Email marketing is more powerful than ever before. It builds relationships, nurtures leads, keeps you in touch, and offers value to your contacts. While other marketing endeavors can be pricey, email marketing is the most cost effective marketing a real estate agent can put in place.
In fact, for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI (Campaign Monitor). That’s a lot of bang for your marketing buck!
If you aren’t utilizing real estate email marketing for your business, or not carrying it out effectively, you could be missing out on hot leads, repeat business, and ultimately – commissions.
Here are the top real estate email marketing mistakes that could be costing you a profit, and how to avoid making them.
Mistake 1: You’re pressuring yourself to write strong emails on your own.
Some real estate agents assume that setting up email marketing is a daunting and time consuming task. They think it means drafting multiple email campaigns, tirelessly proofreading, and sending them out individually. While there are real estate agents who have a flair for writing, it isn’t necessarily everyone’s strength. The idea of writing real estate email campaigns doesn’t appeal to some agents and can prevent them from getting started, or has them using less-than-ideal email messages.
The good news is you don’t have to rely on your own words to be an effective email marketer! Make use of drip marketing plans included with your real estate CRM. Use your real estate contact management system and assign your contacts to a pre-designed drip marketing campaign. This helps you automate your email marketing because emails will be sent at various time intervals on your behalf. In addition to using drip marketing plans to keep in touch with prospects and clients, you can use your real estate contact management software to send out a professionally designed and written e-Newsletter. This saves you time because you don’t have to design an e-Newsletter, write articles for it, and send it out every month.
The email campaigns included with IXACT Contact are written by professional real estate marketing experts, so you don’t have to write a word (unless you want to). For agents who would like to edit the email content, it’s easy to make changes to individual emails or campaigns. Don’t let writing hold back your email marketing. Use professionally written content that consistently performs well and will generate the response you want.
Mistake 2: You aren’t emailing your leads quickly enough.
Time is of the essence when it comes to your real estate leads. If a real estate lead fills in a form on your website, how quickly are you able to get in touch with them?
Over 88% of real estate prospects expect a response from a real estate agent within an hour (RETechnology). This is a difficult expectation to meet considering you may be on the road, doing a listing presentation, or even sleeping.
Waiting too long to get in touch with a lead means it’s more likely that you’ll lose that lead. Don’t make the mistake of missing out on quality leads because of a time lag.
To increase the success of your real estate email marketing, close the gap between lead inquiry and response. It’s easier than you may think! With automated lead capture, your new leads can be automatically added to your real estate CRM, and assigned to a nurture campaign where they will immediately receive email messages from you. All of this without you manually entering the lead and typing an email!
When your emails are received promptly, they have a better chance of turning your lead into a real estate client. Use automated lead capture to increase the success of your email messages, while lightening your workload, thanks to automation.
Mistake 3: You don’t know who is reading your emails.
Perhaps you’re an agent who is already sending good emails and monthly e-newsletters, but you still aren’t seeing the level of success from your email marketing that you desire.
Knowledge is power. When you can see how your real estate email marketing campaigns are performing, you can better understand the types of emails your contacts respond to and which they don’t. Then you can use this information to optimize your email marketing strategy going forward.
Email Campaign Reporting is a powerful feature from IXACT Contact CRM to help you understand more about your campaigns. You’ll see what’s working and what isn’t so you can hone your campaigns over time for maximum effectiveness.
With this reporting feature, you’ll gain insight into total and unique email opens, clicks, bounce-backs and more! These statistics can let you look at your email strategy as a whole, allowing you to see not only how many people are opening your communications, but interacting with them as well.
Armed with this insight, you’ll understand which email messages and subject lines perform the best, and when is the optimal time to send emails to your contact list.
When you see exactly who clicked on the call to action link in your email, you’ll be able to identify your potential hot leads, and reach out to them to connect.
Understanding which email messages are performing well and who is responding to your emails gives you a level of insight that can revolutionize your real estate marketing.
Doing real estate email marketing right.
You don’t have to be an email marketing guru to avoid these mistakes, all you need is the right tools in place to provide you with quality email content, automatically capture leads, and show you who your message is resonating with.
IXACT Contact comes pre-loaded with email content to help you get in touch and nurture your leads effectively and promptly. Start your 5 week free trial now to make sure you’re not making these common real estate email marketing mistakes!
