The Realtor’s Guide to Email Marketing

What marketing strategies do you use to appeal to prospective home buyers and sellers?

If you’re not using email marketing to promote your real estate business, you could be missing out.

Real estate is a highly competitive industry, and thoughtfully written, highly targeted email campaigns can give you an edge over your competitors.

Plus, as subscribers have actively signed up for your email marketing list, you’re speaking to people in the market to buy or sell.

Not sure how to create the perfect real estate email marketing strategy? In this article, I’ll show you the benefits of email marketing for real estate agents and how to create emails that will get prospective clients’ attention.

Key Takeaways

• Consider where email subscribers are in the sales cycle. Your message will vary depending on whether they’re researching, ready to buy or sell, or in the process of buying or selling.
• Create authentic, trustworthy content that resonates with your customers’ needs and avoid spammy language.
• Use personalization and segmentation to create highly targeted email campaigns and show prospective customers information that’s valuable to them.
• Data is critical. Look at your click-through and conversion rates to see which calls to action work best and what days and times to send your emails.
• All your marketing channels, including social media marketing, email marketing, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, should come together to provide a seamless, well-branded customer experience.

Why Is Email Marketing for Real Estate Useful?

Email marketing benefits a range of industries—especially real estate.

Why?

Real estate is competitive. You likely have many rivals in your area. You can use email marketing to show your value, encourage prospective customers to trust you, and demonstrate what sets you apart.

Real estate is unpredictable. The sales market is constantly changing, with a lot of seasonal variations. For example, summer is generally quiet, as many are busy with vacations and other summer activities. You can use email marketing to nurture a steady flow of customers and give them a gentle nudge into putting their house on the market at off-peak times.

Plus, real estate email marketing (and email marketing in general) can be cost-effective. You can use it even when you don’t have a big marketing budget or are experiencing a dip in sales.

Real estate has a long sales cycle. It can take a month or two to buy or sell a house. Readying or entertaining offers, getting a mortgage, and going through the final steps of the sales process can add weeks, even months. And then there’s a lot of legwork that goes into even getting ready to buy or sell.

With so many stages to the process, there’s a real opportunity to use email marketing to reach customers where they’re at in the cycle. Good email marketing will also keep them engaged for the long haul.  

Email marketing is highly personalized, meaning you can build relationships with customers and show you’re a trusted source of information. This keeps them engaged throughout the process and may even mean they recommend you to friends.

How to Build Your Real Estate Email Marketing Strategy

Successful real estate email marketing isn’t just about drafting an email and pressing send. You need to plan to get the best results. Here’s the process I use to get started:

• Identify your target audience. Who do you want to send your emails to? In the case of real estate email marketing, you might have multiple target audiences. This is where segmenting your email list and targeting multiple audiences at different stages of the sales or buying cycle can be useful. More on segmentation later.
• Define your goals. Do you want to generate inquiries, raise brand awareness, or sell a particularly difficult property?
• Understand which emails you will send. How many emails will you send, and what will your call to action be? Keep reading to find out more about doing this.
• Build your list. It’s crucial to get email subscribers in the right way. Customers should consent for you to contact them. A good starting point is to have a sign-up page on your website with an easy-to-complete form.

After your campaign is complete, it’s essential to analyze the data and see if you achieved your goals. This gives you valuable insight into what works and what doesn’t to help with your next real estate email marketing campaign.

Best Practices for Real Estate Email Marketing

Here are some of my best practices for emails that generate clicks and help customers find their perfect home.

(By the way, these tips apply to your commercial real estate email marketing, too!)

Build Around a Relevant Call to Action (CTA)

Your CTA is the action you want readers to take after looking at your email. This could be to sign up for an open house event, view a listing, or read your latest blog.

Research shows that emails with two or three CTAs have the best click-through rates. Adding more can confuse your prospective customers.

The best CTAs take into account where your reader is in the marketing funnel. For example, you might want to encourage someone at the top of the funnel to “download a free homebuyer’s guide” and get someone at the bottom of the funnel to “talk to a real estate agent.”

As well as deciding what your call to action will be, you also need to determine how it will look. The shape, size, placement, and even the color of your CTA can have a significant impact on how often it’s clicked.

A/B testing is the best way to see which call to action generates the most clicks and conversions. Most email marketing platforms come with A/B testing features as a standard.

Experiment to Find the Best Cadence

Email cadence refers to the time and day you send your emails, as well as the frequency.

Getting your cadence right in the real estate sector can be tricky. Some customers might want to see listings as soon as they come on the market, while others might get frustrated if you email them too often.

An easy solution is to let email subscribers choose their email frequency. This means they get notifications when it best suits them and reduces the chances of them unsubscribing entirely.

According to email marketers, sending emails on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday leads to optimal open rates. The ideal time to send emails is late morning or afternoon. However, your own experiences might vary. Try different combinations to see which gets the best results for your business.

Consistency is key. Try to send your emails on the same day and at the same time every week and stick to the same frequency to keep subscribers happy.

Minimize Spammy Language

In the past, internet service providers (ISPs) analyzed the words in your email to determine whether it was spammy. So if you said “free,” “urgent,” or “money back,” chances were your email ended up in the spam folder.

Nowadays, ISPs use more sophisticated, contextual methods of determining whether an email is spam. However, your customers may still disregard your email if it contains suspicious-sounding words.

Here are some words and phrases to avoid in your email real estate marketing—and alternatives to try.

• Instead of saying “discount,” say a property is a “great value” or an “investment opportunity.”
• Instead of “act now,” say “don’t miss out” on a property’s unique features.
• Also avoid writing in all capitals and using excessive punctuation.

ActiveCampaign has a great list of spam trigger words to avoid. The common theme? It’s filled with phrases that make exaggerated claims or create unnecessary pressure and urgency. 

Build Out Unique Customer Segments and Craft Emails Accordingly

Email segmentation is when you split your subscribers into small, targeted groups. This helps you send more personalized emails, increasing the chances of people paying attention.

Eighty-three percent of customers say they prefer hyper-personalized marketing messages. Email segmentation can help you achieve this.

A good starting point for your real estate email marketing strategy is to split subscribers into buyers and sellers. These two groups have completely different goals, as while they may need to sell their existing home to buy a new one, those are two separate processes.

You can find this information out when customers sign up for your emails—ask them if they’re buying, selling, or both.

If you want, you can take things even further. For example, you can ask customers if they’re:

• First-time homebuyers
• Looking to downsize
• Actively looking to buy or sell or are just curious

Once you’ve segmented your email list, craft your email content accordingly.

Support Your Strategy With Email Marketing Tools

There are lots of fantastic tools, free and paid, that can help support your email marketing real estate strategy. Here are a few to get you started.

A great place to begin is Mail Grader. Answer a few simple questions, and you’ll get a free report. This shows what you’re doing well and where you can improve.

It’s essential to choose the right email marketing service for your budget and needs. Zoho is one of my favorites and has a “forever free” option.

It’s important to spend time crafting a great subject line, as this entices people to open your emails. Omnisend has an email subject line tester to help you generate the perfect opener.

Google Analytics is also a must. You can use it to track the customer journey on your website to see which links and email CTAs lead to the most conversions.

Effective Real Estate Email Marketing Examples

Here are some examples of real estate email marketing I love.

Resonant Realty has its introductory email exactly right. It offers a guide for buyers and sellers as a thank you for signing up and provides information about the team behind the brand to establish trust.

It’s short and easy to read but still engaging.

It’s important to consider the images and videos you use in your emails to help subscribers visualize their future home. Kiawah Island Club & Real Estate embedded a beautiful video in its email, showing the benefits of buying a property and how luxurious life can be.

Finally, JamesEdition doesn’t just promote its properties in its emails. It informs and entertains. By showcasing its expertise and knowledge with news and informational content, the real estate agent shows prospective customers that it has its finger on the pulse and that they can trust it to find their dream home.

FAQs

What types of email campaigns are effective for real estate agents?

Examples of great email campaign ideas for real estate agents include:

• New listing alerts
• Open house promotions
• Client success stories
• News about market trends
• Advice for buying or selling your home (for example, how to add curb appeal)

What is the role of segmentation in real estate email marketing?

Segmentation can help you personalize the email campaigns you send based on specific groups of customers. This means prospective customers are more likely to get the information that’s of most value to them.

How important is personalization in email marketing for real estate agents?

Personalizing your email marketing leads to increased engagement, a better customer experience, and a higher likelihood of conversions. For example, you could use the recipient’s name in the subject line or dynamic content to show properties they are most interested in.

Conclusion

Real estate email marketing is the perfect way to capture prospective customers’ attention and nurture them until they’re ready to buy or sell.

Let me leave you with one final statistic. 

Over half of customers made a purchase directly from an email last year. If you can perfect the email marketing for your real estate business, you could see a fantastic return on investment. 
Remember that all the marketing channels you use, including social media marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO), should come together to provide a consistent, cohesive customer experience.