May 08 2012
You've heard that email marketing is an important way for real estate agents to generate leads. Unfortunately, a piece of the puzzle is often missing: a solid list of people to send your emails to! Here are a few ideas for growing your email list so that you can take advantage of email marketing campaigns.
1) Open houses: Use an iPad or clipboard at open houses and ask visitors for their permission to send an email that will inform them about similar properties/other homes in the neighborhood.
2) Email signature: Add a link to your email signature that prompts people to sign up for a newsletter.
3) Follow-up on bounces: Use analytics to determine which email addresses are no longer valid. If you have another method for contacting that person, use it to follow up and get a correct email address.
4) Lead-capture forms site-wide: Include lead-capture forms all over your site, with special emphasis on your:
Any mention of lead capture forms brings up the issue of "forced registration." This is when you require someone to fill-out a lead capture form in order to continue using your site. On real estate sites, it's often seen with the property search function. There's significant debate over forced registration and its impact on user experience, so we recommend testing forced registration settings rather than blindly implementing some course of action recommended by a friend or developer. Ricardo Bueno of Diverse Solutions provides a thorough discussion of this in his article, "Best Settings for Forced Registration?"
5) Direct mailings: Whether it's a postcard, flyer, or other direct mailing, this is an opportunity to build your relationship with a contact. Create some incentive for them that will live on your website. Once you've directed them to your site, you can require their email address to access their incentive.
6) Phone calls: If you have someone on the phone, don't hang up without gathering their email address.
That's a topic for another article entirely, but let's cover just a few basics. Your options for email marketing are plentiful, with a great many companies available to help you. A solution like Happy Grasshopper creates fun, engaging emails to keep you connected with your sphere of influence. At the same time, many CRM solutions (such as Wise Agent, Top Producer, IXACT Contact and others) provide a host of email templates and campaigns. A plethora of other companies provide drip marketing services – you may want to look at VerticalResponse, eMerge, Imprev, or Showing Suite.