Opt In, Targeted Email Marketing for Real Estate

Email marketing has been around for a long time’! But it’s never been as sophisticated and effective as it is today.

It’s now arguably the most convenient form of communication with clients; as well as being one of the most relevant, engaging, timely and cost-effective methods of getting your marketing message across to clients and prospects.

The fact of the matter is, email is where business is taking place; it’s where leads are converted to clients and more and more online deals are happening.

Not sure why you should be sending marketing emails? Don’t worry, this piece will highlight and explain ten crucial reasons why you should focus your energy on email marketing and building your email list:

1. More people use email

To be successful in real estate marketing, you have to go where the people are, and when it comes to the sheer volume of people on email it’s huge! According to THE RADICATI GROUP, INC’s Email Statistics Report, 2014-2018; “The number of worldwide email accounts is expected to grow from over 4.1 billion accounts in 2014 to over 5.2 billion accounts by the end of 2018.” In addition, “the total number of worldwide email users, including both business and consumer users, is also increasing from over 2.5 billion in 2014 to over 2.8 billion in 2018.”

The study also states that “email remains the most pervasive form of communication in the business world, while other technologies such as social networking, instant messaging (IM), mobile IM, and others are also taking hold, email remains the most ubiquitous form of business communication.”

What’s more, email is integral to the overall digital experience given the fact that an email account (i.e. email address) is necessary to sign up to any online activity, including social networking sites, instant messaging and any other kind of account or presence on the Internet.

2. Email IS personal, so BE personal

Email marketing allows you to send more personal messages to your clients and prospects. One of the biggest benefits of email in terms of marketing communications is it gives you the ability to create separate groups such as splitting existing clients into email groups of particular interests or areas. You can then send separate targeted messages to those segmented groups individually, which is more powerful than sending out a general message to the public … and proven to be much more effective, too.

3. The rules to email marketing are simple

With email marketing, you hold the cards; you’re in control of what and who you communicate with. You can email your clients and be in control of building your business. The only rules you have to follow are in the CAN-SPAM Act. Read more about the CAN-SPAM Act and other similar laws here.

At Propertyshowrooms.com we’ve been doing email marketing for international real estate for a long time and know it’s very possible to build and uphold a good reputation with your Email Service Provider and your subscribers. You can read more detailed information about getting your message past spam filters in our Email Marketing Guide!

4. You can test and track email easily

Again, when it comes to email the power is yours. You can trial various different things and analyze the response to make sure you get the best results. You can split-test your subject line, meaning you create two different emails selling the same message and send to a test group to measure which subject line gets the most opens and select the one to use based on real results . Depending on the email provider you choose to use, you can track results and see the names of the people who open your emails and what links they click on within your message as well as who shares your email on social media and who forwards it to friends on a personal dashboard. You can really dig into who is engaging with your emails and the messages that work for you. This is powerful information you can use to make sure you’re really getting through to your audiences and help you craft even better emails going forward!

All of this is available from various email providers and campaign tracking software for you to do it yourself, but be aware that it can be complicated when you don’t know how and don’t have the right tools. That’s why at Propertyshowrooms.com we make it easy and design, build, test, send and track all your email campaigns for you, so you don’t have to.

5. Email offers targeted marketing

Just like creating personalised email groups, you can also do more targeted marketing with email. Let’s say you want to target UK investors looking to buy in Spain. You could really focus your message on the benefits of buying in Spain to attract the right buyers and only send to investors based in the UK.

There are various ways you could find out where they are based in order to implement this; either get the customer to fill in their country of residence in the form you use to subscribe them (or automatically detect their country using their IP address from their computer) or ask the email supplier you’re working with if you can segment their list into countries. It completely depends on who you’re emailing and what information you have on those customers apart from their email address. The more information you have, the more you can tailor your messages.

This is highly targeted marketing and can produce high quality leads when done right! Again, this is quite sophisticated stuff so it’s always best to do your research or consult a professional before you attempt it yourself.

6. Email gives you room to play

With email marketing, you can get creative with the characters and images you use in your message. I am not suggesting that you write a 10,000-word email, there are restrictions you’ll need to be aware of as you can be seen to be spammy with loads of images for example and really lengthy content is less likely to engage a reader, but you do have room to get creative. You can add more than one message, more than one image and customize it as much as you like. You own your message and can do anything you like to get your point across. In our experience we’ve found that the simpler the message is, the better response you get, one message, one purpose (Call to Action) and one focus only, makes the biggest impact. But there’s room for trial and error, try different approaches to find the one that works best for you.

You can even make your emails mobile-responsive meaning they adjust their layout automatically depending on the device being used to view them. This is quite sophisticated stuff, but it’s worth doing as it can have an enormous impact engagement and click throughs. In fact a recent study carried out by Mail Chimp and Litmus found that responsive design resulted in a 15% increase in unique clicks for mobile usersIn addition THE RADICATI GROUP, INC’s Email Statistics Report, 2014-2018 states that, “in 2014, worldwide Mobile email users total 1.1 billion. By the end of 2018, worldwide mobile email users are expected to total over 2.2 billion.” Meaning it’s well worth investing in email providers supplying responsive email designs.

To give you an idea, our emails currently have around 50% of readers using their mobile devices to check our emails. Making it absolutely essential to make sure everything is mobile-friendly. Here at Propertyshowrooms.com we’ve been creating and sending responsive emails for 2 years now (you can view some of our responsive designs by visiting ourInvestment Showcase) and we’re still one of the only property specific email providers to offer this service.

7. Email is hard to ignore

Do you have more than 50 unread messages in your inbox? Me too. Every time I see that unread number in my inbox I know I have to do something about it. Those emails can’t just sit there unread. I have to either open them or delete them. Those are the only two options, ok there are other options but sticking them in a folder or flagging them is just stalling the inevitable.

Remember that email is an actionable item, meaning your clients will have to take action when it comes to your email message, and if your two options are read or delete you need to make sure yours stand out from the rest of the noise. Experiment with creative subject lines, from names, sending at different times of the day (to avoid getting bulk deleted) and remember to always include a clear Call To Action, ask your readers to do something whether its download a brochure, make an enquiry or simply like your Facebook page. In this instance if you don’t ask, you most certainly won’t get.

8. Email is intimate

Email marketing is one-to-one; it’s like meeting a friend for a coffee. You talk; they listen. They ask you a question; you give them a reply back. Because it’s a me-to-you interaction it’s more personal and more intimate. This is key when it comes to building relationships, it means you can let your hair down and be a little more you with your email marketing message.

Beware, emails can often come across as very cold when done incorrectly, the aim is for it to be intimate, treat your subscribers like old friends, speak to them like you would when you meet clients face to face.

9. Email is opt-in

This is one of the main reasons why email is much more powerful than other channels. It’s why it converts better and why people are happy to receive advertising which they actually engage with. They have opted in – and in doing so have asked to receive that messaging. If you make sure that messaging continues to be interesting and engaging then people will continue to be happy to receive it.

In fact, according to Exact Target, “70% of consumers say they always open emails from their favorite companies. Conversely, only 18% say they never open commercial emails.”

At Propertyshowrooms.com we have spent the past 12 years growing and grooming our list of more than 45,000 active opt-in property investors to make sure our agents get the best quality exposure for their properties.

10. Email makes money

That’s right e-mail is a proven money maker (if you do it properly). Exact Target states that, “for every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment”.

But remember, just setting up a campaign and letting it run isn’t going to cut it. You need to invest the time to properly understand your audience and ensure your offering is valuable to them; this will help determine how you engage them through email in order to be profitable.

Our tried and tested methods at Propertyshowrooms.com means we get the best results for our clients, in fact in March this year we saw a 23% increase in property enquiries fuelled by the success of our email marketing campaigns.

Final Note

Email is still the most dominant and effective tool when it comes to marketing yourself and your business online. It paves the way for a personal and direct connection from you to your clients and that’s some really powerful stuff.

My advice? Invest in collecting as many email addresses and customer information that you can and be in control of your online marketing!

Don’t want to do it alone? Don’t worry contact us and speak with one of our Campaign Managers for a free email marketing consultation.