Blog Real Estate Marketing Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents: Beginner’s Guide

Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents: Beginner’s Guide

Key Takeaways

• Email marketing is a vital tool for client retention: It’s a cost-effective way to nurture leads, maintain relationships, and drive sales with a high ROI.
• Different types of emails: Keep your leads and clients interested and engaged with a system of emails – newsletters, open house invitations, new property listings, market updates, neighborhood announcements, and more.
• Simple steps for setup: From finding the right platform, CRM, to segmenting your audience, and types of emails, here are a few tips to help you get started quickly. 
• Platforms to help implement your marketing calendar: We’ve suggested a few user-friendly platforms that are excellent in helping you get your emails out the door and into your client’s email inbox.

Why Should You Start Email Marketing?

Because it works! Email marketing, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated, underutilized, and powerful marketing tools in real estate that you have right at your fingertips. 

The reason I love email marketing the most is because you get direct, personalized engagement with your “target audience” so you stay connected to your leads for better nurturing, which ultimately leads to more sales and referrals. 

Here are some statistics to stress the importance of implementing an email marketing campaign in your real estate business: 

“Fascinating statistics from Hubspot point out that:

• “There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. (Statista, 2021)”

• Hubspot also highlights in their findings that 87% of brands say that email marketing is very critical to business success. (Litmus, 2023)”

I understand it could feel daunting to get started, especially if you’re a beginner in the industry, but a little time spent learning how to use real estate email marketing effectively will help you grow your business exponentially. It’s also pretty easy to get the hang of it quickly!

Here are a few key reasons to get started with it right away:

1. Direct and Personalized Communication: This industry is built off of relationships. It’s personal from the first interaction; staying in touch with your leads with information that is relevant to fulfilling their needs will keep them engaged and coming back to you as their go-to real estate agent. 
   1. From LinkedIn: “Campaign Monitor reports that personalized emails generate six times higher transaction rates than non-personalized ones.” We’ll talk about how to best make your emails personal a bit later. 
2. Cost-Effective: Television ads, billboards, hosting events, paid-per-click advertising, etc. are all effective marketing tools, but email marketing stands to be possibly the most cost-effective.
   1. From Optinmonster: “This is probably because, for every $1 spent on email marketing, $36 is made in return, according to email marketing data from Litmus. That equals a 3600% ROI.”
3. Measurable and Scalable: If you like to nerd out over numbers, like I do, this is the fun part. You can easily track if your marketing is working through open rates, click rates, and conversion rates provided, then adjust your future campaigns with data to back your decisions! Email marketing platforms offer easily digestible analytics to help simplify this process for you as well. 

Types of Emails Real Estate Agents Can Use

You’ll want to get creative with your email marketing topics to keep your leads engaged. When you create your marketing calendar (don’t worry, we’ll talk about that in the next section!), I suggest rotating your topics to specific audiences to keep engagement up and continue to give value to your leads. 

For a little inspiration, here are some examples that could prove to be effective in your email marketing:

1. Property Listings and Virtual Tours: These seem pretty obvious… and you can include a really strong CTA (call-to-action) to get potential clients in the door. You don’t want new property alerts to be the only type you send unless you know you have an active audience ready to purchase.
2. Market Updates: This is one of my favorite types to send because updating your client lists on market trends backed with data helps build trust. This puts you in the position of being the expert and shows that you care about educating them to make the best decisions for their buying and selling needs. 
3. Neighborhood Insights: A great relationship builder! If you have clients new to the area, providing them with community events, school information, new restaurants in the neighborhood, etc. creates a sense of connection and comfort. 
4. Client Testimonials and Success Stories: If you don’t have a lot of these as you’re getting started, that’s okay. Start keeping a log of your testimonials as your business grows, and when you’re able to close deals, it’s always a good idea to celebrate! Again, this builds trust with your clients. 
5. Seasonal Greetings and Holiday Emails: These are purely for connecting with your clients. Being able to give them a friendly well-wish without having a sales angle shows genuine interest and helps you stay relevant.
6. Educational Content: I’ve realized the importance of educating buyers and sellers. Homeowners have a lot of money at stake, and clients want to feel confident in their decision-making. So, I suggest compiling a list of home-buying guides you find, selling tips that work consistently, or information on how to help prepare their home for sale. 

This content rotation helps establish your reputation for being a trusted resource for all things real estate!

If you’re ready to get an idea of what some of these might look like, here are a few real estate templates you can use for client follow-up emails. 

Essential Steps for Getting Started with Email Marketing

Okay, let’s get into it. We’re all in our emails almost constantly throughout our days, so rest assured this will come quickly to you. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and several tools exist to help you simplify the process. 

These steps will help you relaunch successful campaigns time and time again:

1. Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform

This is the first critical step as you’re getting started. Go into research as if you are looking for your new best friend; it’s that important. A few factors to consider as you research:

• User-Friendly Interface: This is key. You’ll need a simple, easy-to-navigate platform, ideally with templates that you can easily integrate into your CRM. 
• Automation Features: This will save you a lot of time. You can set up automated follow-up emails, welcome emails, and drip campaigns to help you streamline and stay ahead in your marketing. Here’s an article I found that expands a bit more on the process. 
• Analytics and Reporting: This feature is your north star. You need to be able to track your emails’ performance to continually improve your content and achieve the highest conversion.

Recommended Tools:

• Mailchimp: This is my top choice. Easy to navigate, easy to build audiences for more targeted marketing, impressive analytics, and an excellent customer service team. 
• Constant Contact: They offer a lot of information on how to set up your campaigns effectively in addition to their straightforward interface. 
• Brevo: An affordable option with 50+ free email templates to help get you started quickly!

2. Build and Segment Your Email List

Your email list is the cornerstone of creating a successful real estate email marketing campaign and should be thoughtfully curated.

 Here’s how to build and segment it effectively:

• Gather Contacts: If you have a strong client base, start gathering their emails and compiling your list. Then, encourage new leads who visit your website or social media to sign up for your real estate updates. 
• Use Lead Magnets: Offer something of value for free to attract new leads who have a genuine interest in real estate. This will help you grow your lists rapidly. 
• Segment Your List: This means breaking your list into groups: buyers, sellers, property desire, and price points. This allows you to send personalized emails with content your audience will appreciate because you address the specific interests of each segment.

3. Create Compelling Content

If you’re sending out emails your main goal is to make sure that it is engaging, that is what leads to a decrease in unsubscribes and ultimately conversion. 

Here are a few ways to make sure your emails are engaging and effective:

• Craft Strong Subject Lines: This can be harder than you think, but essentially, you want to make them short and impactful enough to catch the eye. Typically, use no more than 7 words (5 is my sweet spot) with a tone that compels an open. 
• Design Visually Appealing Emails: This is where your branding comes in. Make sure your emails are recognizably yours. Clean, simple, and with some visual interest is best. Keep in mind that most will be reading your email on their phone, so typically, shorter is better. 
• Include Clear CTAs: Every email should have a clear call-to-action (except for your holiday emails), whether it’s asking to schedule a viewing, asking for referrals, setting up an intro consultation, or giving you a follow on social media, contacting you for more information, or directing new clients to your website… email with a purpose.

4. Automate Your Campaigns

Automation in your email marketing will help you streamline your process of client engagement and keep you organized as you continue to work with your clients who are closer to closing.  

Here are a few ideas to automate:

• Set Up Drip Campaigns: Let’s break this down a bit, drip campaigns are a series of automated emails sent based on when an action gets triggered. For example, if a lead visits your site and subscribes to your newsletter, a “welcome” email is instantly triggered with a survey. Once the survey is filled another email is sent with a list of new properties or an invitation to schedule a call.  
• Schedule Regular Newsletters: I suggest batching these at the top of the month. Take a morning and compose 4 emails that offer something of value about the market and set them up to go out at the times your audience is most likely to read them.
• Follow-Up Emails: Set up automatic emails for after viewings or open houses asking for feedback. You can set up yearly check-ins and referral emails to see how former clients are.

5. Monitor and Optimize Your Campaigns

It’s imperative that you monitor the success of your marketing campaigns. This is how you will be able to know what is working for your audience, and what isn’t. 

Also, just keep in mind if you have a campaign that flops, that’s okay… that’s why you monitor so you know how to improve continuously. 

Here’s how to do it:

• Track Key Metrics: Open rates, click rates, and conversion rates are your biggest factors to monitor. These provide insights into how well your emails are performing.
• A/B Test: This is basically a comparison test to see what resonates best with your audience. You can test different types of subject lines, for example, one being short and the other longer. Ask a question in one, declare new factual info in another then determine which got more opens and clicks. (Here’s more on subject lines)
• Adjust Based on Feedback: Refine your strategies based on whether a particular style, type, or topic resonates more with your audience, and consider using more of what’s working. 

Recommended Email Marketing Tools for Beginners

To help you get started with email marketing, here are some user-friendly tools that are well-suited for beginners and that I have used quite a bit:

• Mailchimp: There are affordable options, but they are easily scalable as your business grows. Their segmentation capabilities are what set Mailchimp apart for me, in addition to their analytics.
• Constant Contact: This platform is great for automation, and they have several templates you can use with ease. 
• Brevo: Straightforward email system with affordable plans. 
• Canva: For simple graphics that you can make yourself to give your emails some visual interest. 
• Zapier: A tool that helps integrate your automation into your CRM. 
• Follow Up Boss: A great platform with a CRM to help you keep your contact lists organized for more personalized emails.

Summary

Email marketing for real estate agents is essential to develop and refine to grow your business, establish your reputation, and create long-term relationships with your clients. This all contributes to your ability to scale your business quickly. 

It’s pretty easy to get started, keep it simple at first, and grow from there. If you take the few steps recommended here, your email marketing will be up and running in no time.