Chances are you just checked your email a little while ago. And so did potential buyers and sellers.
If you aren’t already sending real estate emails to clients and prospects, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity.
As an agent, real estate email marketing can help you reach more people and close more deals. Plus, it’s great for nurturing existing relationships and getting referrals from past clients. Best of all, it’s easy to get started.
At Amitree, our focus is not only on creating, but also recognizing the tools that help you save time and grow your business. We’ve compiled the ultimate email marketing guide for real estate agents.
It’s got everything you need. From how to get started with your first campaign, to how to create great real estate email templates and stand out from the competition.
Why Email Marketing Is Great for Real Estate Agents
Buying or selling a house is one of the biggest decisions people will make in their lives. It’s complicated by a lot of factors — finances, local markets, timing. It’s also a big life change and not something temporary or that happens in a day.
That means the funnel to earn a new real estate client is long.
As an agent, you need to start a conversation and keep it going, build trust, show off your expertise, educate leads, and help them find a new home. This takes time and isn’t something you can accomplish in a single phone call.
Nurturing real estate leads over time is the best way to increase your sales and grow your business. And the best way to nurture sales — even in 2022 — is email marketing.
- Email gets more clicks than any other marketing channel, including search and social
- Email drives 81% of customer acquisition and 80% of customer retention for small businesses
- Email ROI is huge — $44 in ROI for every $1 spent
Email is also great for busy agents because of its low time commitment. Once you understand the basics, you can set up real estate drip campaigns that will let you automate a lot of your lead nurturing for sellers, buyers, referrals and more.
Real estate email marketing done right will grow your business without overloading you with more work.
How to Create Your First Real Estate Email Marketing Campaign
There’s more than one way to nurture leads through email. But, the method that works best for real estate leads is the “drip campaign” — a series of planned emails sent to a select audience that nurtures them toward a specific goal.
You can use a drip campaign for getting:
- New buyers to hire you for their home search
- New sellers to list their home with you
- Past clients to give you a call when it’s time to move
By crafting a series of real estate drip email templates, you can help take each of these audiences through your pipeline, from a welcome email, to learning about you and your services.
Even from your very first drip campaign, you can start to see results. It may sound complicated at first, but you only need a few things to get started:
- Email list
- Email marketing tool
- Real estate CRM
1. Start an Email List
It’s tempting to throw all your contacts into your first email list, but avoid this. Email spam laws require subscribers to opt in and spammy messages are going to be less effective.
Instead, here are 4 ways to start building a new subscriber list:
- Announce your new list launch to your network of existing clients and contacts.
- Share your sign-up link via social media, marketing materials and online.
- Add email opt-ins to your client contact forms and your website’s sidebar, page footer, blog posts, and pop-up screens.
- Run ads on social media channels to direct traffic to your list sign-up.
Make sure to ask for the subscriber’s name, email address, and primary reason for signing up:
- “I’m thinking of selling a home.”
- “I’m interested in buying a home.”
- “I’m looking for info about the local market.”
Also make sure to give people a reason to sign up:
- Explain the value of subscribing to your list, such as access to listing announcements, neighborhood guides, etc.
- Consider creating a free download that’s sent to inboxes right at sign-up, such as a PDF, e-book or infographic about the local market.
2. Choose an Email Marketing Tool
Mailchimp is the gold standard tool of email marketing. It’s tried and tested, easy to use, and free for less than 2,000 contacts. It’s many agents’ go-to tool for real estate email marketing.
But there are other options and you may already be using one of them. The real estate CRM tools Propertybase, Follow Up Boss and BoomTown and all have built-in features to help with your email marketing needs.
Whichever email marketing tool you choose, just make sure it has the features you’ll need. You want a tool that lets you:
- Organize and sort the contact info of your subscribers.
- Create sharp-looking real estate email templates with drag and drop design.
- Automate email sending for your real estate drip campaigns.
- Segment your list to speak directly to your target lead’s interest.
- View analytics for your email open rates, clicks and conversions.
- Handle unsubscribe requests to remain spam law compliant.
- Integrate with your other lead tools, such as your website and CRM.
3. Connect Your Real Estate CRM
A tool like Mailchimp can be used on its own to send real estate emails to clients, but there are big advantages to integrating your email marketing tool with your CRM system.
Your real estate CRM can be the go-between connecting your list sign-up and your drip marketing tool. Your CRM will give you a profile for each subscriber with a record of the emails the potential client has received.
Tying your email marketing to your CRM gives you more data about how your email strategy is performing, such as how many email leads converted to clients and sales and how much nurturing they needed to convert.
Connecting your CRM also opens up the ability to automatically trigger specific listing emails or drip campaigns based on a prospective client interacting with one of your listings on your site.
How to Create Real Estate Email Templates and Content
With your list, your email marketing tool and your CRM working together, you’re on your way to nurturing leads while you sleep, with the automation tools doing most of the work for you — but you still need to come up with the contents of your emails.
The email marketing content you send your prospects is crucial to your success. It has to look great, offer value to the recipient and give prospects a reason to act.
It’s a good idea to save yourself some time upfront and create reusable templates of messages you send frequently, such as:
- Welcome emails
- Listing announcements
- Open house notices
- Event announcements
- Neighborhood guides
- Local market trends
- Homeowner tips
- Client success stories
- Referral emails
- Drip sequences
- Follow-up emails
- Buyer lead emails
- Seller lead emails
Luckily, there are some ready-made drip email and newsletter templates real estate agents can use to make this simpler. Software tools like Mailchimp include free customizable templates and other template resources can be found online.
For even more content inspiration, take a look at the savvy email ideas from:
How to Stand Out from the Competition
If you haven’t already, now is a good time to start paying attention to your own inbox and what kind of emails get your attention. Or try subscribing to some other real estate lists and see how the competition targets leads in your area.
Email allows you to adapt and improve as you go. You can also try split-testing, sending two versions of a subject line or message content to see which gets one gets the better response from your audience.
As someone new to email marketing, your first goal should be to get your emails opened by your subscribers. Focus on clear writing and short subject lines to make your messages stand out in the inbox. Start with one compelling call-to-action per email and monitor your results.
Taking your email marketing to the next level will help you stand out from the competition in your area. With these tips you can get the most from your email marketing efforts.
If you’re an agent looking to get the most from your own email inbox, Folio is a great time-saving tool that can streamline your real estate transaction communications.
Folio is our AI-powered add-on that integrates seamlessly with your regular email account. Our algorithms know how to filter and organize your inbox automatically, so you can always find what you need. It’s one more tool you can use to save time, grow your business, and stand out from the competition.
Who we are
We've built Folio: the first AI email assistant for professionals.
Folio plugs directly into your work email inbox and automatically organizes your email, giving you contextual access to all the information you need to increase your productivity in minutes.
We are a team of passionate product people and engineers that gets excited about solving complex processes and creating value for people.
We're a venture funded company backed by Accel Partners, Vertical Venture Partners, and other leading venture capital firms and angel investors such as Ash Patel and Jerry Yang.
