Your inbox overflows with unread messages, but don’t let important leads slip through the cracks.
Email marketing remains one of the highest converting digital channels for real estate professionals when executed correctly.
Yet many agents underutilize its potential, blasting batch-and-blast messages to stale contact lists hoping for a bite.
This approach wastes time and destroys credibility. To break through the noise, you must create emails subscribers crave opening.
That means understanding prospect motivations, providing continual value, and optimizing through testing.
Top Takeaway:
Email marketing is a powerful tool for real estate agents to connect with clients and generate leads.
By creating targeted campaigns, providing valuable content, and utilizing automation tools, agents can increase engagement and drive sales in the competitive real estate market.Today, we revisit one of our most popular webinars precisely about this subject, hosted by Professor Lydia Monteforte with Ylopo clients and brokers Anthony Malafronte, Mike Renick and Lee Adkins.
In this two part series, these top producers drop important tips, strategies, and essential knowledge you will need to do email marketing the right way.
Today's article will be a distilled version of both webinars, but will broach other areas that haven't been explored in them as well.
The goal is to outline a strategic blueprint to transform email into your real estate business’s most powerful revenue driver. You’ll learn how to:
Build a highly engaged, segmented subscriber list
Create compelling, conversion-focused email campaigns
Leverage automation to streamline complex workflows
Drive website traffic through optimized on-page content
Continually improve performance through data-driven optimization
Email marketing mastery is within reach. Let’s get started!
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Chapter 1: Why Email Marketing Matters Your Real Estate Business
If you're a real estate agent, email marketing should be a fundamental part of your overall strategy.
Utilizing email to communicate with potential clients provides some major advantages that can significantly benefit your business.
Let's explore why you should make email a priority:
It's Cost-Effective
Compared to other forms of marketing and advertising, email is extremely budget-friendly.
You can send out customized messages to hundreds or even thousands of subscribers for very little money.
Strategic segmentation and automation through email service providers allow you to get plenty of mileage out of every campaign.
It Drives Engagement
Nowadays, capturing someone's attention is no easy feat.
However, well-designed emails tend to spark interest and engagement at higher rates than platforms like social media. People who opt-in to your mailing list already indicate an initial willingness to hear from you.
Craft compelling subject lines and content in your emails to further entice them to open, read, and click-through.
It Helps You Cultivate Leads
Email gives you an opportunity to nurture relationships with potential clients over time.
By consistently providing value through helpful information and insights, you organically build trust and authority.
This transforms cold leads into warm leads, priming them for when they are ready to buy or sell real estate.
It Facilitates Sales
Effective email campaigns generate new buyer leads when you have listings to promote. They also ensure you remain top-of-mind with past clients who may buy or sell again.
Tracking email analytics allows you to monitor engagement and behaviors, facilitating timely and relevant follow-ups to convert contacts into clients.
In short, leveraging email marketing can profoundly impact your real estate business's ability to grow and thrive.
Read on to explore proven strategies for maximizing the effectiveness of your email efforts.
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The data-driven real estate platform that skyrockets your business through predictability, efficiency and control.
Chapter 2: Developing Impactful Email Campaigns for Real Estate Success
Now that you understand why email marketing is so valuable for driving real estate success, let's look at some tactical tips for squeezing the most juice out of your campaigns.
Two major keys are:
Lead Magnets
Don't just ask people to sign up for your mailing list—entice them by offering something helpful in return.
Develop a lead magnet: a complimentary, high-value resource like a detailed neighborhood or market analysis that targets their interests.
This incentive sparks intrigue and gets new contacts excited about your future emails.
Pro Tip: When creating your lead magnet, make sure to focus on delivering real value to potential leads instead of purely promotional content.
Provide in-depth statistics, helpful insights, or other useful information tailored specifically to their needs.
For example, offer market reports for specific neighborhoods, guides detailing the home buying process, comparisons of loan options, local school data, and more.
Structure your lead magnet deliverable in an easy-to-consume format like a PDF ebook, checklist, or video that makes the value you provide readily accessible.
Optimized lead magnets positioned prominently on website landing pages, online listings, direct mail postcards, and other marketing materials entice visitors and contacts to exchange their information for your free offer.The specific lead magnet incentive you develop should align directly with your ideal buyer and seller profiles. Know exactly who you want to attract and what would appeal most to them before investing time into creation.
Often niche, hyper-targeted lead magnets focused on serving a specific subset of prospects outperform general, one-size-fits-all offers. Surveys, customer interviews, and examining competitors can uncover niche needs waiting to be fulfilled through a tailored lead gen asset.
Audience Segmentation
Avoid the novice mistake of blasting every contact with identical emails.
Savvy marketers segment their mailing list based on categories like: buyers vs. sellers, locations, lead source, relationship stage, and more.
This allows you to customize your messaging to align with the unique interests and needs of each subset of subscribers.
Email service providers make organizing contacts and sending targeted campaigns simple.
Embrace these two strategies—lead magnets to rapidly grow your list and segmentation for tailored outreach—to ensure your emails captivate audiences and accelerate your real estate business's success.
Chapter 3: Craft Emails That Convert
With your list segmented, it’s time to craft compelling emails. Follow these best practices for real estate email marketing success:
Personalize, Personalize, Personalize
Even at scale, make outreach feel one-to-one.
Generic emails seem spammy, while personalized messages feel like one-to-one communication. Include subscriber first names and details like recent listings viewed to demonstrate personalization.
Make it personal with first name personalization, location-based content, references to past conversations, and links to recently viewed listings. Relevance and thoughtfulness help drive conversions.
When buyers click online flyers or request info, respond immediately with relevant options and neighborhood perspectives that outdo portals’ automated alerts.
Individualize follow-ups based on behaviors tracked in your CRM - agents providing helpful personal touches convert contacts better.
Find the Right Frequency
Consistent outreach generates results, but overcommunication leads to fatigue. Use lead intelligence to determine optimal frequency.
For example, send less to cold leads just entering your funnel while increasing frequency for engaged subscriber groups. Typically for real estate:
Cold leads: 2 emails per month
Warm leads: 1 email per week
Hot leads: 2 emails per week
Monitor engagement levels and adjust frequency accordingly.
Balance Promos and Value
Deals draw attention, but value builds loyalty. Strive for a healthy mix of promotional and value-driven content.
For example, you could showcase discounted fees one week then share neighborhood updates the next. This combination converts subscribers to clients while establishing trust and authority.
Leverage Video to Add Personality
Video marketing dominated in 2023, and will continue to do so in 2024.
Luckily, email platforms make including intriguing video content simple.
Consider filming short videos on local happenings, home tips, or your smiling face introducing neighborhood guides.
Repurpose video across email, site landing pages, social media, and YouTube. Seeing you on-camera builds familiarity and trust with subscribers faster resulting in more conversions.
Chapter 4: Optimizing Deliverability
Crafting great content means nothing if emails never reach the inbox. Ensure your messages get through with these deliverability tips.
Avoid Spam Triggers
Spam filters screen for red flags like:
Spammy language (“free,” “guaranteed,” “limited time”)
Overuse of salesy links and images
Irrelevant content
Email sent from unknown or low-reputation source
Carefully construct copy and send via a reputable provider like SendGrid or Mailchimp to maximize inbox placement.
Personalize the Preheader
The preheader is the short message previewing an email’s content when closed. Spam filters analyze preheaders, so make them relevant.
For example, a preheader like “Market update for [first name]” signals a personalized message vs. a sales pitch.
Authenticate Your Domain
Domain authentication verifies your sending domain, improving credibility and inbox rates. Authenticate through DNS records, domain registrars, or your email provider.
Granular Segmentation for Hyper-Targeting
Avoid spamming all contacts with the same blast. Leverage segmentation to deploy appropriately timed, relevant content.
Set up smart lists in your email platform automatically grouping contacts by behaviors like email opens, link clicks, or properties viewed.
Create targeted follow-up campaigns addressing each segment’s demonstrated interests and needs for greater relevancy.
For example, send recent listings to buyers clicking online flyers or offer neighborhood guides to those opening local articles. Specificity converts.
Ylopo Webinars:
Unlock a vault of real-world, battle-tested strategies from top realtors nationwide.
Chapter 5: Automation Tools to Streamline Email Efforts
Between creating content, segmenting contacts, schedules sends, and tracking engagement, email marketing involves many moving parts.
Luckily, a number of excellent automation tools exist to streamline efforts for real estate agents.
CRM and Email Service Integrations
For realtors, integration between your customer relationship management (CRM) system and email provider solves one of the biggest pain points - syncing contact data.
Tools like Follow Up Boss, Top Producer, LionDesk and many more allow you to:
Sync email subscriber data with your CRM contacts in real-time
View CRM lead intelligence like stage, last activity, days since last email, etc. within your email platform
Trigger emails based on CRM lead actions like viewing a listing or requesting info
Create workflows to automatically update CRM records when emails are opened/clicked
This eliminates manual exporting and uploading of contacts whenever you make CRM updates. It also enables more personalized, automated email flows.
Email Follow-Up Workflows
Instead of manually scheduling one-off email blasts, create follow-up workflows that trigger scheduled touchpoints.
For example, set up a 5-email nurture sequence for new buyer sign-ups:
Welcome email sent instantly
Buyer guide sent 2 days later
Email with recent listings sent 1 week later
Neighborhood overview emails on weeks 2 and 3
This automated follow-up provides continual value and positions you as a trusted resource over time, nurturing subscribers into clients.
Smart Lists and Triggers
Use smart lists and email triggers to deploy hyper-targeted outreach based on user actions.
Smart lists automatically group contacts by attributes like:
Opened a specific email
Clicked specific link
Visited particular webpages
Reached defined lead stage
Entered specific location
Triggers then instantly deploy appropriate emails when smart list conditions are met.
For example, set up a trigger to send listings similar to recently viewed homes whenever a buyer clicks listings in other emails. This hyper-targeted follow-up grabs attention when buyer intent peaks.
Text Message Marketing
Expand beyond email by integrating text message marketing as well. With the rise of mobile, texts often outperform email thanks to faster response expectations and 98% open rates.
Many providers like Follow Up Boss allow you to plug in phone numbers to enable:
Automated appointment reminders and confirmations
Text notifications when listings match saved searches
Instant text follow-up when lead actions indicate readiness
Layering text message follow-up on top of email provides timely outreach based on buying signals.
Struggling agents:
End the vicious cycle of wasted time and money on dead-end leads.
Chapter 6: Driving Traffic and Conversions Through Email
We've covered email marketing best practices from list building and segmentation to crafting killer campaigns and leveraging automation. Now let's explore how to drive website traffic, conversions, and sales through email.
Promote Site Content
Don’t keep your blog posts, market updates, pet-friendly listings, and other website content secrets. Promote these assets in your emails with links and summaries.
This provides value to subscribers while directing them back to your site. Once there:
Your brand and expertise shine through quality content
Visitors browse other pages, demonstrating engagement
Retargeting pixels fire, allowing more relevant ads
Conversions on high-intent pages become more likely
So use emails to distribute and highlight content from your website regularly.
Share New Listings
Homebuyers have one main goal: finding available homes matching their wants. Help them out by showcasing new listings in emails or via automated alerts.
For example, send:
Manually curated selections of new listings
Automated emails when homes meeting saved searches hit the MLS
Listing alerts from your CRM triggered by buyer behaviors
Position each listing with tempting info like room count, amenities, open house dates, and showing instructions.
Sharing on-market listings provides intrinsic value and positions you as the go-to source for fresh inventory.
Link to Landing Pages
Landing pages with dedicated forms allow you to learn more about site visitors and segment them for more relevant follow-up.
For example, create pages geared specifically towards buyer and seller leads. Embed these in emails with messaging and CTAs tailored to each audience.
Forms can capture important information like:
Timeframes and motivations
Property preferences
Budget
Contact info
You now know exactly what visitors want and can provide hyper-targeted outreach to ultimately convert subscribers.
Retarget Site Visitors
Retargeting uses tracking pixels or cookies to serve ads to previous visitors across channels like Facebook and Google.
Since site visitors have demonstrated interest, retargeting them with relevant ads drives higher conversions than targeting strangers.
Savvy real estate marketers plug retargeting codes into:
Website pages
Landing page forms
Email tracking links
This expands your reach and positions you as the expert resource at every consumer touchpoint across channels.
Reward Loyalty
Don’t take subscriber loyalty for granted - reward it. Special perks for VIPs cement relationships and may attract email forwards or social shares.
Offer loyal followers:
Early access to some listings
Entry into contests, raffles or giveaways
Exclusive market insights
Priority booking for events or open houses
Loyalty incentives drive engagement while making subscribers feel special.
Convert Clicks to Calls-to-Action
Ultimately, you want clicks and eyes on your content to convert into tangible lead actions. Ensure every email has clear call-to-action (CTA) next steps tied to conversion goals.
Ask buyers to schedule showings
Request sellers to sign listing agreements
Drive all prospects to valuation tools or calculators
Strong CTAs turn engagement into conversions.
Email allows limitless opportunities to attract and engage prospects while directing them to conversion points online and offline.
Automated Outreach:
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Chapter 7: Monitoring and Optimizing for Email Success
We’ve covered email marketing strategies from foundational list building to campaign creation and conversion tactics. But success requires continual optimization through monitoring key metrics.
Track Open and Click-Through Rates
Two simple email metrics indicate content resonation and engagement:
Open Rates: Percentage of recipients opening an email
Click-Through Rates (CTR): Percentage that click links within emails
Benchmark targets for real estate generally land around:
Good open rate: 15-25%
Strong open rate: Over 30%
Good CTR: 2-5%
Strong CTR: Over 10%
Strive for the highest rates possible across campaigns. Trends also matter - watch for declining engagement indicating fatigue.
Review metrics for each email send to find what content and messaging works. Look for:
High/low performing email types
Trends by segment and lead source
Changes over time
Use insights to refine email segments, content, timing and frequency.
Monitor Conversions
Engagement metrics make it easy to assess content but miss the bigger picture. The real test - did the email generate conversions?
Tie campaign performance to conversions through:
CRM Tracking: Set up lead scoring rules awarding points for email clicks/opens. Track point trends.
UTM Tagging: Append campaign tracking codes to links. See which emails drive form submissions.
Marketing Automation: Tie emails sent to deal stages reached. Review phase advancement rates.
Continually assess conversion rates by source and refine low performers. Ultimately engagement means nothing without conversions.
Check Deliverability Reports
It won’t matter if you send the most amazing, sure-to-convert emails ever if they languish away in spam folders.
Keep close tabs on email deliverability.
After each send, check bounces and spam reports. If numbers trend higher, something requires addressing like:
Spam filter red flags
Bad contact data
Technical issues like faulty links or rendering
Deliverability insights coupled with engagement data allow holistic campaign optimization. If open rates decline, cross-reference deliverability - you can only engage those who actually receive content.
A/B Test for Optimization
Take campaign assessment one step further with A/B split testing. Send one variation to part of your list and another version to the remaining contacts. Changes could include:
Subject lines
Content offers
Visual layouts
Calls to action
See which version drives higher open rates, CTRs and conversions. The winning variant likely better resonates with recipients. Rinse and repeat testing allows continual optimization.
Optimize Frequency Through Testing
Resist assumptions on ideal frequency as more does not always equal better. Send new digests, listings, or promotions too often and engagement falls off.
Deploy A/B testing to pinpoint optimal frequency for each segment. Build one campaign for buyers receiving 1 email per week.
Duplicate modifying the variant to 2 emails weekly. Assess open and click-through lift to right-size frequency. Reduce subscriber fatigue through testing for the sweet spot between effective and excessive.
Know When to Switch Things Up
Sometimes email performance drops no matter what you try. Reader fatigue is likely setting in.
Watch for these potential indicators of wear-out:
Declining open and CTRs
Rise in spam reports
Increased unsubscribes
Lower lead quality
When engagement lulls, use it as a chance to shake things up through:
New lead magnets and opt-in points
Refreshed/reinvigorated segment targeting
Entirely new content formats and offers
Stepped up calls-to-action and promotions
Big changes restart momentum. The beauty of email lies in the ability to continually test and refine until unlocking the highest possible performance. Keep chasing engagement and conversions through optimization.
Chapter 8: Putting It All Together for Email Dominance
Throughout this guide, we’ve explored a multitude of email marketing tips covering everything from campaign creation to conversions and optimization.
While thorough, so much information can also overwhelm and delay taking action.
So let’s conclude by boiling things down to the core fundamentals for email marketing success:
Deliver Value, Not Sales Pitches
Resist the instinct to overly self-promote or share basic listing updates focusing instead on uncovering and delivering the invaluable.
Survey subscribers about the info they need most. Pay attention to the content and topics they engage with and want more of. Identify their biggest questions and provides answers.
Email opens up a direct channel for continual value delivery - take advantage by offering subscribers something helpful, interesting or exciting without solely pushing properties. Sales will come more easily from loyal followers.
Adopt a Less-Is-More, Simplicity Mindset
Does your email workflow require complex diagrams to untangle? Do campaign logistics give you analysis paralysis? Take a step back and streamline.
Follow the 80/20 principle - 80% of results come from 20% of activities. Identify and double down on what works. Strip away extraneous tactics with marginal upside that just add hassle. Create simple lead flows, usable segments, engaging templates and accessible reports.
Email marketing lifts revenue, not headaches. Simplify wherever possible.
Start Small, But Just Start
Don’t get overwhelmed. Solo agents can execute effective email campaigns same as large brokerages.
Many of the best practices boil down to consistently getting in front of past clients and spheres of influence.
Build one solid branded template, create a basic buyer/seller segment, set up automated listing alerts and deploy a nurture sequence for new contacts.
Get these email essentials humming with a core audience before expanding efforts.
Avoid analysis paralysis and chasing email perfection. Progress compounds when executing the fundamentals. Start small, then scale.
Remain Remarkably Consistent
Sporadic email deployment trains subscribers to ignore you. True power emerges from routine, reliable value delivery subscribers can set their watch to.
Establish known touchpoints, like emailing new listings on Wednesdays or market updates on the 1st and 15th.
Balance consistently scheduled offers with always-on automated alerts when buyers request or trigger them.
Uphold the frequency expected by each segment with military precision. Remain consistently engaged through ups and downs of market cycles and no matter how busy.
Relentlessly Follow-The-Follow-Ups
The fortune lies in the follow ups - don’t drop the ball. Every email, campaign and touchpoint serves as the starting line for additional personalized outreach based on response.
Trigger listing alerts when a buyer clicks online flyers. Provide neighborhood guides to those who opened community overviews.
Comment on website posts visitors shared via email CTAs. Respond immediately to replies or requests.
Strive to directly engage everyone demonstrating interest to establish rapport and trust.
Leverage CRM logging and smart lists to track interactions and route leads appropriately when sales readiness signals emerge.
Buyers and sellers convert when they feel informed, important and assisted. Make sure follow-up pathways run wide and deep.Continually Tweak and Optimize
Don’t fix what isn’t broken, but break what needs fixing. The best email marketers constantly test and iterate to improve performance despite any current success.
Try new formats when engagement lulls or market conditions shift.
Mix up segments, offers and creative when subscribers seem bored.
Wrestle against stagnation.
Chase the peaks available through continual optimization and enhancement guided by data.
A/B test follow-up frequency, email layouts, content formats, calls to action - everything. Email mastery emerges from learning, not guessing. Pour over the analytics to unlock what works then pour rocket fuel on it.
Ready to Transform Your Business Through Email?
There you have it - a comprehensive email marketing blueprint covering everything real estate agents must implement to continually attract, engage and convert clients that drives revenue, referrals and lasting success.
I hope these strategies and best practices help take your email game to the next level. Please reach out with any other questions!
Drive More Leads and Sales with Ylopo's AI-Powered Platform`
As we explored, effective lead generation and nurturing are vital for real estate success. Yet many agents struggle to actively engage their pipeline.
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Their comprehensive platform handles the heavy lifting so you can focus on selling.
See how Ylopo’s real estate-specific technologies work together to turn strangers into satisfied clients.
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About the Author
Aaron “Kiwi” Franklin
Head of Growth
Aaron "Kiwi" Franklin is the Head of Growth at Ylopo and an innovative technologist and serial entrepreneur who has over 25 years of experience creating digital solutions for major brands and pioneering companies at the intersection of technology and real estate. His depth of expertise stems from leading development of the first website for Apple to founding a global community of over 1,000 elite athletes. Connect with me