Your real estate business can greatly benefit from email marketing. As a Realtor or real estate investor, you may be generating tons of leads online through SEO, PPC, social media marketing, or any other channel, but if you are not able to covert those leads into clients, you are wasting your time and energy.
Drip email marketing can increase your conversion rate substantially. It is more important for real estate agents and investors compared to professionals in many other industries. The reason is that it takes most people several weeks, months, in some cases years to make up their mind about buying or selling a property. The leads may have made the first contact with your business months ago. They will likely forget about you by the time they are in the market if you don’t keep in touch with them during this decision-making stage. Email marketing is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to ensure that this doesn’t happen.
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What is email marketing for real estate?
Most real estate websites have sign-up forms where real estate buyers, sellers, and investors access property listings or a lead magnet (such as a relocation guide or downloadable eBook).
Once the lead has shared the email address in exchange for your lead magnet, you can send out emails to him or her on a regular basis. You can create brand awareness with these emails and promote your service or offers (such as free home valuation). Email marketing is as simple as that.
How to build an email marketing funnel
For building an email marketing funnel, you need two things:
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
Let’s say for example, you are planning to promote a relocation guide. You should first build a dedicated landing page to present this offer in an enticing way. On the landing page, you will have sign-up forms where the leads can share their details including email address and phone number. Your CRM or email marketing service will store this information. You can send out email blasts promoting your service, brand, and offers on a regular basis.
If you are looking for a tool to create beautiful sign-up forms, you should check out ThriveLeads. It’s the cheapest tool available for email marketing to my knowledge. ThriveLeads is a tool by ThriveThemes. If you are looking for a tool to design landing pages, you can give ThriveThemes a try. Here is a landing page sample from ThriveThemes.
Best real estate email marketing tools (software)
Now that you know how to build an email marketing funnel, here are two of my most favorite email marketing tools:
- MailChimp
- ConstantContact
Mailchimp for Realtors and real estate investors
You can build an email list of up to 2000 leads and send out 10,000 emails per month free of cost with MailChimp.
MailChimp can be easily integrated with ThriveLeads and most other email marketing tools. It’s also easy to integrate MailChimp with most real estate website builders including WordPress and SquareSpace.
If you want help with building a real estate email marketing funnel with MailChimp, contact us today. You can create email automation. You will also have access to free email templates.
In the free plan, your emails will have MailChimp branding.
Constant Contact for Realtors and real estate investors
Though Constant Contact is not a free email marketing tool, it offers the highest deliverability rates. Constant Contact plans start at $20/month.
You can sign up for a free trial period and see if the service is a good fit for your needs.
Sign up for a Constant Contact free trial now
You will get tons of email templates with a drag-and-drop email design-builder to make your emails visually appealing. You can also create beautiful sign-up forms and easily integrate them with your Constant Contact account.
No matter which email marketing software you are using, it should provide you with the following functionalities:
- You should be able to create and design email templates easily. Most email marketing tools allow you to drag-and-drop different elements such as texts, images, and icons.
- A good email marketing software program comes bundled with free email templates.
- Most people open emails on their mobile phones. It’s extremely important that the templates provided by your email marketing software are mobile responsive.
How to get started with email marketing?
You can collect your prospective leads’ email addresses in many different ways – online as well as offline. For example, you can collect the email addresses of prospective buyers by making them fill out a form during an open house. However, it’s easier to collect leads with online marketing channels such as Google Ads pay-per-click (PPC), SEO, Facebook Ads, and Instagram marketing.
While you need to figure how you can collect email addresses offline, here are a few ways to collect them online:
Google Ads PPC
You can run a Google Ads PPC campaign. As a real estate digital marketing agency specializing in Google Ads PPC for Realtors and Investors, we can confidently say that it’s the best way to start generating leads online immediately.
You need to set up a PPC campaign based on budget. You will start collecting phone numbers and email addresses right away. Since Google Ads is inbound marketing, you will get the most qualified leads with this method.
On RealtyCrux.com, you can find many guides on how to set up your Google Ads PPC campaign the right way. Following are the links to some of the most popular ones:
Proven Method to Using Google Ads for Real Estate Leads
Google Ads Restrictions on Real Estate PPC Campaigns: Complete Guide
Easy Guide to Real Estate Landing Page for Google PPC Ads (Examples)
3 Real Estate PPC Strategies Working Great in 2022
The Ultimate List of Real Estate Keywords for PPC and SEO
Real Estate YouTube Ads 101: A ‘Beginner to Advanced’ Guide
What Does PPC Mean in Real Estate Marketing?
Guide to Negative Keywords List for Real Estate Google Ads
Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Google Ads Extensions [Examples]
Definitive Guide to Researching Real Estate PPC Keywords
Definitive Guide to Lowering Real Estate PPC Cost in 2022
Killer Google PPC Ads for Real Estate Investors in 11 Easy Steps
Easy Guide to Real Estate Landing Page for Google PPC Ads (Examples)
If you are not sure how to get started with Google Ads, you can hire a RealtyCrux PPC expert for a consultation or to set up the campaign.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Optimizing your website for top rankings in search engines is no easy feat. It takes time, but if you manage to do it, you will get real estate leads without spending a penny.
Here are a few RealtyCrux guides to help you learn about real estate SEO.
Step-by-Step Guide to Writing SEO-friendly Real Estate Blog Posts
SEO Audit of Real Estate Website: Complete Guide
5 Real Estate SEO Trends that Are Working Great in 2022
Local SEO for real estate leads: Complete guide
How to build SEO-friendly Real Estate Website in 30 minutes
Not sure if your website is optimized for top ranking in search results, check this out.
Facebook Ads
Facebooks Advertising is the cheapest way to start generating real estate leads instantly. Though the leads will not be as qualified as those you will generate with Google Ads, Facebook Ads are cheaper and can help you create brand awareness.
Here are a few RealtyCrux guides to help you get started with Facebook Ads:
Luxury Real Estate Marketing with Facebook Ads: The Definite Guide
Advanced Guide to Real Estate Facebook Ads: Examples & Tips
Your Unlimited Source of Facebook Ad Copy Ideas for Real Estate
Facebook’s Special Ads Category for Real Estate: Definitive Guide
The Perfect Facebook Ads Funnel Formula for Real Estate
4 Best Facebook Advertising Practices for Real Estate Professionals
3 Best Features of Facebook Advertising for Real Estate
4 Ways to Make Facebook Ads Profitable for Real Estate in 2022
20 ways to collect real estate leads with Facebook ads
Best Facebook ads placement strategy for real estate
How much should you budget for real estate Facebook Ads?
Facebook advertising: Best targeting options for realtors
How can real estate agents lower their Facebook advertising cost?
Weekly newsletter
With ThriveLeads and other email marketing tools, you can create beautiful subscription forms. The leads can subscribe to your weekly newsletter.
Other ways to grow your email list
Here are a few other ways to generate leads online for email marketing:
- Tell professionals in your network such as title inspectors, home appraisers, stagers, etc. to subscribe to your email and request them to promote it to people in their sphere of influence. You can partner to promote each other’s email list.
- Your website should have strategically-placed opt-in forms for your website visitors to subscribe to your email list.
- real estate podcasts
- YouTube Ads
- Instagram Ads and marketing
- Facebook organic marketing
- Craigslist
- Free property listing websites
8 most important email marketing tips for Realtors and investors
When you get started with email marketing, here are the 10 most important things you should keep in mind:
Audience segmentation is extremely important
You need to segment your audience to send out emails according to what service they are looking for.
Sending home listings to sellers is a fiasco that you will want to avoid.
Most email marketing tools help you leverage audience segmentation.
With audience segmentation, you will send out new listings, relocation guides, property buying guides, free home buying consultation offers, and other such lead magnets and services to home buyers only. Similarly, home sellers will receive free home evaluation offer and home selling guides.
The question is: How would you know what service or offer a particular lead is looking for so that you can segment the audience accordingly?
Well, most marketing tools allow you to create different lists for different types of audiences. You can integrate these lists to different sign-up forms on your website and other marketing platforms.
For example, you will have a different sign-up form on the website page that offers free home evaluation. When a lead signs up using this form, his or her details will be forwarded to the email list created for home sellers.
Personalize your messaging
MailChimp, Constant Contact, and most other email marketing tools let you apply the lead’s first name and other details anywhere you want in the email.
So, if a lead gets an email mentioning her first name, she will feel connected and be more encouraged to start a conversation with you. You can mention the first name in the subject line and email body. Leads will leave their first and last name when sharing their info on the sign-up form. You can insert a code looking like {first_name} where you want to mention the first name of the leads. The email marketing tool will replace this code with the email recipient’s first name.
You can also personalize your message by using email signatures having your professional image and other details such as your phone number and email address.
Leverage automation
Whenever you post any new guide, article, or featured listing, you can create a campaign and send it out to your leads. However, it needs to be done manually every time. You should also leverage automation that most email marketing tools offer nowadays.
- Create a drip email sequence for each segment of leads – home buyers, sellers, and investors.
- These emails should share with your leads the most appealing offers, services, lead magnets, and listing alerts on a regular basis.
If you have 50 emails in an email sequence then you are all set for a year as you can use the automation feature and send out emails one by one every week.
Any new lead who shows up in the email list will start getting these emails at a pre-defined interval – for example, they will receive the first email seven days after signing up, the second email 14 days after signing up, the third one 21 days after, and so on….
Stick to a schedule
Though you shouldn’t overuse email marketing and avoid cluttering the mailbox of your leads, you should follow a schedule to get the best results. You can send 1 or 2 emails a week.
The motivated leads will wait for your emails if they find the content useful. They will be disappointed if they don’t get communication from you on a regular basis.
Track results
It’s very important to know how successful your email campaigns are.
Here are a few matrices you should keep a tab on:
- click-to-open rate: the percentage of real estate leads in an email list that opened your email.
- Click-through-rate: the percentage of leads that clicked on a link or a CTA button.
- Bounce rate: the percentage of people who unsubscribed from the email list.
- Conversion rate: the percentage of people who took the desired action after opening an email such as filling out a form or signing up for an offer.
Most marketing tools provide this data. Analyzing this data can help you get better results from email marketing over time.
For example, if you got a low click-to-open rate, it means that the subject line of your email was not attention-grabbing.
If you got a low click-through-rate, it means the email copy or CTA was not compelling enough.
If you are getting a low conversion rate, you need to fix your landing page or make your offer more appealing.
If you are getting a high bounce rate, there is something seriously wrong with your marketing funnel.
A strong CTA in your emails
While the purpose of your emails should be to provide useful information and tips to your prospects, there should be some call-to-action (CTA). You can drive traffic to your service or offer pages and ask leads to fill out forms to access more valuable content on your website. You can promote podcasts, videos, and the latest articles or guides.
This will make your emails actionable and help you filter the most motivated leads in your lists. You can further segment your emails based on this data and send out personalized emails more frequently to the motivated leads.
Don’t get discouraged
Email marketing is very effective, but you may have to wait a while before you start seeing good results. So, you should not give up after sending out a couple of campaigns. Be consistent and don’t get discouraged when a few leads unsubscribe. You should keep trying to improve your campaigns to get better results.
A/B test email campaigns
You should create multiple versions of the same campaign in terms of design and content, test which one gets better click-to-open, click-through, and conversion rate.
This will help you understand your audience better and create more effective email templates.
Follow legal requirements
You should always follow privacy laws and other legal requirements.
It can be against the law to send emails to a lead who has unsubscribed from your list.
If you are talking about down payments and credit opportunities, the email should contain a disclaimer that you are not a licensed lender.
You should also not discriminate based on gender, religion, or race in your email communications when targeting leads with email marketing.
Best practices for a real estate drip email campaign
- Never overuse email marketing. The unsubscribe rate will go up if you send out too many email campaigns in a short period of time.
- Decide a manageable frequency.
- Don’t create too many CTAs in one email. Ideally, an email should have only one call-to-action.
- Be very clear and concise when writing subject lines and email copy. You should make sure to deliver what you have promised in the email.
- Always encourage leads to leave their feedback or comments on the content by replying to your email.
Types of drip emails best suited for Realtors and real estate investors
- You should send a newsletter at a set frequency – for example, weekly or monthly. There are plenty of topics to cover in a newsletter such as an analysis of the latest real estate market data, upcoming community events, links to the latest content (blog posts, guides, or ebooks) and featured listings.
- Create different email lists for leads who you should follow up with. For example, make a drip email list for people you offered free property valuation service to, and another one for those who requested a property tour. Now write a follow-up email sequence for each list and send emails at a set frequency.
- Create a drip-email campaign for new subscribers. The lead will start getting welcome emails at a set frequency after subscribing to your email list. You can send a wrap-up of the best guides on your website, community videos and guides, client success stories, the profile of your team members, and a link to the MLS search.
- Don’t forget the clients who you have helped close on a home. Create an email sequence requesting reviews on Yelp and asking them how they are enjoying their new home.
Looking for real estate email marketing services?
Are you looking for an email marketing service? Here at RealtyCrux, we can help you develop the best email marketing strategy.
From integrating CRM with your email marketing tool to writing effective emails, we will take care of every aspect of your drip campaigns.
You can reach out to us by filling out this form. We will help you leverage email marketing for real estate leads.
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