Email Marketing Hacks for REALTORs
Email Marketing Real Estate
As a real estate agent, email marketing can be fantastic way to build relationships with people in your database. It’s just important to you approach your real estate email marketing with the right strategy. In this podcast, we discuss a few of the best hacks for REALTORs who want to leverage the power of email marketing using such platforms as Mailchimp. You will learn about subject lines, open rates, unsubscribers and more.
In this real estate agent training podcast, you will learn our favorite email marketing hacks for REALTORs
Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Rev Real Estate School. The podcast with quick tips and actionable advice to help you sell more real estate in today's world. And now your host Michael Montgomery.
[00:00:11] Hello and welcome back to Rev Real Estate School. I'm your host Michael Montgomery and today we are talking all about e-mail marketing and specifically our favorite e-mail marketing hacks for real estate agents.
[00:00:26] Email marketing can be such a huge part of your business and it's something that can be under utilized as well. Oftentimes newer agents or even agents with smaller databases choose to not do e-mail marketing or just kind of do a lackluster job of it. It can be such a powerful way for you not only to communicate with your database and continue to build a relationship with them but also get new subscribers and new people into your database.
[00:01:00] On this episode we're not going to get into the basics we're just going to jump in to a few different email marketing hacks that you can put into place right away. But first things first: if you do not use email marketing definitely start doing it a service such as mail champ or some other e-mail services out there makes it very very easy and for MailChimp it's free for up to two thousand subscribers. So it makes a ton of sense start using these tools right away. And if you haven't been using them for a period of time start doing them again. This leads us into our very first tip a schedule so if you have done them in the past but haven't really done them with much of a schedule start doing your email marketing with a schedule. Now if you're on our email list you'll notice that every week on Friday an email goes out with three quick tips. So this is a schedule and it goes out and people start to expect it. People respond to it. People engage with it because they are expecting to receive it. It's the same thing in your real estate business. Try to send out your e-mails on a consistent schedule whether that be weekly monthly whatever that looks like to you. Now I find weekly can be almost a little bit too much for most people and the only reason is because most people aren't looking to buy and sell right now. So weekly can be a little bit too intrusive. Not always but a little bit too intrusive for most. And it can lead to an increased number of unsubscribe. I think a great place to start is monthly and the beautiful thing about monthly is you can do a monthly market report as well as put in a few other little tricks that we're going to go over next.
[00:02:47] Let's chat about subject lines now. So first subject lines you want them to be short. You want them to be sweet and you want to get right into the details. I always recommend A/B testing your subject lines. I did this when I first started and I found the subject line that gets the most response so I stick with it. A lot of different tools out there have the ability to test your subject lines and I'd highly recommend doing that because sometimes we don't always know exactly what works with people and what doesn't and what ever you do try to avoid the trick. So there for instance putting it "FWD" or "RE" or reply into your e-mail subject line. This is used as a trick to get people to actually open the email because they think that there's already a conversation thread and that's not the case. So what happens when people open it. Yes you'll get a higher click through rate but you're also just going to make people mad. So avoid using that. I'm sure you've all received emails that say forward or read or something in there and you think that you're going to open up and see an email train and that's not the case and you're upset by it. So don't be duped by these little tricks because you end up hurting the relationship that you're having with your database.
[00:04:04] Next the debate between using HTML or plain text in your email marketing. I would recommend under most circumstances if you're sending out say a monthly newsletter to use HTML. So that is the type of e-mail that has images in it something that's very common through MailChimp. These are more visually appealing. People interact with them more. However if you're doing this for lead gen and you have people on say like a drip campaign where they're receiving messages then you want to be using plain text because you want it to be a little bit more personalized. Also you'll typically have better deliver ability if you're using plain text. However if you are doing the monthly e-mails and the market reports in these sort of things HTML can work in your favor because it's easier on the eyes. People can interact with it a little bit better. So if you're not too sure which one to choose I would recommend if you're doing a newsletter or an e-mail blast out to your database you go with HTML. However if we're talking about drip campaigns then plain text is the way to go.
[00:05:08] Next a great little is to use the footer. What do I mean by the footer? Oftentimes what you're going to see in there is say the unsubscribe link and there might be the address and that sort of thing. But what I'm talking about is right above that most email marketers will use a P.S. or a P.P.S just right at the very bottom of their email. And this is use and it's been tested and a lot of times people that skim e-mails will read the bottom will read the footer so they will read what's in the piece. If you're going to draft a really nice email definitely use P.S. at the bottom and then draw people to a link something or somewhere where you want them to go because those people that are just browsing over the email there's a high likelihood that they will read that the next hack.
[00:05:58] Now if you're sending your e-mail out to a large group of people or if it's an important e-mail that you want to send out then you can use the resend trick. So re-sending to those who have not opened your email a lot of different email providers will have this option even within MailChimp. You can do this just with segmentation quite easily where you send it back to people who did not open the email. Now use this cautiously because if you're doing this over and over again and people are deleting the e-mail and they see that you're doing this over and over again it can be seen as a little spammy so maybe just do it once maybe do it if it's an important e-mail that you're sending out to your database even if it's your monthly market update and you reset to unopens and you reset it say the next day or something like that it can work very very well but don't keep re sending it. Obviously if they're deleting it then their chances are they probably aren't going to open it and they're just going to get frustrated. But this is a great tip and it can work wonders for email marketers.
[00:07:00] Next let's talk about unsubscribes. Nobody likes it when they unsubscribe from their email list. I get it. It happens though and a lot of times people will unsubscribe and it's nothing personal. The tricky thing is when you have unsubscribed on an email notification to you. So every time somebody and subscribes you get an email I know MailChimp has this a few other e-mail marketing services have this where you can get an e-mail every time somebody subscribes or a daily list on who had subscribed I highly recommend just turning that off because it doesn't actually add any value to your business. All it is is it just kind of makes you frustrated and sometimes people just get too much e-mail. They just do not want to receive e-mail that doesn't necessarily mean they're not going to use you when it comes time to buy or sell in the future. It just means that they're not interested in receiving the email. No harm no foul let them off. And that's the way it goes. If you would like another tip with subscribers this one it's a little bit more risky but it goes a long way. Is once a year send out an unsubscribe email. An e-mail where you actually let people know that the e-mail the purpose of it is to let them unsubscribe if they would like. Now the reason this is very very powerful is because it's showing that you want people on your list that want to be there. You don't want to trick people to be on your list. This is again one of these ones that you might want to use with caution and depending on what stage you're at and how large your email list is you may not want to use it right off the bat but those that receive the e-mail open it up and delete it as in they do not unsubscribe. Those people can be clients for life.
[00:08:38] Finally make sure you're using a tool such as litmus.com . So it shows how your e-mail is going to look in different browsers and it tests it to make sure your links work and that sort of thing. The last thing you want to do is send out an e-mail and then realize that you're really important the link doesn't work or it looks really funny on iPhone but it works great with Android. So just double check it. It also goes without saying that you want to make sure that somebody reads the e-mail and make sure that it's proof read. I'm awful for this. So I really try to make sure that it's always proofread because otherwise I will miss things and it's just what happens is just the way it goes.
[00:09:15] So those are your tips for e-mail marketing. These are your e-mail marketing hacks hopefully you can put these into use right away there things that you can do on your next e-mail campaign.
[00:09:25] Thank you so much for listening I really appreciate it. Remember if you want to chat with the top producer all you have to do rate review the show then go to the free coaching section let us know where you did that and Top Producer gives you call. Easy as that. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you in the next lesson.
[00:09:39] This episode of Rev Real Estate School has come to a close. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you back here for the next lesson.