How to set up your real estate email marketing the right way

Setting up your real estate email marketing strategy is easy. Real estate is a competitive industry: And there’s one form of digital marketing that outperforms the others: email marketing..

How to setup your email marketing strategy for your real estate business? Just follow these 4 steps!

1. Capture real estate leads

At your next open house, networking event or another sociable get-together, you can collect email addresses the old-fashioned way (just remember to get consent to use their personal information for the purposes of email marketing) or use an iPad app to add people directly to your real estate email list.

Though property viewings and sales mostly happen in person, you’ll want to also take your business online for efficient lead generation and to build your client base further.

Online, you can reach people by using targeted paid ads (on Google or social media) and have the right people find you by investing in SEO for relevant keywords (e.g. real estate broker in [city]).

PPC advertising can get really expensive very quickly! So we wrote a guide about how to drive traffic to your website or property listing pages with online ads.

Once people land on your website, it would be a shame to let them go without asking for their contact details. One can always try! In email marketing, you do this with a signup form.

A signup form can be placed in various spots on your website, from the footer to the blog sidebar or appearing as a pop-up.

Give visitors a good reason to give you their email addresses. Tell them what they can expect from your real estate marketing emails, and explain how it’s relevant to them and how it will benefit them.

We explore how to grow a high-quality prospect email list in this in-depth guide.

Many real estate marketers use an incentive to motivate visitors to sign up. In exchange for an email address, they offer a useful gift that is relevant to the real estate market, such as:

A report on real estate price changes
How to obtain low-interest loans
A list of contact details from movers and packers in the area
A checklist for moving properties

2. Brand yourself

Just like normal, offline relationships, you want to break the ice and build rapport before you ask for any favors or promote your services. Work on your credibility first, then start doing business.

Welcome email

To break the ice, use an automated welcome email. This email is sent after someone signs up for your list. You can send it immediately, or add a couple of hours (or a day) of delay in your automated workflow. Your email marketing software will handle these autoresponders.

In the welcome email, you introduce yourself. It’s your first chance to show your level of expertise, trustworthiness, experience and professionalism. Focus on why customers should do business with you (and not another one of the many brokers in town).

Then add a call-to-action (CTA) that asks the reader to set up a phone call or grab a coffee to chat about their situation. Preferably, you want every email to contain a call to action (and your phone number).

Here’s how to create a call-to-action (CTA) that works in your real estate newsletters.

Entertaining emails

For the first set of emails, don’t instantly go into sales mode. There’s plenty of time for that later! Instead, show your human side and personality.

Send your subscribers emails about:

Local charities you participate in
Events happening in town
Updates on interest rates on the market
Periodic comparative market analysis
Newly opened shops and restaurants
Holiday greetings
Home improvement tips
Mortgage news
Housing decoration inspiration and trends

3. Invest in a personal relationship

Should I let you in on a secret that’ll instantly make your emails more valuable?

It’s personalization.

Find out as soon as possible what your email newsletter subscribers are interested in so you can personalize your messaging and deliver value. This starts on your homepage. Set up different landing pages for different target groups.

People interested in selling their house don’t need the same information as those who are looking to buy one. The same goes for visitors searching in different locations or with diverse housing needs. When you have different landing pages, each target group can read about what’s applicable to their situation.

Use different signup forms on each landing page to organize your readers from the get-go.

Or use one signup form and have people mark the newsletters they’re interested in. In your email tool, these subscribers will automatically be grouped together, making it easier for you to send personalized emails.

4. Stay top of mind with targeted emails

After you’ve grouped your subscribers together in different segments, it’s time to come up with a concept for the real estate emails you’ll send out. To make the most out of your email marketing, try to automate as many emails as possible.

You’ll want to have a mix of regular email marketing campaigns and automated workflows.

Regular campaigns could include:

Just sold properties
New or expired listings
Current events in town
Seasonal information
Updates

Seasonal events and festivities are a good excuse to host something for potential buyers and sellers. You could also host a giveaway or competition to build up the hype.

Automated workflows you could set up include:

Incentive email (e.g. when a subscriber signs up to receive a downloadable)
Welcome email
Relationship-building emails (a series of emails in which you introduce yourself, your service and what you can offer the subscriber)
Automated new listing alerts or a weekly/monthly round-up of what’s new on the market using RSS campaigns
Follow-up email after a meeting, viewing or sale
Referral or testimonial email for happy buyers
Drip campaigns (a series of emails to nurture customers, e.g. to get them from explorative to ready to buy)
Win-back campaigns for readers that haven’t shown any engagement with your emails lately

Automated email sequences are easy to implement with the right email marketing software.