Beginner's Guide to Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents

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Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents is Not Outdated

In today’s post-pandemic world, real estate agents need to do more with less – fewer phone calls, fewer face-to-face meetings, and fewer showings. As a result, many realtors are turning to various forms of social media marketing to connect with potential home buyers and sellers in a highly personalized way. However, according to a study by real estate marketing firm ActivePipe, email marketing for real estate agents is still one of the best ways to grow your real estate business.

In the recent years since social media has come to dominate the internet, real estate agents have begun successfully leveraging platforms like Facebook and Instagram to find new clients and close more deals.

And although it’s easy to believe social media is the most effective way to reach potential buyers and sellers, email marketing is “remains the highest [return on investment] digital marketing channel, returning $42 for every $1 spent.”

Email marketing for realtors is one of the best ways to grow your real estate business. For more than a decade, real estate agents that consistently use email marketing in their internet marketing strategies have seen tremendous results.

Here’s a quick guide to what email marketing for real estate agents is, why it’s useful, and how it can help your business.

What Is Email Marketing for Realtors?

Email marketing is a remarkably effective marketing strategy that involves sending emails to customers and prospects. On the surface, email marketing is just what it sounds like: business marketing conducted via email. But there’s more to it than that.

Successful email marketing is about building relationships. When done effectively, email marketing nurtures buyer and seller leads, turning prospects into clients.

It constantly tops every other marketing channel as a direct and effective method of communicating with prospective clients and converting them into devoted customers.

How Effective is Email Marketing for Real Estate?

In today’s social media world, we understand the appeal of writing off email marketing. However, email marketing has lasted this long for a reason and its results keep showing why it remains an essential component of any marketing venture. Listed below are a few email marketing statistics:

Email marketing has an return on investment of $42 for each $1 spent – which is drastically higher than other digital marketing channels, like pay-per-click and social media. (ActivePipe, 2020)
59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions. (SaleCycle, 2018)
The average click-through rate for email is roughly 2.5%, whereas Facebook you can expect a click-through rate of only 0.07% (Campaign Monitor, 2019)

One of the major drivers of these stats, is the sheer probability of someone reviewing an email versus seeing social media post. There is no guarantee that anyone will notice a social media post however, an email remains in your subscribers’ inbox until they take a look at it.

Benefits Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents

For real estate agents, emails are the most effective and secure way for you to have a close professional relationship with your potential clients and previous buyers and seller.

Stay top of mind with prospects and past clients. Email offers the opportunity to send out regular updates about your real estate business, promote new listings, and keep your subscribers abreast of market changes – effectively keeping your real estate business top of mind.

Nurture buyer and seller leads. With professional tools, you can easily message every one of your subscribers. Not only do control every peice information they receive which helps places your business in a positive light but email can also be highly personalized with individual information to increase trust.

Develop robust online marketing strategy. Email marketing plays an integral role in your online marketing strategy. Email marketing allows for you to nurture a group of people who have already decided that they want to hear from you whether from organic social marketing or paid marketing.

? Want to learn the top benefits of having an email list for real estate leads? Read the 5 Compelling Reasons Why You Must Have An Email List for Real Estate Leads

How to Get Started with Email Marketing for Real Estate

The market is competitive and doesn’t favor businesses that fail to keep up with it. Ignoring email marketing is a sure way to always be behind your competition when it concerns reaching a wider audience and attracting new buyers. We shall in this chapter discuss steps you can take to set up an email marketing campaign even as a complete beginner.

In the sections below, we are going to cover best practices around:

Building your email list
Managing your email campaigns
Analyzing your email marketing

Building Your Real Estate Email List

A list in email marketing refers to the sum of email addresses your real estate business has that can be used to reach and engage with current customers and prospects. To build a list you need three things: an email marketing platform, an email lead magnet, and the proper permissions.

Select and Email Marketing Platforms

You would need the services of email marketing software. Here are seven email marketing tools that are beginner-friendly and fairly easy to understand and use:

MailChimp
Flodesk
Mad Mimi
Aweber
MailerLite
ActiveCampaign
Constant Contact

Create an Email Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a piece of information that compels people to exchange their contact information to gain access. It is industry-related content that your target market will find relevant and valuable. The best lead magnets help to solve one small problem.

The best way to get subscribers on your real estate email marketing list is to offer your visitors a free piece of content in return for subscribing. It can be something as small as a free but informative book or a coupon. Offer something attractive enough to turn visitors into subscribers.

Market Your Email Lead Magnet

To drive leads, focus on creating downloadable content designed to educate consumers or housing providers, such as an excellent guide on ‘how to buy a second home’ or ‘how to stage your home before you list.’

Start by leveraging your social media following to create an email list. It doesn’t matter if you have 500 followers for 5,000 followers, if you focus on offering them valuable content that helps to better their lives you will begin to successfully turn followers into email subscribers.

Here are five ideas for free lead magnets ideas you can offer:

PDF Guide
Video Training
Checklist
Ebook
Free Consultation

? Want more ideas for lead magnets? Check out the 10 Best Real Estate Newsletter Lead Magnets to Serve your Followers and Grow Your Email List.

Permissions Compliance

When obtaining email addresses from buyers and sellers, it is important the provider does so freely and fully informed they are signing up for an email list. You are responsible for ensuring you can prove your email subscribers have consented to receive emails from you.

Make sure that your call-to-action is specific and tells them what they will gain by subscribing to your email list. Also, include an “Unsubscribe” button at the bottom of every mail so users know that they can opt-out at any time if they decide to do so.

Managing Your Real Estate Email Campaigns

Content

For long-term success, you need to think of email marketing for your real estate business as relationship-building. You are nurturing your subscriber closer and closer to working with you with each email. It’s a delicate balancing act of getting subscribers, getting to know them, interacting with them, keeping them up-to-date, and ensuring you stay top of mind when they are ready to buy or sell a home.

Here are three email campaigns realtors should consider in their email campaigns:

The Welcome Email – The most important email you can send out is the welcome email. The welcome email is usually the very first email – or a series of emails – that your new subscriber will receive from you. Also, the welcome email usually has the highest-open rate so you do not want to skip this one.

The Newsletter – Keep your subscribers in the know by sharing a weekly, monthly, or bi-monthy newsletter about your company. Highlight client testimonials, featured listings, local happenings and anything else your subscribers will find interesting.

The Market Update – Showcase your expertise by providing an in-depth market update every quarter. Market update emails are perfect for educating your subscribers on the local market and highlighting how you are uniquely situated to help them with their real estate needs.

Frequency

No matter how entertaining or important your updates are, nobody wishes to receive 100 emails every day? While 100 is an exaggeration, you should keep your email frequency as low as possible. Before you dive, you should test the water. Determine how frequently your clients want to hear from you.

Autoresponder

Only a beginner would believe that dealing with all of the clients will be easy. Consequently, as your list grows, you will seldom have time to react to each of them individually. As your business expands, it becomes more difficult to keep up with the rising number of clients.

So, how do the best marketers do it? – Of course, with ‘Autoresponders’! An autoresponder is computer software that answers people on your behalf while engaged with other things. You may use an autoresponder to send emails automatically if you plan them ahead of time. This ensures your list of clients remains warm with auto-emails while you take a break.

? Want to learn how to use MailChimp? See article Tech Tips for Realtors: YouTube, Google Plus and MailChimp.

Analyzing Your Real Estate Email Marketing

Understanding Metrics

All email service providers give analytics so you can see how well your methods are performing. Among the statistics, these are the most important ones to look at.

Deliverability: It’s the number of emails that were correctly mailed and delivered.
Open rate: This figure represents the number of people that viewed your emails.
CTR: “Click Through Rate” indicates clients clicked on the link in your email.
Unsubscribers: This figure indicates the number of persons that have dropped out from your email list.

These four fundamental metrics might assist you in improving your email marketing strategy. They act as a sieve, revealing what you’re doing incorrectly or correctly.

If you see a low CTR, for example, work on the links and rewrite your text. If the rate of unsubscriptions is increasing, reconsider each step of our email campaign from the beginning to rectify the issue.

Segmenting Your Audience

The term “email list segmentation” refers to the method of dividing and segmenting your real estate email list’s subscribers into more specific groups.

Instead of filling everyone’s inbox with emails, they don’t want; you could create more tailored emails based on the specific groups.

Here is a potential list of segments that real estate agents can use for email marketing campaigns.

Buyer Leads or Seller Leads
Residential Developers
Commerical Renters
Previous Clients
Agent Attraction
Industry Partners

In Summary

However, for long-term success, you need to think of email marketing for your real estate business as relationship-building. You are nurturing your subscriber closer and closer to working with you with each email. It’s a delicate balancing act of getting subscribers, getting to know them, interacting with them, keeping them up-to-date, and ensuring you stay top of mind when they are ready to buy or sell a home.

Editor’s note: This article was created by Kary Perry, Agent at eXp Realty. Information deemed reliable but is subject to change.

About Building Better Agents

At Building Better Agents, we are dedicated to helping agents build successful real estate careers. We help agents develop a plan, build a database, and work smarter to uncover the keys to success as a real estate agent. All without cold calling, door knocking, and chasing expired listings. Building Better Agents Leaders Kerry Lucasse and Kary Perry are proud to be agents with eXp Realty.

For more information, please contact us today!