I recently downloaded another one of HubSpot's awesome inbound marketing guides: Optimizing Email Marketing for Conversions. (Link for the complete guide at the end of this article.) While some of what the guide covers is a bit heavy for the average real estate agent, I do think that there is a lot of useful information. I'm going to cover a few of the high points here.

Growing Your Email List

First, you need people to send marketing emails to. We've talked about growing your email list here on RE Technology, but HubSpot offers some additional perspectives.

• The "wrong way": Buying an email list, even from a reputable source. Now, I'm not sure that I agree with HubSpot here. There are some great real estate-specific lead generation sources that sell contact information, including emails. However, HubSpot's argument is threefold: by buying an email list, you alienate recipients because they haven't signed up to receive emails from you; you could get marked for spam; and these recipients aren't as engaged as recipients who have opted-in.
• The "right way": HubSpot argues that if you create valuable content and make it relevant to your target audience, the subscribers will inevitably follow. More specifically, that means creating a website and blog that are filled with resources relevant to home buyers or sellers in your area. Then, of course, you must add a subscribe button or lead capture form to the website/blog.

Another key point from the eBook: improving your unsubscribe process can help you maintain your email list. How? Well, people hitting "unsubscribe" may still enjoy your content but would just like to receive it less frequently. If you give them the option to sign up for less frequent emails or emails that are only about one specific thing (i.e. new listings that meet certain criteria), they may still choose to remain engaged with you.

Integrating Email Marketing

HubSpot describes several key strategies for integrating email into your existing marketing channels, including:

• Social media. In order to integrate your social media and email marketing strategies, consider several tactics: include social sharing buttons in your emails, create email blasts based on insights you gain through social media (topics of interest that you notice, trends, news, etc.), farm your social media connections as additions to your email marketing list.
• Mobile. The eBook states that 16% of all emails are opened on mobile devices. In order to make sure that your emails are optimized for this very important channel, you should: test templates to make sure they work on mobile, create a CTA that works for mobile (links and buttons should be clickable, even on a small screen), offer both plain text and HTML versions of email, and optimize for mobile the landing pages that are linked-to in your email.

Other Interesting Points

Although some of the content in the eBook wasn't relevant to our industry, I did notice other interesting points/suggestions:

• Conduct a survey of your email recipients to see how frequently they'd like to receive email from you.
• Find ways to segment your audience and deliver emails that are relevant to them. Segmenting your audience means breaking them down into different groups based on their interests/objections. So, for example, you might have a different email blast sent to each of the following groups: buyers, sellers, and people who are not active in the real estate market in either capacity.
• Consider hosting an HTML version of each email blast on your website. If you search engine optimize these emails, they might help your site rank higher in search results for your keyword terms.
• Don't forget analytics! I can't overstate the importance of understanding what happens to your emails once they're sent out. How many people are opening them? How many people are clicking through but aren't converting? How many/which email addresses are bouncing?
• 17% of emails never make it to the recipient's inbox – if you don't want to be among this 17%, you need to improve your "deliverability." Deliverability is determined by factors that include how "clean" your email list is (do the people on the list exist, have a relationship with you, and want to receive your emails?) and whether or not you follow other best practices for email marketing.

Email Marketing for Real Estate

As you can see (and probably know from experience), mastering email marketing is tough. That's why so many real estate professionals choose to rely on companies that specialize in email marketing (Happy Grasshopper, VerticalResponse, eMerge, andImprev are some good examples). You'll find some of these companies in the Drip Marketing section of our product directory. You will also find that many CRM solutions offer email marketing functionality (such as Wise Agent, Top Producer, IXACT Contact and others).

Download the eBook

To download the eBook I reference in this article, visit HubSpot.com.