Yuka Kato
Successful real estate email marketing starts with choosing the right email marketing tool. After that, apply segmentation, personalize as much as possible, always add a CTA, optimize for mobile, balance between sales and informative content, and combine emails with other marketing channels.
With over 3 million active real estate licenses in the US, real estate is a competitive industry.
Success in the real estate industry relies heavily on communicating with people and nurturing relationships. Interestingly, email marketing is touted as one of the best ways to do this.
So why should you use email marketing for your real estate business, and what’s the best way to perform real estate email marketing? This article will answer these questions and more.
At the end of the article, you’ll be one step closer to using email marketing to supercharge your real estate business.
Why use email marketing for your real estate business?
You should use email marketing for your realtor business because it works. Email marketing is a very effective channel for nurturing relationships that can lead to your success as a realtor. It can build long-lasting relationships with current and previous clients, as well as help you find new clients.
Success in the real estate business relies heavily on relationships because home buyers find real estate agents mainly through referrals. About 40% of all home buyers found an agent through a referral from a relative, friend, or neighbor.
Using email communication to promote new updates can position you as the go-to realtor. This way, your past clients are more likely to come back to you for their next purchase or refer you when someone they know is looking for a house.
Also, people are relatively receptive to real estate marketing emails. A recent industry report shows that the email open rates (41.59%) and click-through rates (8.69%) for the real estate industry are higher than those of many other industries.
What do real estate businesses use email marketing for?
Real estate agents use email marketing campaigns to provide more information about available properties, as well as their amenities and neighborhoods.
Specifically, you can use real estate email campaigns to showcase the following:
Open houses
Emails are excellent for inviting the public to visit and walk through a property available for sale to see if it’s one they’ll want to make an offer on.
Real estate agents need to show properties to potential buyers. One-on-one house showings to every interested house owner may be too time-consuming, so open houses are the best way to go. And one of the best ways to ensure a lot of people show up to the open house is to send marketing emails to your contact list
New listings
Real estate marketing emails are also excellent for informing prospective buyers of new properties available for sale.
When a property owner wants to sell a property and contracts you to help them find a buyer, you may list the house on a real estate website. Not everyone regularly checks real estate agents’ websites though.
That’s where email marketing comes in. Email marketing can help drive traffic to the website, allowing prospective buyers to check out the newly listed property.
Real estate marketing emails about new properties should:
- Describe the property accurately.
- Highlight the property’s unique features.
- Avoid going overboard with adjectives.
- Use high-quality images (if possible, include videos or virtual tour links).
Neighborhood guides
An email campaign also allows you to provide prospective buyers with all they need to know about a listing’s neighborhood.
More often than not, people buying a house are not only interested in the particular property but also its neighborhood. Buyers want to know whether the neighborhood has certain amenities that make it suitable for their lifestyle.
The solution is to email prospective buyers a neighborhood guide, which further shows why the property is valuable and convinces them to make an offer for it.
Essentials of neighborhood guides include:
- Real estate statistics in the neighborhood (average prices of homes)
- Demographics (statistics of who the neighborhood residents are).
- Services (proximity to schools, hospitals, etc.)
- Fun activities (presence of restaurants, cinemas, etc.)
- Testimonials (first-person experiences of happy clients in the neighborhood).
Real estate trends
Email campaigns are opportunities to provide prospective buyers with real estate trends and impress them with your knowledge of the industry.
People looking to buy a house seek real estate experts. Interestingly, one of the easiest ways to position yourself as a real estate expert is to update your target audience on happenings in the industry constantly.
Email campaigns allow you to be in contact with targets on an ongoing basis, updating them with real estate trends they need to know about.
Top real estate trends for email marketing include:
- Changes in real estate prices
- Changing demand in home types
- Mortgage rate movements
Property alerts
Property alert emails are electronic mails sent to home searchers who signed up to receive notifications on properties meeting specific criteria.
Prospective home buyers who visit your property website may not find a house meeting their criteria but they may want to know when one is available. If they sign up to receive alerts when a property meeting their criteria is listed, emails are some of the best ways to provide such notifications.
These are usually high-quality leads more likely to engage with your emails.
Benefits of using an email tool if you are a real estate agent
There are many benefits to using email marketing if you are a real estate agent. Using an email marketing tool:
Helps you stay top-of-mind
Regularly providing real-estate-related information via email campaigns ensures that your business is always at the top of your target audience’s mind.
It’ll make them turn to you as their first choice over other real estate agents when they want to buy a property or need to recommend an agent.
Helps you personalize messages
Email campaigns allow personalization, such as greeting your recipient by name, congratulating them on their special days, etc. This helps you create emotional connections with your target audience and strengthen existing relationships.
Helps you communicate directly with prospects
Most other marketing channels send your message out there, hoping your target audience will see it. But real estate email marketing lets you send a specific message to a specific person.
The message drops into the person’s personal space (their inbox), ensuring they will see it.
Helps you get direct responses from your audience
An email marketing tool helps you encourage two-way communication with a large group of people. That is, not only does email marketing let your target audience get a direct message from you, but it also allows them to respond directly to you.
Other popular real estate marketing options (like television, radio, print media, etc.) come with significant barriers to a response. But when you send a real estate marketing email, the recipient can respond to you with just a few clicks.
Helps you know when to follow up
Email marketing is the best for planning follow-up efforts because you can determine when prospects open and read your message.
The best email marketing software feature tracking, which lets you know when the customer receives and/ or reads the message. With this, you’ll know how best to follow up with your audience.
Helps you build your brand
Email marketing for real estate can also help you increase brand awareness.
You can add branding elements in communication when you run real estate drip campaigns to increase your brand’s visibility. Also, providing industry trends and other relevant information that helps home searchers can establish you as an authority and improve your brand’s value.
It is cost effective
Running an email marketing campaign is cheaper than using other direct marketing channels.
While direct marketing channels like TV and print media will cost you a pretty penny, using email marketing software will only cost you around $10 per month.
Types of email campaigns a real estate agent should send
Whatever email marketing software you choose, the most important thing is that your messages set you up for success. Here are the email types you should send to succeed in your realtor business.
Email newsletter
An email newsletter is an email that a business sends to contacts on its email list periodically.
As a real estate professional, you can use email newsletters to share what is happening in the industry and what your business is up to. Specifically, you can use them to share real estate trends, your latest listings, upcoming events, a recent blog post, etc.
Email newsletters (like print newsletters) should follow a schedule, typically weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.
With email newsletters, you constantly provide expert real estate content to your audience to keep your services top-of-mind for them.
Welcome email to new subscribers
The welcome email is the first email you send to new subscribers, users, or customers, thanking them for joining your contact list and giving them a snippet of the benefits they will gain.
First impressions matter in any relationship. The welcome email is your chance to make a good first impression on potential clients.
Welcome emails make new subscribers feel good about joining your lists. Something as simple as “Welcome Aboard” and “Thank you for choosing us as your real estate agent” can build trust between you and the recipient, laying the foundation for a solid and valuable relationship.
Welcome emails can also drive engagement from the start. First, welcome emails have 4x the open rate and 5x the click rate of standard marketing emails.
To make welcome emails drive engagement from the start, encourage recipients to click a link, share, reply directly to you, etc.
For example: “You’re one step closer to finding your dream home. Click here to explore thousands of listings.”
Follow-up emails
A follow-up email is an email you send to someone who has previously received an email from you.
Real estate professionals send follow-up emails for many reasons, including:
- To alert a recipient to a previously sent email.
- To reignite a conversation that may not have ended properly.
- To request a reply or information (such as social proof/ testimonials of how past clients are enjoying their house).
- To remind the recipient of important dates like upcoming events.
- To prompt the recipient to take an action.
Sending follow-up emails can increase reply rates from 9% to 13%. Follow-up emails are very important in real estate marketing because they can revive a conversation that has turned cold, resurrecting a dead lead to take action.
However, sending successful follow-up emails is an art because you can come across as pushy when you do not do it right.
Some best practices for sending follow-up emails include:
- Keeping it short and straight to the point.
- Personalizing the message by mentioning something that has meaning to the recipient.
- Including the original message so the recipient doesn’t go looking for it.
- Having just one clear ask.
Drip campaigns
A real estate drip campaign is a series of automated emails sent to people based on actions they take or changes in their status.
Drip campaigns for real estate agents are excellent for keeping in touch with your audiences in a personalized and targeted way. You can personalize the email communication with details like the contact’s name or reference to specific actions they took on your real estate website.
You can configure your email marketing platform to send out multiple emails at specific times throughout a specified period, according to the action of the recipient.
You can also define what triggers the automated emails to your contacts. For example, someone who visits your website signs up to receive information about a property type. Signing up triggers a series of messages, which starts with a welcome email.
In the welcome message, you encourage the contact to respond about specific neighborhoods they are interested in. If you have properties in the neighborhood they specify, the system automatically follows up with an email of your listings. If not, it follows up with a neighborhood guide email (to show why one or more neighborhoods you have properties in may also be suitable).
Drip campaigns “drip feed” messages to your audience over time in bite-size formats, nudging them closer to taking a specified desired action.
Referral request emails
Referral request emails are emails you send to your existing customer base encouraging them to refer your real estate services to their network.
It is about leveraging existing customers’ networks to find potential new clients.
This can be a huge competitive advantage because referred customers are cheaper to acquire. Real estate businesses thrive on referrals, as about 40% of all home buyers find their real estate agents through a referral.
Sending referral request emails spurs word-of-mouth recommendations, as many of the email recipients will refer their peers to try your real estate agency service.
When sending a referral request email, mentioning your significant interactions with the recipient is fine. However, you don’t have to go into too many details because real estate clients who had good experiences with you will not really need to be persuaded.
Emails for buyer leads
Emails for buyer leads are follow-up emails you send to people who have expressed interest in buying one of your properties for sale.
You get real estate buyer leads from multiple sources, including open house events, existing clients, renter clients, buyer leads sellers, etc.
However, buyer leads do not automatically translate to buyers. Success in selling real estate requires nurturing real estate buyer leads by sending them compelling messages that position you as a real estate expert they can trust.
Real estate email marketing is an excellent way to do this, as it allows direct personalized communication between you and your contacts.
Open house and event announcements
Open house and event announcement emails are electronic mails you send your target audience to inform and/ or invite them to upcoming events relating to your properties.
Suppose you organize an open house for prospective buyers to come for a tour of your property. In that case, emails are perfect for informing the public of the event and inviting interested parties.
Top tips for writing open house and event announcement emails include:
- Using a personable tone.
- Giving an overview of the property.
- Providing the address of the house.
- Stating when the event will start and when it will end.
Best practices for real estate email marketing
Some of the best practices for building an effective email marketing strategy in the real estate industry are to:
Use an email marketing tool
The first step for a successful email marketing strategy is to choose the right platform.
Email marketing tools are not built equally, as they have different features and capabilities. So, a best practice for real estate marketing is choosing a tool with the right functionalities instead of one with fanciful features.
Essential features to look out for when choosing a real estate email marketing tool are ease of use, a high deliverability rate, good personalization features, integration with other tools, and email tracking.
Use segmentation
Email segmentation is simply dividing contacts in your email list into groups based on certain characteristics. Typical real estate email list segmentation would include hot buyer leads, current clients, renter clients, recently closed deals, etc.
People on your list will have different interests. For example, while hot buyer leads may be more receptive to new listings, recently closed deals may be more receptive to requests for information about their experience and the neighborhood.
Segmenting your email list helps you make email messaging more relevant. With your email list divided into groups, you can send different messages to the different groups instead of sending a generic message to everyone.
Use personalization
Personalization is a one-to-many marketing technique that delivers individualized content to recipients. Personalization aims to communicate with each contact as an individual instead of communicating with contacts as a generic group.
Personalizing your emails as much as possible helps you build an emotional connection with your audience and move them toward taking the desired action faster.
There are several ways to personalize an email campaign. Here are some of the most popular:
- Greet recipients by their names. “Hi, Mark” will resonate with a recipient more than “Hi, there.”
- Celebrate your audience on their special days. Send wishes to your audience on their birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
- Feature a topic they’ve expressed interest in. Did your contact express interest in a bungalow? Follow-up with bungalow listings and not walk-up apartments.
Optimize for mobile
Optimizing for mobile means ensuring your emails can be received and read using mobile devices.
Mobile devices are the most popular for opening marketing emails. This also applies to the real estate industry.
Mobile technology has changed the way potential home buyers search for houses. One report says that 44% of US homeowners who own a smartphone have used their phones to look up real estate listings.
When you run a real estate email campaign, many in your email list will likely open the mail using their phones and click through to your website. Thus, ensure that your emails open well on mobile devices. When emails are not optimized for mobile, this group may be unable to read your content easily.
Always add a CTA
A call-to-action (CTA) is a text or design prompt that encourages the audience to take a desired action.
When you run an email campaign, you want each recipient of your emails to take a specific action. So, the best practice for successful email marketing is to make it clear what you want recipients to do by including a call-to-action (CTA) in every email.
When contacts read your email, they should have no doubts about what you expect of them. Make it clear whether you want recipients to contact you for more information, check your new listings, or something else.
Your CTA should not only be clear, but it should also be easy to spot and do.
Maintain a balance between informative and sales content
Informative content is messaging that provides information on a specific topic, while sales content is designed to nudge recipients to buy.
True, the end goal of real estate agents is to sell houses. However, pushing too much sales content can make you come across as serving a personal agenda.
On the other hand, providing helpful, informative content makes you come across as genuinely interested in helping your target audience live better.
For example, instead of continuously bombarding your audience with listings, delight them sometimes with content that explains topics like the differences between house types or how to maintain a specific house type.
Your helpful content may attract people who do not want to buy a house immediately. They’ll come to respect you as an expert on the subject. Then when they or anyone they know wants to buy a house, you’ll be the top choice on their agents’ list.
Combine with other channels
Real estate email marketing can give you good results. However, you’ll get better results if you combine email with additional marketing channels because that increases your digital reach.
Social media marketing and content marketing are channels that the most successful real estate businesses use together with email marketing.
Social media marketing involves posting regularly on social media platforms. Content marketing involves posting compelling content on your website and adding a CTA to your offers.
Takeaway: Supercharge your real estate email marketing with Mailsuite
Succeeding as a real estate agent requires communicating with people and nurturing relationships.
Email marketing for real estate can help you connect with an audience and nurture relationships to keep you top-of-mind for prospective home buyers.
The real estate email marketing best practices mentioned above will help you become a successful realtor. The best practices include using segmentation and personalization, optimizing for mobile, always adding a CTA, etc. However, it starts with choosing the right email marketing software.
While there are different email marketing tools, Mailsuite’s ease of use and superior tracking capability make it one of the best for small businesses.
Mailsuite ticks all the right boxes for running successful real estate marketing campaigns. Mailsuite lets you run an email campaign right from your Gmail account. It tracks sent emails and notifies you when a recipient has opened and read the content so you know how best to follow up.
Mailsuite helps your real estate business and all small businesses run successful email marketing campaigns. Install Mailsuite for free today！
