Email Marketing for Real Estate
Real estate has become a competitive industry. Research tells us that most real estate agents leave it within five years.
If you are a real estate agent (or want to become one), you don’t have to leave it. It’s still a growing industry and an extraordinarily profitable one.
But, how do you keep up as a realtor?
By using the right digital marketing strategies. By staying top-of-mind of your prospects. How can you do that?
By leveraging the power of “Email marketing”.
After reading this article, you’ll have the email marketing strategies that you need to take your real estate business to the next level.
Let’s get started with email marketing for real estate.
Why Use Email Marketing for Real Estate?
There is a reason why email marketing brings the highest ROI amongst all digital marketing strategies.
Email marketing is a disruptive form of digital marketing. This means your prospects have to read your email even when they are involved in routine life.
When you have your prospects’ emails, you get access to their inbox, where you can deliver a personalized message.
Plus, when they are giving you their emails, it’s a sign that they are interested in your business. This allows a marketer to nurture leads with effective communication.
There are a lot of realtors looking for clients. To stay top-of-mind, real estate agents need an intimate connection with their potential customers.
Email marketing allows realtors to engage and stay top-of-mind of their prospects. So, when they or any of their peers need a realtor, they turn to you.
Not only that, but email marketing tools today allow you to segment your audience and deliver personalized, targeted messages. This increases the chances of conversions.
Source: Sendinblue.com
For instance, someone signs up for your email list. You send a welcome email to them. However, a recent subscriber who is looking for a house is best treated with a little promotional content.
Email Marketing for Real Estate: Choose the Right Software
Now you know that email marketing is a powerful way of growing your real estate business. The next step would be to choose the right email marketing software.
Using email marketing software is important as it offers automation, drag-and-drop template designing, and analytics to improve.
Source: constantcontact.com
There are a lot of them out there. Just make sure your email marketing software has:
- Drag-and-drop templates
- Mobile optimization capability
- Personalization features
- Automation
- Analytics
Email Campaigns Every Realtor Should Send
Once you have an effective email marketing tool, it’s time to produce content that can drive action. There are a few email marketing campaigns that can produce great results for realtors.
Let’s discuss them.
Newsletter
Source: Sendinblue.com
Email newsletters are like print newsletters. You send them weekly or monthly. The purpose here is to educate and inform the subscribers about a variety of stuff going on in the industry.
For instance, you can share your listings, upcoming events, real estate trends, or a recent blog post.
A newsletter aims at providing content that can make you appear an expert in your field. So, when they need a real estate agent for themselves or their peers, you pop into their minds.
Follow Up
Source: campaignmonitor.com
Sending follow-up emails is a great way to retain existing customers for the long term. What a realtor can do is send an email sequence or a single email after the sale.
You can use a follow-up sequence to ask what they thought of your service. You can also ask them to refer you to their peers if they liked you.
Welcome
Source: HubSpot.com
When you send an email welcoming your new subscriber to your email list, it’s a welcome email. You make the subscriber feel good about joining your list by sending a greeting to their inbox.
You can also tell them what type of content they should expect from you and at what frequency. Setting the expectations right in the beginning can be beneficial.
Moreover, offering something right off the bat is also a good strategy.
Build Your Email List
Who do you send your emails to when you don’t have an email list? You don’t want to exhaust your resources on sending your well-thought-out content to an irrelevant audience. It can’t get you good results.
So, it’s important to build an email list of people that are genuinely interested in your business.
How do you do that? Let’s see.
Opt-in Form on the Website
One of the best ways to capture the email addresses of your prospects is through an opt-in form on your website or blog.
Create content that not only appeals to your audience but is also search engine friendly.
This way, you’ll attract relevant people to your website, giving you a chance to capture their email addresses.
You can place an opt-in form at the top right corner of your website, at the end of blog posts, or as a pop-up on your articles.
Use Ads to Get Sign-ups
Getting subscribers organically is awesome. But, for that, you’d need a good amount of traffic on your website through search engines. That takes time.
What if you could get people to sign up for your emails through cost-effective social media ads?
Facebook ads are a great ad platform that you can use to build your email list. It allows you to put your ads in front of the right people, maximizing your ROI.
Source: Facebook.com
So, it’s also a good idea to get quick sign-ups through Facebook ads and build your email list.
Use a Lead Magnet
Using a lead magnet is an effective strategy to make people give their email addresses. No one dislikes a freebie, right?
You can offer your prospects something valuable for free in return for their email addresses. It could be an eBook or any other digital product.
Partner Up with Related Industries
A great way to get noticed by your potential customers is by partnering up with local businesses. These may include moving services and home décor and improvement services.
You can join hands with them in marketing efforts. They can suggest you and you can recommend them to your respective clients.
Partner up with a company similar to your industry, but realtors will always remain your competitors.
Create Effective Emails
With email marketing, you need to be consistent. To do that, it’s important to plan your emails. So, decide on an easily manageable frequency.
Improve Your Open Rate
It wouldn’t be a good sign if your email list doesn’t even open your emails, right?
So, you must optimize your emails to improve their open rate so that your prospects can get your message.
How do you do that?
First, write an engaging subject line and title. These two parts of your emails will decide whether the receiver will open it or not.
Keep your title and subject line short and simple. Try to tell your readers what you’ll be talking about in the email.
You can make your subject lines exciting by including emojis and time-sensitive words. Make them curious about the content of your email, pushing them to open it.
Using the first name of the person in the email can also improve your open rate as it makes the email more personal.
Increate Your CTR (Click-through rate)
You’ve succeeded in getting your receivers to open your email. The next step would be to entice them to act.
In other words, you want them to click on your call to action. It could be a link to your new blog post or a sign-up for an upcoming event.
How do you get them to click on your CTA?
Keep a clear call to action several times in your email. Don’t go overboard though. And, it should be a single CTA.
Including multiple CTAs is a distraction from your main goal. Don’t want them to do everything in one email.
Use Analytics to Keep Improving
After all the heavy lifting, the next step would be to check whether it worked or not. It could be a little overwhelming though.
But, you need to keep tabs on your progress to keep moving in the right direction.
What do you look out for?
Here are some important metrics to be aware of:
- Make sure your emails are getting delivered (delivery rate)
- Make sure your email open rate is high
- Your click-through rate should be encouraging as well
- Keep a tab on your unsubscribe rate
- Find out your best-performing campaigns/sequences and focus on them
Final Thoughts
Because of the competition in the market, you need to engage your audience these days. And, email marketing for real estate is more personal, intimate form of marketing.
Your prospects’, by giving access to their inbox, are telling you that they are interested in your services. This gets you ahead of those that don’t have access to their inbox, right?
With email marketing, you can get an ROI (return on investment of 3800%) that you won’t get through any other strategy.
But, you need to follow the right strategies and be patient. Follow the techniques discussed in this article and you’ll see your business moving in the right direction.
