Is Your Marketing Email Driving Away Business?

There are many very successful real estate professionals who are masters at real estate email marketing. They generate leads on their websites and use email to develop a relationship that leads to the closing table. They also follow up with past clients with email to build repeat and referral business.

If you use email for prospect and client marketing, how is it working for you? Do you have any hard data to show whether it's working or not? Could your real estate marketing email be driving away business instead of bringing it in? Here are some tips to help you make real estate marketing email work for you instead of against you.

Evaluation

Do a deep dive into your email marketing to see how it's working, especially if it's bringing in business and referrals.

Action: The Newsletter Decision

What are you sending, how often, and is it getting positive responses? If it's a newsletter, do your emails have interesting and useful content, and a subject that will get them opened? Is your newsletter filled with purchased boilerplate content with maybe one original article of your own?

You can buy newsletters ready to go out via email or snail mail, but you should look at examples with a critical eye and from a prospect's viewpoint. One company charges around $100/month for newsletters, and the articles are OK, but definitely not localized for your market. If you consider it a plus, the example issue had a recipe for a Caramelized Veggie Bowl.

That sample newsletter had around 1600 words. Even if you don't want to write your own local content, you can hire competent freelancers for around $0.05/word on freelance sites and give them topics that will be of interest to local prospects and clients. That's 2000 words for $100.

Consider other strategies to either complement or replace your newsletter.

The Short and Long of Lead Generation

Consider a combined strategy for short term immediate lead generation that transitions to long term relationship building and referrals. It's all about getting your emails read and NOT getting that dreaded UNSUBSCRIBE.

Action 1: Get the Short Term Leads to Closing

You're placing calls-to-action around the site with forms to capture visitor contact information to convert them to prospects for marketing. Your first priority is to harvest the ripe fruit, the buyers ready to buy and the sellers ready to list.

Develop three or four emails targeted at each prospect type, sellers, buyers, and maybe investors. You know your market timing, the average time between serious interest and a listing or purchase. Send out your short set of emails over that period to get the fast leads to a contract.

Action 2: Build Long Term Relationships

For those prospects that do not act right away, or they're just testing the waters, you still want to keep them on your list and you want them to come to you when they're ready. Instead of expensive monthly newsletters or lots of emails that aren't of great interest, send them something everyone will find interesting—market sold statistics.

You can send these emails monthly or quarterly, and they're free to create out of most MLS systems. Go into your MLS system and create a report of recent sales for the previous month or quarter. Break it out any way you want, but by market area is often best for your audience. Every buyer and seller wants to know what's happening in their neighborhood.

Convert the report to a PDF file with software or a free online service. Ninety-nine percent of all computers can open a PDF file. Then just attach it to your email and send out to your list with your added comments on how the market looks to you. You'll spend no money and you'll get more emails opened and fewer unsubscribes.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.