Building and nurturing relationships with prospective clients is essential if you want to operate a successful real estate business. As you know, several strategies can nurture leads, build brand awareness, and consistently result in a greater number of converted leads, but few are as successful as strategic email marketing.
Why? According to Benchmark’s survey on Real Estate Email Marketing, 63% of recipients engaged and responded positively to real estate email marketing campaigns, and another 22% planned to in the future.
Implementing an email marketing strategy into your real estate business marketing plan is hands down one of the best ways to keep your real estate brand top-of-mind with prospective clients. We’ll show you why real estate and email marketing are a match made in heaven when paired with the right tactics to convert leads, nurture prospects, and earn continued business from former clients.
Read the following guide for information on the importance of email marketing and tips on how to get started with your real estate email marketing.
How email marketing helps real estate agents
To begin with, what exactly is email marketing, and why is email marketing crucial for a real estate agent? Let’s start with the SparkNotes:
- It builds trust with local homeowners and sellers by providing value
- It’s a direct line of communication between you and your prospects
- It’s the perfect framework that allows you to move a prospect through your sales funnel
Building trusting and nurturing relationships with local homeowners, buyers and sellers is the cornerstone of today’s marketing world. A home may be the biggest investment your clients will ever make, which means homeowners, sellers and buyers are looking for a real estate agent, that makes them feel comfortable and secure with the knowledge and experience they provide. As a result, delivering value to a prospective client is essential for fostering a high level of trust.
The best way to provide value and to form a personal bond is through the direct line of communication. Email campaigns allow just that! Consider sending information to your contact list about:
- Current events and news that pertain to home buyers or sellers
- Your expertise and insights about the local area, including school districts
- Information about regulations, fees, homeownership
- Local statistics and real estate marketing trends
- Tips for staging and upgrades that’ll add value to your home
Once you build trust, your clients will view you as the go-to real estate agent in their local area. However, it’s important to send relevant information to your list of contacts. Keep in mind that home buyers and home sellers are not going to be interested in the same content. For instance, a guide about staging and upgrades that’ll add value to their home won’t interest a first-time home buyer.
The right real estate email marketing strategy is all about reaching the right people at the right time. Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) facilities are a vital part of building a successful real estate email marketing strategy. When you target the right people, at the right time, it’s the perfect framework that allows you to move a prospect through your sales funnel.
How? Set up a series of emails that periodically check in with their current needs, create a personal relationship that provides them with resources that are relevant to their specific situation, and informs their buying decision. Consider your campaign objectives and possible goals. For instance, you could begin with a relocation guide, followed up by information about the local area, out of town buyer information, and available listings. Other goals may include:
- Build subscribers to your blog/newsletter
- Add new contacts to your CRM (homeowners, renters, investors, etc)
- Cultivate relationships with existing contacts
- Qualify prospective buyers and sellers for a listing appointment/consultation
- Promote an open house or community event
- Educate local residents about a new development or listing
Often, you may have multiple objectives. Keep a list of objectives and goals, and ensure they are at the forefront of your planning. This way you can prioritize the important tasks, refine your messaging, and craft a concise CTA without losing sight of your ultimate goal.
So now you know what email marketing does for your real estate business, the next question is, how do you get started?
3 things you need to get started:
- An email marketing software
- A CRM (Most email marketing software come with a basic CRM).
- A copywriter to write out your emails
Choose the right email marketing software
First things first, you need to choose the best email marketing software. Preferably, choose one that has a built-in CRM system to get the most out of your email marketing strategy.
Here are 4 email marketing software recommendations with a CRM included:
BoomTown
BoomTown is one of the best qualified-lead generation tools and integrated solutions for real estate agents. Why? It’s specifically designed for real estate agents! Its predictive and accurate CRM creates a clear path to conversions. Make personalized follow-ups, create targeted lists, implement customizable action plans, organize your database into manageable lists, and tag and segment lead based on location, price point, clients that you haven’t yet called, and more.
Wise Agent
Wise Agent is another email marketing and lead generation tool built by agents for agents. It’s specifically designed to help real estate agents work smarter, not harder. Its goal is to help you provide amazing customer experiences and build an incredibly successful real estate business. Its features are designed to help you automate your marketing and transactions. Wise Agent’s centralized client information gives you instant access to everything you need to know about your clients. With that, you have the tools to create effective marketing campaigns and long-lasting client relationships. Automate your business, convert more leads, live the lifestyle you want.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is a powerful, yet simple tool that helps you develop a more efficient and strategic email marketing for your real estate business. Constant Contact reports that an effective email marketing strategy boosts 50% more sales, at a 33% cost. Save time by building your list with ease, then send targeted messages to specific contacts with welcome emails, automated email series and more to nurture leads. After all, the best results come from sending the right message to the right people at the right time—automatically.
AutopilotHQ
AutopilotHQ seamlessly integrates and automates the complexity of your marketing strategy, so you can focus on building your real estate business. One of the best features about AutopilotHQ is how easy it is to create drip campaigns. Simply set up your marketing emails to be sent out automatically on a schedule. For instance, sending an automated email when someone subscribes to your newsletter, followed by a second email 3 days later and so forth. Through these drip emails, you will develop personal relationships by engaging at the right time, educate them with relevant information, build loyal clients by making every client interaction memorable without the manual work. Plus, it can be easily integrated with several applications that you are already utilizing to understand and engage your clients.
Writing for real estate email marketing campaigns
One of the most common questions real estate agents ask is, should I write the emails myself, or should I hire a copywriter?
Your writing has a massive impact on your image, communication, and ROI. When it comes to your email marketing campaigns, writing is a massively underrated component. When executed well, it builds loyalty, professionalism, consistency, and conversions.
We all write emails, but emails that make sales aren’t quite the same, so it might be worth outsourcing the writing to a credible copywriter. If you choose to go with a professional copywriter, choose someone who has both strong writing skills and marketing tools for the most effective email marketing. Consider what it’s like to be on the receiving end of emails, and how few of those emails you actually read. Email marketing requires the perfect balance of engaging content with motivating headline to entice you to open it, read it, and take the requested action.
What are email marketing drip journeys?
We briefly touched on drip campaigns while talking about AutopilotHQ. If you’ve never heard about email marketing drip journeys, here is everything you need to know and why it’s a gold mine for real estate agents.
Drip campaigns, as mentioned earlier, are automated sets of emails that go out based on specific timelines or user actions. They enable you to stay in touch with groups of people based on events like when a user signs up for an account or how often that user visits your site. Each time a drip email is sent out, it comes from a queue of pre-written and scheduled emails. This means, you don’t need to manually write or send out emails. They can even be personalized with your contacts’ name, company info, and more.
The goal of drip marketing is to deliver clients the right information at the right time. For instance, if a client subscribes to your newsletter after reading a blog about selling their home, a drip campaign might begin with sending a welcome email. Next, an automated email about upgrades that will add property value might be sent 2 or 3 days later.
The art of drip emails is creating an automatic series of emails based on triggers and user segments that you define. The effectiveness of drip campaigns hinges on providing targeted and relevant information based on behaviours.
Thoughtful and strategic drip emails are the perfect way to foster relationships, build trust, and keep you at the top of their mind. Consider the following in your email marketing strategy:
- Drip Frequency: Customize the frequency of your emails and periodically send out emails based on a predetermined frequency schedule.
- Newsletter drips: weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly emails to subscribers.
3 Drip Funnels You Should Implement In Your Real Estate Business
- Newsletter Drip: Set-up a community newsletter drip for all prospects. These newsletter emails should provide more general value to both home buyers and home sellers on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. Consider focusing on your local area with news and events that will appeal to both home buyers and home sellers.
- Home Buyer Listing Drip: Generally speaking, you will have two groups of clients: home buyers and home sellers. Keep in mind that within these groups, you may have subgroups. For instance, you may have professionals looking to buy their first home, young families in search of family-friendly neighbourhoods, and retirees looking to downsize. Your home buyers want information that pertains to buying a property in a particular area. Set them up in your MLS or email marketing software so that they can receive an email every time a preferred listing show up.
- Home Seller Value Drip – Your home sellers require emails that build trust with home seller leads. Consider sharing testimonials, case study of sold listing, and guides to help them with the selling process.
Do’s and Don’ts for your real estate email marketing campaign
- Make sure you are following all NAR rules and rules for your brokerage.
- The ultimate goal for all drip campaigns is securing an in-person meeting.
- Track all your traffic from your email marketing.
- Balance branded newsletters with personalized and plain text emails. For instance, send a personalized follow-up email shortly after a client has purchased a home from you to check-in.
- Improve your open rates and click-through rates with killer subject lines, carefully segmented lists, resending re-engagement campaigns, send during peak reading time, use a branded email address and keep it consistent!
- Use dynamic merge tags to personalize emails, such as tailoring questions, building client personas, personal your email greeting, and match personalized emails with appropriate landing pages.
With the right strategy, email marketing is one of the most effective tools of communication with your real estate prospect database. In an era where we receive countless emails, messages and chatbots, building a personalized and strong rapport with your clients is essential. As more and more ways to communicate continue to “pop-up”, grabbing prospective clients attention is an integral part of the growth and success of your real estate business.