4 real estate email tips that make an effective sales routine
1) Add your contacts to your real estate CRM and segment them
Sending the same message to different people rarely brings many replies. You could do much better by segmenting your contacts into several lists, then sending out personalized follow-up campaigns.
To do so, you’re going to need a real estate CRM. Import all of your contacts, then apply custom fields to segment them into lists. Some of the best ways to segment your email database are:
- status: lead, customer, past client;
- inquiry: buyer, renter, seller, investor;
- location (for example, neighborhoods in your city);
- stage in a sales funnel (new, verified, closed), etc.
- use tags and groups (pets, special requirements), etc.
The point is that you can organize your contacts into segments to email them relevant information automatically. For one thing, this saves lots of time and boosts your team’s productivity. For another, no lead slips through the cracks which is a relief considering that 80% of leads are never followed up.
Segmentation used to be difficult but with today’s CRMs you can do that in under 5 minutes simply by setting the fields.
2) Automate essential messages
One of the best real estate email tips to implement is automation. According to the 2015 study of the real estate industry’s CEOs conducted by Imprev, marketing automation is the most sought after investment for 2016 and onwards. Agents want to take the strain off daily follow-ups with a huge database and scale their lead generation activities.
This is what you can start automating today:
- follow-up calls and emails to new leads who are at the earlier stages of the buyer’s journey;
- reminders to follow-up with the sales-ready leads (since they’re closer to the point of signing up with you, you’d want to talk with them personally);
- adding new leads;
- email drip campaigns;
- reminders about client birthdays and move-in anniversaries.
[Related post: 4 Follow-up Tasks You Should Refine with Real Estate Marketing Automation]
3) Personalize your emails
Email is still a better way to reach prospective clients than social media. In fact, surveys show that people prefer emails to other communication channels.
To enhance your email campaigns, personalize them:
- personalize your subscribers’ first name (not just ‘Hi’ to everyone on your contact list but ‘Hi Mary’);
- personalize a subject line. This trick is said to secure an average of 5% more opens. For example, not just ‘Hot offers in the most sought after Knoxville neighborhood’ but ‘John, hot offers in the most sought after Knoxville neighborhood’;
- personalize content. The better your content addresses your readers’ problems, the bigger the odds they’ll open your emails and click to your site. Create segmented email lists and send the right content to the right people. Buyers, sellers, investors, vacation home seekers, etc. – deliver the right content to the right niche. Personalizing depending on location works great too.
[Related post: 4 Lead Generating Ideas for Real Estate Follow-up Campaigns]
4) Ask for reviews and referrals
As a referral-based industry, real estate is geared towards personal reviews and recommendations. Agents aspire to generate the bulk of their business through referrals but that requires serious prep work.
One survey found out that people are actually willing to give more referrals to agents but, since the latter don’t ask for those, they don’t.
Never miss a referral opportunity with your real estate CRM. Create a series of follow-up emails asking for a referral. Here’s more on this: 6 Proven Ways Top-producing Real Estate Agents Get Real Estate Referrals.
Likewise, the importance of online reviews is growing exponentially. According to the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, reviews are evolving into an essential SEO signal for both people and search engines. So having a good review strategy will help you both strengthen your digital presence and generate more business.
Remember that intelligent persistence can make the deal. These simple real estate email tips will get you up and running in less than a week.
