Real estate is one of the most competitive industries, and the significant financial investment involved means building trust with potential customers is essential. In this context, email marketing is an unmatched tool for promoting real estate services. But how can you effectively utilize this strategy?
The most effective email marketing ideas for real estate include having social proof, sharing newsletters, including a CTA, and diversifying content. Other strategies are sharing educational content, engaging contacts, offering referral incentives, using templates, and analyzing results regularly.
If you are in real estate, read through to learn how to implement email marketing effectively.
9 Tips for Real Estate Email Marketing
If you want to stay at the top of your consumers’ minds, here are some ideas you can implement.
1. Share Social Proof
What word-of-mouth is to offline marketing is what social proof is to online marketing. Testimonials from your clients can convince prospects to consider doing business with you.
If you recently sold a house, you can request the client to share their story. Sharing testimonials through emails can convince potential clients to purchase.
You can also compile several reviews and share them with your contacts. The decisions and beliefs of others influence our purchase decisions.
Therefore, you can get more clients by sharing case studies, reviews, or testimonials. You can create a story from the experience of your customers.
Another psychological aspect of social proof is stamping your credibility and enhancing clients’ trust.
One of the primary factors buyers consider before purchasing is reviews on platforms like Google, Trustpilot, and Angie’s List.
2. Have a Monthly Newsletter
Using newsletters can help you establish your authority in the industry and keep your past clients engaged. This makes it easy for them to give you referrals from their circles.
A real estate newsletter can include the following:
- A client’s story
- Recent house listing
- Trending news in the industry
- Latest blog post on your website
- A video showcasing your unit interiors
In short, you should include any information relevant to your target audience.
However, you should also mind the size of your newsletter because not everyone might have the time to go through long publications.
Making the newsletters skimmable by including infographics can make the strategy more effective. Your marketing message should be separate from the primary focus of your newsletter.
The potential clients can feel short-changed if it is all about you. Focus on providing value, and potential clients will knock at your door.
3. Always Have a Call to Action
After reading your content, what next? Never leave your prospects or contacts hanging after providing helpful insights. They should know the next course of action.
In real estate email marketing, your call to action can be:
- Downloading a brochure with available houses
- Sharing your message on social media
- Requesting a virtual visit to your units
- Requesting a quote within their budget
- Sharing contact information
All your content should be tailored to a desired action. Understanding the different stages of the purchase decision can help you tailor the CTA to the audience.
For example, a CTA to download your list of houses means this is someone who is past the awareness stage. They might want to buy a home or do business with you.
Also, a call to action should show the value to the prospect. Instead of “download our listing,” you can use “see what your dream home looks like.”
The second phrase shows potential customers that the deal is about them.
4. Diversify Your Content Type
A block of plain text can be tedious, hurting the click-through rate. Spicing up your email marketing with different content types will keep your audience engaged and encourage sharing.
You can include the following content types in your newsletters, weekly updates, or announcements:
- Videos with tips
- Responsive buttons
- Images featuring your units
- Infographics with summaries
- Hyperlinks to your blog posts
- Different font sizes and colors
Diversity gives life to your content. Even if someone misses the text, their eyes can land on the images.
Some may prefer images or videos over text. And as the adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Prospects can grasp a lot from the photos you insert in your emails.
5. Analyze the Metrics Regularly
Analyzing your email marketing performance helps you know the most effective strategies. Most email management software provides the metrics to assess the return on investment.
One of the essential email marketing metrics for realtors is cost per lead. How much do you spend on your email marketing to get one customer?
This metric will give you the information you need to know whether email marketing is worth it. Another essential metric is the open and click-through rate.
You should know the percentage of contacts that open your emails and click the buttons. Split testing can help you identify the most effective copies, subject lines, or buttons.
Comparing performance between two periods is also essential. This practice lets you know whether your techniques are bearing any fruit.
6. Share Educative Content Regularly
Real estate is a complex industry. Therefore, you should focus on educating your audience to make the decision-making easier.
Few know about real estate taxation, financing, and the transfer process. You build credibility and trust by establishing your business as an authority in these areas.
You can use email marketing to share weekly tips with your contacts. These include how they can claim tax reliefs, financing options, and legal requirements.
You should simplify your real estate to make it understandable. Most of the jargon in the industry can confuse potential customers and turn them off.
7. Engage Contacts at a Personal Level
Understanding most, if not all, of your potential clients can help you send tailored messages.
Here are some of the questions that can help you use email marketing to engage your prospects at a personal level:
- What is their priority?
- What is their income bracket?
- When are they likely to purchase a house?
- The prospect is in which sales funnel stage?
- How do they mostly interact with your content?
- Who are the competitors they might be considering?
After answering these questions, you can segment your audience according to shared interests.
For example, some need more awareness, while others may only need a little nudge to buy. The two prospects need different kinds of engagements.
8. Offer Incentives for Customer Referrals
The best gesture to encourage referrals is to share incentives through email marketing.
Because of the financial investment involved, most prospects may trust friends and family more than your sweet marketing message.
You can leverage previous clients’ networks to reach a wider audience. Some of the best incentives to encourage real estate referrals are:
- Personalized gifts of a branded item
- Supporting a charitable cause
- Exclusive access
- Cash rewards
- Vouchers
The chosen gift should be valuable to the referrer. Therefore, you should understand your customers to know what will move them to action.
You can use limited-time offers to encourage the customers to share the information.
9. Use Real Estate Email Marketing Templates
Do you want to reduce your time drafting your real estate marketing emails? You can use email templates and tailor them to your audience’s needs.
Templates are mostly tried and tested. Therefore, you have the assurance that you will get desirable results from the email.
It is essential to note that you should edit the templates to match your brand voice. Apart from that, you should make them unique to boost your conversions.
Final Word
Real estate is a complex and capital-intensive industry. Therefore, any prospect should be treated as a valuable asset.
To succeed in real estate email marketing, you should personalize your message. Social proof in your emails can also increase your credibility and build customer trust.
Other ideas you can implement to increase conversions include using templates, sharing educational content, incentivizing referrals, and regularly analyzing performance.
Diversifying your content and having a CTA can also help you give competitors a run for their money.