and it's going to improve deliverability for good quality messages. And I think that's the intent. They're not trying to remove email as a communication. They're trying to improve it as a communication strategy because it's gone off the rails.

Dan Stewart  [00:33:33]:
Yeah, off the rails. What a term. I can't source the stat right now, but it's over 90% of all Internet traffic is spam. Like. That's an absurd waste of resources. It's just an absurd amount of energy.

Chris Drayer  [00:33:50]:
And a lot of nigerian princes.

Dan Stewart  [00:33:52]:
Say again?

Chris Drayer  [00:33:53]:
That's a lot of nigerian princesses.

Dan Stewart  [00:33:57]:
That's a whole lot of expired car warranties. Right? It's a lot, definitely. So let's put together a short list here. Chris, the first thing I think should be on the list is just understand the game. We have to know where we are. It's mid August. As this is being recorded without fail by the end of September, I think you should commit to having your database cleaned up. You've got to put segmentation in place.

Dan Stewart  [00:34:25]:
You've got to have a true plan to communicate with everyone effectively.

Chris Drayer  [00:34:29]:
Quick question, Dan. In that December 23 announcement by the FCC, they actually gave dates when things are happening in different cliffs occur is that.

Dan Stewart  [00:34:39]:
I don't recall them giving specific dates. I think there was a reference to by the end of 2024 these would be put in place. It's like there was a twelve month clock established on December 18 is my recommendation.

Chris Drayer  [00:34:54]:
Okay, so we can now have a deadline because of that document. That's where I was going with this. We know that that is our timeframe now to take. Take action and to test. So you don't just need to take action. You want to test and make sure that your program is working so you can iterate again if you need to going forward. Right. So, yeah, I think that that's very wise to be at the top of the list.

Dan Stewart  [00:35:19]:
Well, we got to start where we are, right? So, you know, some people listening to this have massive databases they've invested a lot of time in. And other people are like, oh yeah, my database. I really need to work on that. Whichever of those people you might be or somewhere in between, that's okay, you are where you are. Let's take the actions necessary to make sure you have a brighter future.

Chris Drayer  [00:35:42]:
Because we've been doing this free audit of databases. We've talked to a lot of people about databases and nearly 100% of agents, just so that listeners know they're not alone. Nearly 100% of the thousands of people we've talked to have said, yeah, I know I need to do that. I need to clean it up, I need to segment it. And they don't even know about the FCC stuff. Right? This is just in general, they know in the back of their head this needs to be done. And when were you going to get to that?

Dan Stewart  [00:36:18]:
I find there are a couple of moments in every agent's life that spur them to take action. The most meaningful one is when they're driving home and they see some other agent sign in front of one of their neighbors homes. That is a spear in the chest moment where they're like, never again. I helped them buy that house a few years ago. I'm never going to make that same mistake again. And then they get so caught up with the issue of the day that next thing you know, it's just this ongoing, never solved problem. In fact, one of my favorite questions to ask a live audience anytime I'm on stage somewhere, I always say, so raise your hand for me if you have a CRM. And everybody raises their hand, right? Because every brand, every team, every brokerage, all provides some sort of technology for their agents.

Dan Stewart  [00:37:07]:
And then I say, okay, now I want you to raise your hand again. If your database is perfectly organized and producing all the opportunity it could be, and they literally do what you just did. They smile or they just laugh. They're like, nope, not even close to that. Ha ha ha. Right? You all have the technology. You do not have the knowledge or the expertise to win with this. So, you know, companies like revaluate, companies like Happy Grasshopper.

Dan Stewart  [00:37:36]:
This is what we do every day, day in and day out. And that's why, very meaningfully, we say the first thing you should do is get organized. Because if you don't have that organization, it's not possible to send the right message to the right people at the right time. Right? So step one is organization. I'm going to propose a step two to decide what your outcome is. A lot of people don't know. They just want another transaction. Do you want to buy or sell or.

Dan Stewart  [00:38:08]:
Doesn't matter, I'll take whatever. Right? Well, what price point do you like to work in? The price point that hires me. That's where I like to work. You must have certainty about the business you're building so you can take the right steps to get to that particular outcome. And the more certainty you have, the more easy it is to make decisions about who should get what in your database. So have a goal in mind, people. That's what we're talking about. If you did twelve transactions last year, what's your goal for this year? If you did 200 last year, what's your goal for this year? How are you going to get them? Database is likely the fastest way to do that.

Dan Stewart  [00:38:50]:
So two steps so far, organization and outcome. Step three is going to be to build your messaging plan. Once you know where you're going, it's time to create the strategy that can lead you from where you are to where you'd like to go. And I get how challenging that can be for you. So, you know, if you're stuck there and you need help, just go to happygrasshopper.com dot. We have tons of information there about how to do that. Or you can just book with us and someone on staff will help you. You can do all that right from our homepage.

Dan Stewart  [00:39:27]:
So it's that simple, really. It's three steps. We're not talking about having to land a rocket on a barge over here. It's simply understanding the relevancy of the relationships you have in the database and the appropriateness of the content that you're delivering to those people in relation to the desired outcome you're seeking.

Chris Drayer  [00:39:49]:
If we're a new listener sitting out there and they're considering this, we've given them sort of this stick approach. Then we've said, here's the three steps to do to improve the situation. What's the carrot on the other end look like in your mind, Dan?

Dan Stewart  [00:40:07]:
That's a great question, Chris. One of my favorite things is helping people have that moment of discovery. Name a database typical agent. There will be somewhere between 100 and maybe 300 people who actually know who they are, and there might be several hundred strangers that are in that database. Well, some of those strangers may be ready to transact now. Right. But if you put them on a once a week communication, they're going to unsubscribe because they didn't ask for that. They don't want it.

Dan Stewart  [00:40:40]:
But if you shake the database, like once every 90 days or so, you'll have several people who raise their hand and say, you know what? I actually need to talk to you about that. Now, I would love information about this. Right. Remember, you're not closing the deal in that email. You're closing on having a conversation in that email. That's the only thing that's for sale there. Nobody's going to click a link and enter their credit card to buy their house. That's not going to happen.

Chris Drayer  [00:41:07]:
Be an adult. Don't be a high schooler.

Dan Stewart  [00:41:10]:
Okay? What's wrong with high school?

Chris Drayer  [00:41:12]:
You got to wait.

Dan Stewart  [00:41:13]:
Come on, Mandy.

Chris Drayer  [00:41:16]:
I got one. Yeah. Chill. Instant gratification is not the name of the game.

Dan Stewart  [00:41:23]:
And yet instant gratification is sometimes the outcome. If you send a message to your past clients and your sphere of influence and you ask how they are and if maybe they'd like to get together for coffee, well, you get that gratification of going and reconnecting with people you have a relationship with. And then if you ask smart questions like, hey, by the way, do you know anyone in your neighborhood who might be thinking of moving? Or even someone we could convince to move if we got a high enough offer for their home? You'd be surprised how many of them are like, actually, you know what? I do know. Bob and Susie down the block have been talking about moving to Florida. They might be exactly who you need to talk to. Let me make an introduction that works.

Chris Drayer  [00:42:04]:
Some of our top customers use that line, and it's just softer than asking them if they're ready to buy and sell, which people are over with. Anyway.

Dan Stewart  [00:42:16]:
We train on this extensively. We call it the oblique ask because it's not that direct, confrontational. Right. Chris, are you ready to sell your house? Would you like to know what it's worth? I bet we've got buyers.

Chris Drayer  [00:42:29]:
What are you shopping for today?

Dan Stewart  [00:42:30]:
Yeah, right? I mean, think about yourself. You walk into a department store and you have someone come up right away and they're like, what are you looking for here today? You know, I don't know.

Chris Drayer  [00:42:40]:
Nothing.

Dan Stewart  [00:42:40]:
I don't know, but I'll find it on my own. Okay, so we are. We are two individuals united in a common purpose of helping you win. Right. Dear listener, these sessions are for you. And there's a lot that's been covered here today. I want to make sure we have the ability to connect you, Chris, to the audience. What's the best way for them to reach out to you if they have any follow up?

Chris Drayer  [00:43:06]:
Oh, cool. Well, we'll provide a link that we can drop in here at the end, but the direction for the free database gradient audit that we talked about earlier is revaluate.com. r e v a l dash dash. E.com free.

Dan Stewart  [00:43:24]:
Wow, that's really complex. Revaluate.com free. All right.

Chris Drayer  [00:43:30]:
And we can slow it down.

Dan Stewart  [00:43:32]:
No, we're good. We are good. Chris. I love you, brother. Thank you for being you. Thank you for all you've done all these years. And thank you for hosting one of my favorite human beings for a beer here at the end of the month. I'll connect you to veneer later.

Dan Stewart  [00:43:49]:
Awesome.

Chris Drayer  [00:43:50]:
You're the best, Dan. Love you too.

Dan Stewart  [00:43:52]:
All right, be good, man. See ya.