Email Marketing For Real Estate - Everything You Need To Know (with Examples)
Email marketing is the new normal for real estate agents and brokers, and for good reason. It’s affordable, effective, and easy to set up over time. Plus, you don’t need a huge budget or team to get started with email drip campaigns—just some basic training and some time on your hands to start sending out emails! In this article, we’ll cover what is an email drip campaign and how they can help you generate more leads in less time.
Why Email Marketing For Real Estate?
Email marketing is the most effective way to generate leads, and it’s also a great channel for nurturing those leads into paying customers. But why?
The benefits of email marketing are numerous:
- Email marketing has a higher ROI (return on investment) than other channels.
- It’s less expensive than other forms of advertising, which means you can create an effective campaign without breaking the bank.
- It's more personal than any other form of media, making it the ideal way to build relationships with your audience over time.
- Measuring results is easier with email campaigns because you can track how many people open your emails and what links they click on in each message so you know which ones work best for future campaigns
Types of Email Marketing Campaigns For Real Estate Agents
There are multiple different styles and reasons you may want to start an email campaign. Here are the most popular types of email campaigns:
Email Newsletter
An email newsletter can be sent weekly, monthly, or somewhere in between. I recommend that you stick to a consistent posting schedule, starting off with one newsletter per month. You can include a variety of different content and it can even be from outside of the real estate industry. Here are a few content ideas to include within your email:
- Photos of clients at the closing table or in front of their new home.
- Local real estate market update
- Link to one of your recent blog posts
Email Marketing to Sellers
Seller email marketing will most likely be a drip campaign (explained below) and we will want to include helpful information for selling their home. Email campaigns to sellers can even be segmented further, based on FSBO, expired, etc.
For FSBO email campaigns, I focus strictly on providing value. These emails don't mention my services, how I can help them, or even my track record as an agent. Rather, these emails focus 100% on helping THEM sell their house. For example, some of the FSBO email content includes:
- My photographer's contact information
- Open house tips
- State-specific legal contracts & forms
- Closing attorney information
- Helpful tips to sell their home faster
Email Marketing to Buyers
I have 2 separate types of email campaigns for buyers. Those actively looking at houses and those looking to purchase something in the next 12+ months.
For buyers actively in the market, I set them up with a search through my IDX site. This alerts them, a maximum 1x per day when new houses are listed that meet their criteria.
For buyers 12+ months out, I add them to the buyer educational email campaign. These emails provide home buying tips, current market information, and mortgage tips.
What Is an Email Drip Campaign?
An email drip campaign is an email sequence that sends out over time. Typically, you’ll start with the first email and then follow-ups will automatically be sent every few days or weeks after that. You can create multiple drip campaigns that correspond to what stage the buyer or seller is in.
How a Drip Campaign Works
A drip campaign is a series of emails that you schedule to be sent at specific intervals of time. For example, you could create an email sequence that sends out one email every seven days for three weeks.
The idea behind drip campaigns is that each message builds on the previous ones, so the more times someone sees these messages or clicks on links in them, the more likely they are to convert into customers. In real estate marketing terms, this means people will move from being potential clients to actual clients.
Why Email Drip Campaigns Are Better Than One-Off Emails
Email drip campaigns are a great way to engage your audience. They’re more effective than one-off emails because they allow you to build a relationship with your readers and set up long-term expectations.
Email drip campaigns are also more cost-effective than other forms of marketing because they don’t require as much time or money to create, manage, or track results. Plus, it’s easy for real estate agents to manage an email drip campaign: all you need is a good email service provider!
What Do You Need for Your Drip Campaigns?
If you’re going to be emailing your contacts, it’s important to make sure that your emails look professional and polished. In order to do this, you need the right tools:
- Email marketing software (such as Moosend)
- Your own email list—make sure it’s organized based on if they are a seller/buyer.
- Email templates—these make writing new emails easier by giving you a framework for what information goes where and how it should look on mobile devices or desktops.
Dipak Raghuwansi, Email Marketing Associate
Types of Email Drip Campaigns for Real Estate Agents
Email drip campaigns are some of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. With email drip campaigns, you can communicate with your audience over time by sending out a series of emails at different intervals:
Automated Email Drip Campaigns
These are automated emails sent when certain conditions are met. For example, if someone subscribes to your seller tips on your website, they would automatically be placed into your seller tips drip campaign.
Manual Email Drip Campaigns
Manual drip campaigns require more manual intervention but allow for more flexibility in terms of timing and content than automation does. This means that you can send out one-off messages when there’s something important happening in your clients' lives (e.g., “The kids will be getting back from summer camp tomorrow! We're excited too!"). Or maybe someone just bought a new home and wants advice on what improvements they should make first? You could send them tips via email with links back to blog posts where we've already covered those topics—and then continue following up every few weeks until they feel confident about making the leap into DIY mode themselves!
What’s a Good Timeline for Real Estate Drip Campaigns?
Here are some guidelines for the length of your drip campaigns:
For Sale By Owner Listings: One email per week will usually last for 7 weeks, or until they sell/allow me to list.
General Sellers: One email per month, for a total of 24 months. These emails are packed full of information for the sellers and are only sent 1x / a month to ensure they are value packed.
Active Buyers: One email per day, if a house was listed that meets their criteria.
General Buyers: Like the general seller campaign, you want to ensure the emails are packed full of value. When they receive an email from you, they know there will be something they can learn within. I send these 1x / mo for a total of 24 months.
Remember that email marketing isn’t about sending one email and waiting for them all to convert; it’s about building relationships with potential clients over time so that when (not if) they're ready for new listings or homes for sale in their area, they'll think of YOU first!
Best Email Marketing Software For Real Estate
There is no shortage of email marketing software. Over the years I have used 4+ different email marketing services and below is the set of tools I currently use. I found these tools work best for my business and I recommend trying a few different ones out.
Moosend | Automated email marketing software with built-in landing pages to gain additional subscribers.
Airtable | I use it to manage all of my drip email campaigns, it makes it easy to keep track of everything.
Canva | I use canva for email signatures and email design templates.
Jasper | Generates subject lines and helps me write the emails
Warmup Inbox | Prevents your email from being marked as spam by "warming up" your email.
Automated Email Marketing For Real Estate
Having automated email sequences are well worth the time to set up. Once the content is built out, you can automate email campaigns that are specific to where they signed up. Here is a video on Automated email marketing in Moosend.
Email Subject Lines & Open Rates
When you start your automated email marketing, be sure to pay attention to the open rates. The best way to increase open rates is through your subject lines. Take a look at these 2 email subject lines:
A. Market Update | September 4th
B. What in The World Just Caused Home Prices to Drop 12%!?
Both emails contain the same exact content but the email subject line "B" provides more insight into what they will be reading when they open.
Another reason you may have a low open rate % is the emails are going to the spam folder. Most email providers will provide you with the metrics you need to know, making it easier to pinpoint the problem(s).
If your emails are going to the spam folder, here are some ideas on how you can fix it.
Use an Email Warmup Service
This is especially important if you just created your email account. An email warmup service will automatically send emails to and from your account for about 10 days. It slowly increases the output so after 10 days you are able to send 100's of emails a day, without hitting the spam folders.
By both sending and receiving emails, a warmup service shows the email providers your email account is legitimate.
Verify Emails on Your Campaign Lists
If your campaigns are being sent to emails that are no longer valid or do not exist, it will hurt your delivery rates for all of the other emails.
Personally, I will verify the emails in my campaigns 3 - 4 times a year. This can easily be done by exporting your email subscribers and uploading them into a service, like voila norbert. From there, delete the invalid emails from your campaigns.
How to Get Email Subscribers
Outside of your lead sources and clients, a great way to gain more email subscribers is through your real estate agent website. On your website, you can include landing pages to gain additional email subscribers.
These landing pages can be
- Buyer Tips
- Seller Tips
- Area information (things to do, restaurants, events, etc)
Depending which landing page they signup on will dictate which campaign they will be placed into. This may sound somewhat overwhelming at first but I can ensure you it is incredibly easy.
Start with one email campaign & landing page and build from there when you feel more confident. If you use a service, like Moosend, everything will be completely automated for you.
In conclusion, utilizing email marketing for real estate will significantly impact your business. You most likely will not see results immediately but eventually, you will have 900+ email subscribers who will convert over time.