Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents

If you're a real estate agent / Realtor, I'm sure you're trying to be seen by anyone who's ready to buy or sell a home. But by the time they're looking, it may be too late. Why? If someone doesn't bother to actively research agents and find the right fit for them, they may simply call the name on a listing sign. Right?

But if they do go searching for an agent, who are they going to find? Chances are, they'll find:

• Agencies rather than agents in most search engine results; if they happen to find the agency you work for, what are the odds they'll look to you as the agent?
  
  
• Agencies or agents who are aggressive enough to advertise in the search engines. Given the value of a single client, this is a great idea if you know what you're doing. If not, the cost of these ads could break you.
  
  
• Agencies or agents who are aggressive enough to advertise through social media, through retargeting, through print ads, etc.

In all these examples, I could be talking about you. But the vast majority of real estate agents are not doing these things. Many will simply take calls through their agency, and will perhaps send out some printed letters or postcards in hopes of attracting some clients. Some will also use social media, but the world of social media has changed, and even if you build a big following, only a small fraction will ever see your posts unless you "pay to play."

This is why email marketing is so critical for real estate agents, just as it is for any business. Most marketers will list this as one of the most important things to do from day one in a business. Yet many real estate agents / Realtors never understand the importance in building a consistent clientele in this way.

And given how inexpensive email marketing is, there's no reason you shouldn't be doing it.
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How Would You Use Email Marketing?

In some cases, you can catch people at the exact moment they're ready to buy or sell a home. But if you want to think long term about your business, then it's important to develop a list of people who grow to trust you over time and remember you when the time is right.

This is why email marketing is so powerful. It lets you stay in people's minds on a weekly or monthly basis by sending out a newsletter. And this doesn't have to be some in-depth email that few will ever read from start to finish. I know one Realtor who used to send out a monthly email with one tip per e-mail that most people would find useful, even if it had nothing to do with real estate.

This way, he continued giving people value, building on the power of reciprocity (where people want to pay you back for the value you have given them; this is built into most people). He also branded himself by following the tip with a reminder about his success in real estate. This helped with both trust ("he's successful") and recall.

Another form of content could be special deals you've scored with local businesses exclusively for your readers. People love to feel exclusive, and anyone who used the deal would get a clear financial benefit for reading your newsletter. Make sure they get their deal by mentioning you to the business -- this way the business can track the benefit of working with you, and YOU are making people say your name and associate that with a great value.

Of course send out your listings. If you have local readers, share your listings. If you happen to have so many that this would overwhelm readers, send a weekly digest of new listings, or send your best ones. You never know who's starting to think about a move, and what listing might strike a chord. Plus, your readers may know someone else who's looking for a listing.

Automatically send your blogs. That's right ... a good system can automatically send out the blogs you write on your site. So if you're having an open house or have other news to share, there's no need to spend time writing an e-mail to your list about it. The system can send this news out automatically. I recommend using one blog for this kind of news and a separate one for your listings and NOT automating your listing e-mails. That's because you'll want to more carefully prepare a listing e-mail. For instance, check out the section on "Images" below.

Think of all the time or money you put into trying to land clients. With email marketing like this, you could spend just a couple hours a month (at most!) putting together an honest tip or deal for your readers. You could have a boilerplate reminder about who you are at the end of each email (including a link to your listings.) It wouldn't take long, and a good autoresponder system (see my recommendations below) can cost under $20/month. (Or FREE up to 500 subscribers if you don't mind their branding included and don't need more advanced features.)

Now imagine that you've built a list of 500 people in your community who hear from you each month. If each one moved only once every 10 years, that would be 50 people per year, or about one a week. Each one might represent both a home sale and purchase. If you only landed 10% of these (5 per year) as clients, wouldn't that be a pretty solid return on a couple hours of effort per month?

Now what if you scored more than 10%? Or built a larger list?

This is the power of staying in people's minds and giving them value over time.
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How Do You Build a List?

Of course it's one thing to talk about staying in touch with a list. It's another to figure out how you build that list. While I can't explain all the following in detail in this blog, let me give you some ideas:

• Build your own real estate website so you can attract your own search engine traffic (no other agents to compete with) and direct ads to your own site rather than an agency site (where you could lose those leads to other agents). I think this is critical for every agent, though most won't do it. (Big advantage to you if you do!) Add an email capture for to your site and give people an incentive to join. (Maybe it's just the promise of monthly tips to enhance their lives. But maybe you partner with local businesses and provide a few exclusive coupons in the first email!)
  
  
• Build your own real estate smart phone app and include an e-mail signup form in the app. Apps are likely to soon be a big deal in search engine rankings, and those who jump in early should have the advantage. Meanwhile, the right sort of app will automatically update with blog content and other site content; it can also link to your real estate listings; and besides email marketing, it also allows you to reach out with Push Notifications to everyone who downloads your app. This is an awesome way to send out alerts about your latest listings.
  
  
• Ask your local social media and email contacts if they would like to subscribe. (Presumably you're focused on local real estate, so local contacts are important. Modify this if your business is a little different.) The people you know can start your list and give you incentive to make sure you send something every month. Ask them to let other locals know about the newsletter.
  
  
• Include an invitation at the end of every newsletter for your subscribers to share with others. This invitation comes after you've just provided the reader with value at no cost to them. Again, the power of reciprocity will sometimes come into play here, and they will forward that value on to others.
  
  
• Invite open house attendees to join your list. You can even keep a computer or smart phone open to your lead capture form so people can enter their e-mail address on the spot.
  
  
• Include an invitation to your mailing list in your email signature. This way, as you're sending regular emails to your contacts, they also have the chance to see what you offer and join your list.
  
  
• Try scoring clients when they're thinking of selling their home by offering an email series with tips about preparing a home for sale. So far I've focused on manually sending out an e-mail every month to your list. But these services can also automate emails that go out over time, on whatever schedule you set. With this sort of series, you can offer one tip per day and have them go out every day for a week. This way, someone about to sell their home would get YOUR name and contact information 7 times in a week. If they don't already have a real estate agent, there's a good chance they'll reach out to you when they're ready. And when they join to receive this series, they'll also be added to your regular mailing list.
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My Recommended Service

Hopefully by now you see how obvious it is that you should be email marketing by building a list and reaching out to that list at least once a month. And hopefully I've stimulated ideas about how to build that list and what to do with it.

Now what service should you use for your email list? Honestly, there are a lot of good ones that start at "FREE" if you don't mind their branding and missing a few advanced features. That said, as a professional, you might not want to show their branding, and it's under $20 to have up to 500 subscribers.

I personally recommend AWeber because they're less restrictive than others about sending things like "affiliate" emails. So if you ever had an arrangement, for instance, to promote something to your list (besides homes) that you earned from, that could be a problem with other providers. If you do look at other providers, just make sure to check out their Acceptable Use policies.

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AWeber

• Everything you could want in an email marketing service, even for power users.
  
• ​​Integrates with tons of other software.
• Unlimited landing pages (so you can build web pages where people sign up for your newsletter).
• Beautiful sign-up forms (for your landing pages, even if you have your own web pages). This can collect whatever info you want on subscribers, like city, buyer vs. seller, etc. (Make these things optional if you want more subscribers.)
• Automatic emails to your list every time you write a blog.
• Simple "drag and drop" email builder with 1000s of images you can use.
• A hosted archive of your newsletters.

$19/month for your first 500 subscribers. (Less when paying ahead.)

Try AWeber for $1

Please share! I hope you've found this information on email marketing useful and that you'll share it with other real estate agents! No, of course not your competition. That would be crazy talk. But share it with your friends in real estate who you want to see succeed. Thanks!