With so many flashy new technologies and social platforms competing for our attention, it is easy to forget the tried and true value of email marketing. Not only is email marketing still one of the most powerful ways to build a captive audience and stay in touch with your database, but it is a cost-effective way of doing so. Email laws and strategies, however, continue to evolve. Agents and brokers need to understand the rules and best practices to effectively market themselves via email. Here is what the experts of Weichert want you to know about the best practices for broker and agent email marketing.
Develop Your List, the Right Way.
Following the fallout of data breaches a few years ago, new laws have been put into place to protect consumers from predatory practices through email marketing. One of the laws states that a person must opt-in to receive emails from you. In fact, in most cases having a double-opt-in is best because it ensures that the person truly wants to be emailed. Therefore, you should never purchase a list of people to cold-email because you will be violating these laws and potentially dealing with people who have no interest in you or your services. Furthermore, if you use email marketing software to send mass marketing emails to a purchased list and get a high number of bounces, unsubscribes, or abuse complaints it may prevent you from being able to use email marketing entirely through a process known as blacklisting.
Attract New Email Subscribers
The best way to develop your list is with a slow steady strategy and honesty. Start by building a lead magnet that is valuable to your target audience and then offer it for free in exchange for them opting in. A good lead magnet can be a free informational class, a whitepaper on how to sell your home in a down market, market information, information on a particular property, or anything else that is timely and relevant. To cover yourself, send them an automatic email confirming that they subscribed to accomplish that double-opt-in. Once you’ve captured them, make sure you segment them in your database as much as possible based on their behavior as a subscriber. For example, if you have two lead magnets (one for buyers and one for sellers), those people should automatically be segmented to their respective lists when they sign up. This will allow you to tailor the content you email them and increase your open, click-through, and conversion rates.
What Should You Serve Up to Buyers & Sellers?
Once a person opts-in to get emails from you they should immediately get that opt-in confirmation. From there, they should be put on an automatic drip campaign of steady content that is relevant to their reason for opting-in. For example, if they downloaded a book about getting their house ready to sell, they should keep getting information that is valuable to sellers and prompts them to contact you for help. Their segmentation in your database will also indicate if you should be sending them listings, just sold, or any other type of property listings.
How to Improve Open & Click-Through Rates
The first challenge in getting conversions from your email marketing is getting people to open your emails. You can give yourself the best shot at getting people to open your emails by optimizing your subject line using the free headline analyzer by co-schedule. From there, you need to make sure that the content is relevant to the subject line and attention-grabbing. If it doesn’t solve a problem, help achieve a goal, or entertain your audience you may be disappointed in the results.
Let’s say you want your subscribers to read your newest blog post which explains how hard but important it is to set the right price on a listing. The subject line should communicate the potential loss or gain they will achieve from the article. Then, the body of the email should act as a teaser of the blog post with a strong call-to-action to read the blog post. Be careful that you don’t only use your email list for advertising because it will hurt your open and click-through rates. Make sure you are providing content of value as well.
Integrate With Your Real Estate Website & CRM
Setting up powerful email campaigns, coordinating lists, and keeping track of all the leads that come in, as a result, can be tedious, time-consuming work. That is unless you have a fully-integrated technology platform like myWeichert. At Weichert, we provide our affiliates with the technology that incorporates all the best elements of a great real estate CRM, but has the ability to create those “lead magnets” to build your database, then uses sophisticated marketing automation to segment and nurture those potential clients for you. From pre-programmed to customizable campaigns, emails can be sent to your various audience segments automatically and in a timely fashion based on almost any criteria. Its direct integration with your IDX website and database also gives you the ability to set up property search alerts to feed buyers listings based on criteria you establish. A complete smart technology platform like myWeichert takes much of the guesswork and delay out of using email marketing while maintaining a level of personalized contact that other real estate CRMs and tech platforms do not provide.
As an agent, and especially as a to make sure you are getting the most out of your marketing tactics, such as email marketing. And if you are looking for a true partner, Weichert and a tool like myWeichert may be just the solution you’re looking for.
For more information about the Weichert suite of technology and marketing tools go to https://www.weichertfranchise.com/best-real-estate-crm/.
