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Cold call, text, email or DM: what actually works with agents?

Cold calling, you say you got away from it. Is it just not effective at all? I have ADD. I can’t be doing a hundred channels at once.Asked by a photographer on Dominic Turner, Central Texas

Pick one. Nobody answers their phone anymore, so the daily channel is a text or a DM, and the call happens the second she replies. A hundred channels is how you end up doing zero. The channel matters less than the rhythm.

Non-voice is king

I got away from cold calling myself. Not because it can’t work. Because nobody answers their phone anymore, and a hundred unanswered calls is a week of your life.

What replaced it: a cold text or DM every day, with her name and one thing about her listing. One observation, one question. Ten a day.

One channel. Not because the others don’t work, but because one you do every day beats five you do when you remember. With ADD, the daily one is the only one that survives.

The moment she replies, call. She’s holding the phone. That’s the one window when a call isn’t cold, and most people type a paragraph into it instead.

A hundred channels is how you end up doing zero, and the agent with a listing this week hears from somebody else.

Nobody answers their phone anymore. Text first, and call the second they reply.

Stack DM and text, then add a Loom

DMs hit a ceiling fast. Instagram caps you around 25 to 30 DMs a day before the bans start, and if you ignore it, you lose the account.

Text takes the overflow. Same message, same shape, different pipe.

Text has no daily cap. It lands on the phone she’s holding in the driveway, which is where the four-word reply comes from.

For a name that matters, record a Loom. Open on her listing with her name on the first frame. A Loom with her name on it beats a cold DM night and day.

You don’t need one for all ten. Save it for the name a text keeps missing.

Cold calls get a narrow window

So is the cold call dead? No. It has two windows, and most people call outside both.

Monday through Wednesday, or Saturday. Never Friday, never Sunday.

Friday she’s setting up weekend showings and Sunday she’s in them. Monday to Wednesday she’s at a desk, or close to one.

Saturday is open houses. I sat enough of them in ten years as an agent to know: Saturday afternoon at a dead open house is the loneliest hour in real estate. That’s when an agent picks up a cold call and talks to anyone.

Email is for brokers, and it needs about three months of mailbox warming before it lands anywhere but spam. Even then it doesn’t get opened on its own. One text lifts it, and it’s nine words long.

The line

Hey, did you get the email we sent you?

The big lesson

The channel matters less than the rhythm.

Do this

Pick text as your one channel for the next 30 days, ten a day, and block Tuesday mornings for broker opens.

The agent opener scripts

One observation, one question, and the day 3 and day 10 follow-ups. Free. Then take the sixty-second roadmap quiz and I tell you what to fix first.

Get the scriptsGet my roadmap

Straight answers

Is cold calling real estate agents still effective for photographers?
Only in two windows: Monday through Wednesday, or Saturday during open houses. Never Friday or Sunday. Outside those, text or DM, and call the second she replies.
How many Instagram DMs can I send real estate agents per day?
Around 25 to 30 before Instagram starts restricting the account. Send text for the overflow.
Does cold email work for real estate photographers?
For brokers, with about three months of mailbox warming first. Pair it with a text asking if they got the email.

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Julian Lundgren sold real estate for ten years before he shot a listing for money. He runs Cineminn, a Minneapolis real estate photography studio, and writes these answers from the agent’s side of the table. Send a question to info@cineminn.com.