Email is one of the most powerful items you have in your marketing toolbox as a real estate agent. Not only does email allow leads to contact you at any time of day or night, but you can also craft effective campaigns for nurturing your leads and clients.
Of course, a bit of strategy, a lot of testing, and some trial and error are par for the course. For this reason, we’ve compiled a list of 7 ideas for improving your email marketing campaigns.
1. Remind Recipients to Whitelist Your Email Address
This one detail can make all the difference. If your emails are landing in your lead's junk folder you're throwing away time, effort, and the money spent on your email marketing provider. Reduce the chance of this happening by reminding your recipients to add your email address to their safe sender’s list.
Ideally, this is most effective when you do this when your leads opt in. If this isn’t an option, be sure to add a reminder and instruction for whitelisting your address in your first email to them. Yes, it may still end up in the junk folder, but if they have recently opted in, they are more likely to check their junk email since they’re expecting to hear from you.
2. Carefully Craft the Subject Lines
You know what they say about first impressions, right? You never get another chance to make them, and this holds true with email marketing. If you currently have an email campaign in place, take a look at your open rates, are they low? According to a 2017 HubSpot report, the overall average open rate is 32%.
If yours is much lower, one cause could be boring subject lines. Some ideas for spicing up your subject lines:
- Include personalization (name, city, etc.)
- Play to curiosity
- Be witty
- Be timely
- Include action words
3. Test Send Times
Believe it or not, the time of day and even the day of the week can greatly impact the success of your email campaign. Studies have shown that Tuesday is typically the day of the week with the best open rates, but run some experimentation for yourself! Do your leads typically check their email in the morning or maybe after work? Test your send times and days and you’ll gain extra insight about your subscribers!
4. Avoid These Spam-Triggering Words
Often some of the most intriguing words (like free, for example) lead to our downfall as email marketers. Check out this complete list from HubSpot, some of them might surprise you!
5. Stick to One Call-to-Action
If you are asking your leads to call you, make an online appointment, AND email you back…that’s just confusing your message. Stick to one plain and clear action that you would like you reader to take. If you want them to use your online calendar to set up a listing appointment time that works for them, make that the focus.
6. Optimize and Test on Mobile
Mobile is everything these days. Consider how many times a day you check your own email on the phone! It’s estimated that around 51% of emails are opened on mobile devices these days. Be sure that your emails are loading properly (and still look good) on mobile. You can easily do this by sending test emails to your own device or, if you do a lot of email marketing, it might be worthwhile to use a tool like Litmus, which previews your email on a variety of mobile platforms.
7. Don’t be Salesy
Of course, your main objective is to get listings and more buyer and seller leads, but you don’t want to be that pushy salesperson. Remember that to form a relationship with your leads, you need to build trust with them. Send your leads information to educate, entertain, and engage them.
Here’s one example: We’ve created an buyer lead quiz to help qualify leads. Download yours today and try it in your next email campaign!
When all else fails, take off your marketing hat and look at your own inbox (and even glance at that scary junk folder). What catches your attention? What instantly stands out at someone attempting to get you to buy something?
Those were 7 of our favorite tips, let’s hear yours! Tell us your top email marketing tip in the comments below!
