How to Make Real Estate Email Marketing Work for Realtors In 2022

The real estate industry is dynamic with shifting trends as investment opportunities explode and new tracking and marketing technologies emerge. The house-hunting market is getting more extensive, and property prices keep rising. Hence, the recipe for financial success is getting your marketing right. 

Realtors can use real estate email marketing strategies to connect and build relationships with potential buyers. 

That said, this blog post covers all you need to know about nurturing your real estate audience and transforming prospects into loyal customers using email marketing for realtors. 

Why Real Estate Agents Need to Engage Their Customers Using Email Marketing

Engagement is how often your leads interact with your content via replies, shares, comments, and more. Here are some of the reasons you need audience engagement as a realtor.

You Can Educate Your Customers

Homebuyers often spend about three weeks searching for a new property on their own before contacting a real estate agent. The buyers will see you as a trustworthy expert if you use email marketing to educate them about the property buying process. If they don't find a property on their own, they'll choose to hire an agent and consider you first. 

You Can Get More Referrals

About 39% of buyers find a real estate agent via a family member or friend. When your customers interact with and pay attention to your content, they'll be more likely to remember you when an individual in their network requires a realtor. That's why you also need to keep your past clients engaged.

Competition for Customers is High

The US has over two million real estate licenses, which implies steep competition for clients. Getting high engagement with your real estate email marketing can make your customers notice your content and remember you when it's time to buy or sell a home.

Email Gives You More Control 

Email marketing gives you more control than other digital marketing channels (like digital advertising or social media). For instance, when you post content on your Instagram or Facebook page, your post only reaches out to a fraction of your audience, thanks to their algorithms.

On the other hand, your email list will receive your emails at a set time without any confusing algorithm obstructing it from being seen. 

Factors to Consider Starting Your Real Estate Email Marketing Strategy

Timing Is Everything 

You want to keep customers thinking about your real estate brand so that when they're prepared to rent or buy any new listings, they'll contact your real estate agency. But you'll need to avoid too much contact — no one likes a pushy real estate agent. 

With this in mind, you'll need to schedule real estate newsletters that aren't overwhelming but don't let customers forget about your real estate business.

It varies based on each real estate business, so make sure you test various schedules to know which yields the optimum results. 

Creativity is Key

Sometimes when customers search for properties, they're not ready to make a final decision. They may just be browsing the real estate market, so every email they receive from a real estate agent shouldn't be trying to get them to view properties. 

As a real estate agent, get more creative by generating various kinds of valuable and engaging content that eases the process of buying or selling a house.

Update Your List Regularly

Real estate email marketing requires updating and segmenting your list regularly to ensure you're sending messages to the right people. 

That implies getting user preferences like location details so that your list is up-to-date.

It makes more sense to have a small but engaged list (quality leads) than a long list of email subscribers who hardly open your emails.

Ways to Utilize Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents 

You can generate loyalty and build trust with your customers by using effective real estate email marketing to show you care. 

Here are essential strategies to help you create winning email campaigns and convert your buyer leads. 

1. Design Targeted Emails

Ensure the design of each email is specific to the objective of the email campaign. 

For instance, you'll need to structure property bulletins differently from monthly email newsletters, which should be different from the appointment confirmations for your property viewings. 

While each email needs to be optimized based on your objectives (providing information, getting clicks, etc.), ensure to brand all of them, so customers will instantly recognize that they're from you. 

It's essential as there are so many real estate agents trying to rent and sell properties that it can confuse customers. Ensure you have a memorable brand that customers won't forget when they need to buy.

Here are some steps to help you design your emails to improve your real estate brand interactions. 

Sign Up for Your Competitor's Newsletters

You can get real estate marketing ideas on the kind of wording or design generating results by keeping an eye on the property bulletins and newsletters of other real estate agents. Look for email marketing samples that will help you generate better content ideas. What works for real estate marketers isn't the same as for accounts or e-commerce stores but there might be some elements that can be emulated.

Create Email Templates 

You can create an email template for each type of email campaign and avoid beginning from scratch every time. For instance, you can have a property bulletin template, which enables you to slot in new rental properties quickly.

2. Segment Your Client Base

This strategy is especially essential for quality leads that you wish to nurture over a long period if they're not ready to rent or buy. 

To build and maintain relationships, you want to send these potential clients relevant content (not just updates on the business), so you can establish your brand authority. At the same time, don’t spam them with too many emails.

To do this, you'll need to segment your client base. 

How Can I Segment my Client Base? 

Segmenting your client base helps to boost your click through rate, newsletter engagement, opens, and provides a better customer experience. Here's how to achieve that. 

Centralize Your Data

Centralizing all the information you get from various sources, such as phone calls, social media, email newsletters, in-person appointments, and other marketing platforms, will help you create accurate, up-to-date segments. 

Collect as Much Data as You Can

Whether through a sign-up form, in-person at an appointment, or on the phone, ensure you get as much data as you can on the customer's preferences and demographic data. 

3. Use Landing Pages to Generate Sign-ups

Several individuals who want to rent or buy a house first look online, whether it's a property aggregation website or your real estate website. 

Ensure to make it as seamless as possible for your potential clients browsing your site to either learn more about each property or sign up for your newsletters. 

To achieve this, you'll need to encourage individuals to provide their information by creating sign-up forms and landing pages. Ensure you optimize the property inquiry forms to avoid people who see an asset they like from choosing not to proceed because the form is overly complicated, doesn't work correctly, or requests too much data. 

Here are essential factors to note when maximizing the sign-ups you generate from a landing page.

Include Custom Fields

Add necessary fields relevant to the real estate industry, such as preferred location, when they'd like to move in, and budget. 

Keep it Simple

Ensure you make the email catchy and concise, and keep the design simple yet attractive enough to project the properties you're trying to sell or rent. You don't want to confuse or distract your website visitors. 

Optimize Your Design for Every Device

Since you don't know which device (desktop or mobile device) your leads will use, ensure the functionality and design of the landing page are effective across all devices. If you're not a graphic design expert, look for beginner-friendly email marketing software that offers drag-and-drop templates. 

Create a Clear Call to Action

Ensure the design and text of your call to action button are clear enough.

4. Automate Email Campaigns 

The key to successful real estate email marketing is sending the right message to the right person at the right time. Yet manually doing this isn't easy. 

An automated email campaign is automatically sent when a client takes a specific action. The customer will receive a series of marketing emails (specific to the action they took) from you at predefined intervals. 

Creating an automated email campaign (also called autoresponder or drip campaign) ensures clients receive personalized emails relevant to their preferences, lifecycle stage, and demographic. 

For instance, when new leads sign up for your newsletters, you can send an automated welcome email that provides information on the real estate market. After the welcome email, you can send another email with details of the best restaurants, schools, bars, and cafes in the area they're interested in.

You can follow that up with an email about home maintenance tips, and the subsequent email can be a rental property bulletin. 

Sending an automated email campaign can help avoid committing errors that annoy clients, such as sending welcome emails to customers who just purchased a house.

Besides being more effective, automated campaigns also save time and money. Here's how to create effective automated campaigns. 

Measure the Effectiveness of Each Email

Monitor the engagement and click through rates for each email and not just for the entire email campaign to help you identify if the content or workflow requires editing. 

Identify Common Behavioral Actions

You need to know what actions customers regularly take that can help to nurture them on their way to renting or buying. That includes signing up as new leads or arranging a viewing.

Use the Right Email Marketing Tool

If you're prepared to begin your email marketing process, the first thing is to select the right email marketing software. You can't use a personal email account for your real estate email marketing. Nearly all personal email clients (such as Yahoo and Gmail) limit the number of messages you can send simultaneously.

Besides, personal email clients don't provide any scheduling or analytics. Ensure to research various email marketing tools to find the most suitable one for your needs. Examples include:

• Mailchimp: It provides automated message templates. 
• MailerLite: It optimizes your landing page and helps create popups when generating sign-ups. 
• SendPulse: It uses multiple criteria to create specific segments and updates them automatically.

Gain Customer Loyalty by Building Trust as a Local Realtor

Renting or buying a property isn't a simple decision. Buyers need someone they can trust — an agent who cares about helping them choose the ideal house and isn't just pushing them into making a rash decision. 

Email marketing for commercial real estate is the ideal way to prove to your customers that you care about them and know what you're talking about. That way, they can rely on you to help them find their dream home.