Real Estate Marketing Through Email Is Essential

Today, virtually everyone communicates via email. Email marketing is an essential component of real estate marketing. Autoresponders, behavior-triggered email, videos, and email newsletters only enhance its usefulness.

The catch is that it’s all too easy for a REALTOR’s email marketing to land in the recipient’s spam folder. You avoid this sad result by providing distinctive, high-value content. To help you accomplish that, here are email marketing tips and templates from a leading real estate marketing company.

The Basics of Email Marketing: Add This Essential Component of Real Estate Marketing to Your Business.

Email marketing starts with creating a list of leads in your database (you do have a database right?). You can create this using both organic and paid lead generation methods. The latter include referral nurturing, networking, and social media advertising.

Once you’ve identified your list of potential clients, you’ll use the various tools of email marketing to turn them into actual customers.

This process is generally accomplished via drip emails. The first email introduces the REALTOR and explains his or her unique services. If the potential customer responds with contact information, this launches an autoresponder sequence. Every few days, an email goes out containing new listings, information about the neighborhood, commentary on marketing trends, and/or other interesting material.

The autoresponder sequence (AKA drip marketing) is often accompanied by monthly newsletters. These typically include listing highlights, information about local events, additional information about the real estate agency itself, and information about the real estate industry as a whole and the process of buying a home. They help the prospect to remember the realtor and automatically think of him or her in relation to the idea of home buying.

Real estate email marketing also frequently employs behavior-triggered emails (a type of autoresponse email). These are emails that go out automatically whenever a prospect takes a certain action on the realtor’s website. For example, it may go out when a potential customer views a particular listing. In that case, the behavior-triggered email might provide further information about the listing and offer to set up a viewing.

If all the above suggests that real estate marketing via email marketing is complex and time-consuming, well, that’s not entirely incorrect. But fortunately, experts are available to handle email marketing for realtors.

The cost of real estate marketing via email marketing varies depending on the specific services being purchased but is generally quite affordable, and the gains in effectiveness and efficiency can be considerable. It is a valuable investment in your business because email marketing is an essential component of real estate marketing

Within the general framework outlined above, there are various types of email marketing strategies.

Types of Real Estate Email Marketing Campaigns

Targeted campaigns are aimed at a particular group within all the leads the real estate agent has uncovered. These groups can be sorted out based on demographic information, location, or interest. They are often based on gender, income, or age.

Cold campaigns use emails to reach out to prospects with whom the real estate agent has had no prior contact. They tend to need more emails to get the potential customer interested, and the early email’s focus tends to lean toward introducing the realtor’s brand than on presenting listings.

Drip campaigns are essentially described above. They tend to be automated with particular messages being elicited by a particular prospect behavior. They

can be extremely important for maintaining the REALTOR/customer relationship over the months often required to move from initial contact to sale.

As the name implies, open house and event follow-up campaigns consist of emails that go out after clients have attended a viewing or comparable occasion. They allow the REALTOR to ask if the customer was interested in the property and if the prospect would like to schedule another viewing.

Referral or testimonial request campaigns allow real estate agents to request the recommendations from satisfied homebuyers that typically account for a good portion of a successful REALTOR’s new business.

Tips for Effective Real Estate Email Marketing

Make a positive first impression. That means you come across as professional, personable, easy to work with, and by no means pushy or desperate. Make sure the client quickly becomes aware of your expertise and marketing savvy, but don’t do it in a way that makes you seem arrogant or egotistical.

End your emails with a Call to Action (CTA.) The CTA invites the prospect to take some sort of action and by doing so in effect continue the dialogue. Typical Calls to Action include invitations to schedule phone calls or personal meetings, suggestions that the realtor is added to the prospect contact list, or invitations to connect on sites like LinkedIn.

Provide helpful, interesting information. Your emails shouldn’t solely be about you and your desire to sell, sell, sell. You can include infographics, information about the local real estate market in general, home improvement, and mortgage news and recommendations. As a general principle, your emails should focus on the prospect’s needs first and foremost and only secondarily on your own.

In conjunction with the point above, make your emails entertaining. Technical insider discussion of real estate matters might interest a professional like you but bore a layman to tears. Instead, consider items like reports on local events, restaurant reviews, and holiday greetings. Information about your involvement with local charities can go a long way toward revealing your human side and inspiring potential homebuyers to like and trust you.

We’ve already noted that you should avoid a hard sell, but this point is so important it bears repeating. A hard sell turns people off. Of course, you’ll include listings, announcements of open houses, etc., but be very sure your emails are always educational and enjoyable to read.

Stay in touch after the sale. You won’t reach out to the homebuyer as often as before, but it’s still a good idea to say hello occasionally and ask how things are going. This will reinforce the client’s feeling that he was more than merely a sale to you and make it more likely that he’ll refer others to you. A keep-in-touch campaign is an essential piece of any email marketing strategy or a successful business.

Templates for Real Estate Marketing via Email Marketing

• The welcome email introduces you, thanks prospects for signing up for your email list, and lets them know what they can expect from you as a realtor. Welcome emails should be friendly, brief, and professional.
• Newsletter emails provide entertainment, helpful information, and encourage your leads to actually hire you. Along the way, they demonstrate you’re an expert on the local real estate market and keep the memory of you fresh in the minds of former customers, who may then send you referrals.
• Buyer lead emails provide information about the newest listings, which tend to be the listings of greatest interest to buyer leads. Buyer leads are often eager to buy quickly. To encourage them to do that, explain how the newest listings to meet their criteria and offer to schedule an appointment.
• Seller lead emails provide answers to the two questions seller leads are most interested in: What is their home worth, and are you the proper person to handle the sale? Seller lead emails should go out every 28 days with information on the local sales market, changes in home value, and what nearby homes have sold for in the past 30 days. They should also mention what homes the REALTOR him- or herself has sold recently.

As noted above, the aim of former client emails is to generate referrals. The first such email should go out 90 days after closing and be friendly and cordial.

We hope these tips and templates will prove helpful, and help you understand that email marketing is an essential component of real estate marketing. For more information on real estate marketing via email marketing, we invite you to check out other entries on our blog.