Email Marketing for Real Estate: Boost Property Sales

by | Aug 11, 2023 | Blog, Email Marketing

One of the biggest questions of email marketing for real estate is, what’s the best way to gain subscribers and boost property sales?

Insider tips, how-to guides, curated top stories, paid content, and partner website deals are certainly industry best practices, but which one ranks the highest?

We gave it away with the title. You’re here to discover how to boost property sales with email marketing.

So will 77.1% of our typical readers who responded to our recent survey, expressing their preference for how-to guides in exchange for signups.

Insights like this get us excited at OnDigitalMarketing about internet marketing. They inspire our cause to educate aspiring digital marketers and entrepreneurs on harnessing its potential.

As such, we’ve gathered six approaches to boosting property sales with email marketing. As we delve into these ideas, you’ll learn:

  • How to build and target a high-quality email list in real estate
  • Key considerations for crafting real estate emails
  • Creative ideas for real estate email newsletters
  • Key considerations for analyzing email marketing success
  • The benefits of email templates and automation

But first, what is email marketing for real estate anyway?

1 – Understanding Email Marketing for Real Estate

person opening an email

Real estate email marketing is all about communicating with prospects, leads, and clients.

The main objective is to boost property sales, retain customers, and drive traffic to real estate websites, which requires a relationship with your audience.

This relationship is built on trust and provides an opportunity to communicate relevant information, such as:

  • New property listings
  • Price changes
  • Market trends
  • Local news

Picture this scenario, a real estate agent develops a monthly “Housing Market Digest” email featuring a summary of the latest happenings in the local real estate market.

It includes data on the average home prices, property sales, average days on market, and any notable news or changes that impact buyers and sellers.

The email also includes a brief commentary on what these statistics mean for the recipients, actionable advice, plus links to websites for those interested in learning more.

Naturally, the agent spotlights a few properties he’s recently listed or sold along with these links to informative websites.

How do prospects receive this email?

The abundance of information in this “Housing Market Digest” email demonstrates overwhelming expertise in the eyes of any prospective property buyer. Consequently, they become curious about the agent and keep him top-of-mind when making estate decisions.

This is the main idea behind real estate email marketing, but there are some key features to consider:

  1. The email campaign should have a clear and specific goal, such as promoting a new property or generating leads.
  2. The content of the email should be relevant to the target audience and provide value that is useful to the reader as there are various types of property buyers.
  3. The email should have a clear and compelling call-to-action that prompts the reader to take action, such as visiting a website or contacting the real estate agent.

With these considerations, your email marketing strategy is bound to be successful at generating real estate leads. However, it’s also essential to develop a high-quality list of subscribers who’ll be inclined to engage with your content and generate conversions.

2 – Building a High-Quality Email List in Digital Marketing for Real Estate

A high-quality email list comprises people who’ve opted-in to receive emails from the real estate agent or company.

These individuals signal genuine interest in the agent and his offerings. Consequently, they’ll be more likely to open and read through his emails, increasing the chances of conversions.

So, how do you get opt-ins? By optimizing your content.

There are several effective strategies to do this, one of them is through lead magnets, including free e-books, webinars, and guides.

It’s no surprise that people love free stuff. But when you combine free and value, it creates a strong incentive for high-quality subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content and likely to generate conversions.

This was Backlinko’s insight when they decided to upgrade their email content and signup requests with free e-books and reports.

The strategy, which was new at the time, was resoundingly successful in growing signup conversions and helped set the standard for email best practices today.

Segmenting based on different buyer profiles and interests is another way to ensure your email content is relevant to attract high-quality readers.

These segments include first-time property buyers, upgraders, investors, relocators, and downsizers. So use customer relationship management (CRM) tools, such as feedback, to help you understand your typical website visitors and target them.

Finally, clean your email list. Remove inactive subscribers and review your email list regularly, and ensure that you comply with email regulations like CAN-SPAM Act. This will require email marketing analytics to track open rates, read-throughs, and conversions.

Bonus Idea: Use social media advertisements to drive traffic to your landing page and attract new subscribers to your email list.

3 – Crafting Effective Real Estate Emails

Crafting an effective email marketing strategy for real estate involves more than just sending out mass emails to a list of contacts. It requires careful thought and planning to ensure that your emails have a high open rate and drive real estate sales.

There are several key components to consider when crafting your real estate emails, including:

  • The Anatomy of Your Emails: Your emails need high-quality visuals and engaging content to catch the attention of potential buyers. These include images and videos showcasing various properties and personalized content based on your lead’s interests.
  • The Allure of Your Subject Lines: Subject lines must be attention-grabbing and relevant to entice potential clients into opening your emails. This typically involves teasing intriguing content, asking thought-provoking questions, and offering urgent insider information.
  • The Structure of Your Email Body: The email body should be concise, yet informative, to hold attention. It must also include a clear call-to-action with links to your website or landing page to simplify taking action for your prospects.
  • Your Delivery Rate and Targeting: Sending too many emails to the wrong audience results in spamming, which damages your reputation and the effectiveness of your campaign.
    Use email campaign automation tools to ensure perfect timing for your posts, for instance, welcome emails immediately after signing up and follow-up emails after property tours

One of the most effective strategies for observing the above email considerations is segmentation. This helps you narrow down to your type of buyer and tailor the subject lines, email body, and email anatomy to maximize engagement.

Meanwhile, conducting analytics, such as A/B testing, helps you track the performance of your email campaign, from overall design to delivery. This reveals any areas of improvement and enables you to build data-driven real estate email templates for future effectiveness.

The table below provides a comprehensive list of different categories that can be utilized to segment email lists, enabling businesses to effectively target their desired audience based on factors such as demographics, interests, location, and behavior.

Category Description
Demographics Segmenting based on age, gender, income, occupation, or education
Interests Segmenting based on hobbies, preferences, or activities
Location Segmenting based on geographic location or time zone
Behavior Segmenting based on past actions, purchase history, or engagement
Engagement Segmenting based on email open rates, click-through rates
Preferences Segmenting based on communication preferences or content type
Purchase history Segmenting based on previous purchases or product preferences
Lead source Segmenting based on the source through which leads were acquired
Industry Segmenting based on the industry or field of interest
Company size Segmenting based on the size of the company or organization

These categories can help marketers and businesses effectively target their email campaigns and tailor their messages to specific audience segments, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

4 – Creative Real Estate Email Campaign Ideas

As a real estate agent, you need to constantly generate real estate leads to boost property sales.

While using digital marketing for real estate is an effective way to generate leads, having a solid email marketing strategy is crucial. It’s how you stand out from competitors and attract potential buyers or sellers.

So, here are some creative email campaign ideas to inspire your own:

Personalized Email Campaigns: Personalization is essential to make your emails stand out, and CRM for real estate is an excellent approach to use. CRM tools help you track client behavior, demographics, location, and interests for more personalized email content and layout.

Check out this brilliant example of personalization from My Tampa Agent’s email. It features elements that appeal to a family demographic, interested in socializing within the Bay area. As such, it’s titled The Tampa Bay Weekend Bucket List.”

Follow-Up Emails: Continuing the conversation with potential clients after an initial interaction is a powerful strategy to guide them along the customer journey. It nurtures a relationship and sustains engagement, which encourages them to complete the purchase.

Take the instance of a subscriber who clicks on a property listing on your website and reads through all the information you provided. A follow-up email is a fantastic way of continuing the conversation about that listing and furthering interest. This improves your chances of converting.

Market Update Email Newsletters: Monthly or weekly email newsletters featuring insightful market information are excellent ways of establishing trust and authority with your leads.

This status keeps you at the forefront of their minds when making purchase decisions, improving your chances of conversions.

A classic example of this strategy is Nethunt’s newsletter idea, which starts with a punchy “Let’s Talk Numbers” before delving into market trends and implications for real estate investors.

Expert Tip: Use email marketing analytics, such as A/B tests, to track the effectiveness of different campaign ideas in engaging your target audience.

5 – Measuring and Analyzing Email Marketing Success

digital analytics

Digital analytics for real estate is essential to the growth and success of the business. Fortunately, tools such as CRM for real estate and email campaign automation, offer a wealth of data to evaluate.

But what metrics should you track?

One of the metrics you need to monitor is the performance of your subject lines, and open rates serve as a clear indication of effectiveness.

Low open rates signal you need to enhance your subject lines and make them compelling with features such as personalization, curiosity-evoking language, and relevance.

Another crucial performance measure is your read-throughs and subscriber growth rates. These signify how compelling your content is and serves as an A/B test indicator of various content elements, including videos, images, layouts, and writing styles.

Your conversion rates and the return on investment (ROI) are also crucial for determining the effectiveness of your call-to-actions in encouraging user action. This includes making purchases, filling out forms, and responding to your posts.

Low scores in this instance suggest a need for CTA improvements on aspects such as your placement, value proposition, and wording.

Ultimately, all the insights generated from analyzing your subject lines, read-throughs, and conversions help you build solid real estate email templates for future campaigns.

The table below presents an overview of various email marketing campaigns, showcasing the number of leads generated, revenue generated, and the corresponding return on investment (ROI) percentages for each campaign. 

Campaign Leads Generated Revenue Generated ($) ROI (%)
Campaign A 500 $10,000 300%
Campaign B 750 $15,000 250%
Campaign C 400 $8,000 200%
Campaign D 600 $12,000 150%
Campaign E 800 $16,000 180%

This analysis enables businesses to assess the success and profitability of their email marketing strategies, aiding in strategic decision-making for future campaigns.

6 – Real Estate Email Templates and Automation

When it comes to creating effective real estate emails, having a strong email marketing strategy is essential. And one part of that strategy is utilizing real estate email templates and automation.

Real estate email templates are pre-designed email patterns that can be customized to fit your specific needs, like showcasing your latest property listings, sending out a monthly newsletter, or even following up with potential leads.

These templates save time and effort, allowing you to focus on other parts of your business for efficiency. 

But what’s even more beneficial to your real estate email marketing campaign is automation. Email campaign automation software allows you to set up trigger-based emails that are sent out automatically based on predefined actions or behaviors.

For example, when a lead signs up for your email list or interacts with an email by clicking a link, the automation software can send them a targeted follow-up email. This not only saves you time but also ensures that your leads get the right message at the right time.

This also creates a personalized experience for each of your leads that makes your email more compelling and likely to generate conversions.

Learn more about email templates and find examples for the real estate industry in the video below:

Learn More About Email Optimization From OnDigitalMarketing

So there are six tips to help you boost property sales with email marketing for real estate, but there’s more to explore about email optimization.

For instance, how effective are curated top stories at enticing visitors to subscribe to your mailing list? 35.4%, according to our latest survey at OnDigitalMarketing.

Is this better than access to paid content? Sign up for our email newsletter and discover the answer and more insider tips from our upcoming courses.

Jake Cook

Author

I'm a forever curious entrepreneur that works across ecommerce, analytics, and AI. I've been creating and teaching courses on ecommerce, design thinking, and data science at Montana State University and University of Montana since 2007. Most recently, I've been lecturing and assisting with research and case study development for Harvard Business School.

Translate

Our Mission

We help educate aspiring digital marketers and entrepreneurs on how to use the power of the web, social media and analytics to grow their brands and causes.