By Paul de Fombelle
Email is easily the most ubiquitous digital communication technology. Ninety-five percent of online consumers have at least one email address and most check their email every day. If you are not incorporating this valuable tool into your real estate marketing, you are missing out on valuable leads. Here are a few items that make email so important and ways you can leverage it for marketing success.
Emails transmit information that a phone call can't. When you contact prospects by email, you can immediately send them photos of homes, information about the size and price of a property, and important information for the sale. Letting the home speak for itself can be far more persuasive than trying to verbally describe a listing that your client or prospect just has to see.
Most consumers prefer email. In surveys, consumers indicate that email is their preferred method of contact for commercial communications — and, it makes sense. Email can be scanned, allowing people to gather the gist of a marketing message in just a few seconds. Unlike phone calls, email is not time bound. You can send your messages and consumers can peruse them at a time that is convenient for them. Email provides a record. If your prospects want to review the stats on a property, it's right there in their inbox when they want it.
Email provides a great return on your marketing investment. The average email marketing campaign provides a 4,300 percent return on investment. Email allows you to reach as many or as few prospects as you would like at a very low cost. By using this method regularly, you can significantly drop your customer acquisition costs and increase your real estate business net profits.
Email is great for generating return customers. When you help someone find an apartment one year, the chances are good that this person will need one again when his or her lease is up. Throughout the year, keep in touch with past customers by sending a valuable and useful email marketing newsletter. Share tips on subjects that include decorating, home improvement and the best local attractions. By staying in contact over time, you can significantly increase the chances that, when they need a real estate agent again, they'll think of you first.
Email offers a remarkable conversion rate. The conversion rate for email is three times as high as what you accomplish, on average, with social media. It is estimated that companies that employ email marketing on a regular basis have 50 percent more leads than those who do not. Their leads typically generate sales that are 20 percent higher in value. What’s more, they enjoy a cost per lead that is 33 percent lower than their non-emailing competition.
Email makes it easy to localize. Set up rules to automatically send information about houses or apartments in specific ZIP codes or neighborhoods to prospects on request. This allows you to keep in touch daily or weekly with exactly the information that your contact needs. When creating locally focused emails, be sure to include that local information in the subject line. Thirty-three percent of email recipients say that they open emails based on the subject line alone.
Email is great for mobile marketing. Nearly half of emails are opened on a mobile device. This can be especially true for real estate marketing. Your prospects are on the go looking at places to live. Share good properties with them wherever they are by making your emails especially mobile-friendly. Keep subject lines short so that they are easily readable on a mobile device. Email bodies should include plenty of white space, and information that is shared with subheads and bullet points for easy scanning.
Real estate professionals can give their marketing efforts a significant boost by adding email to their arsenals. Incorporate newsletters, daily email blasts and other email tools to reach more customers and win more conversions.
Paul de Fombelle comes from an editorial background and has contributed to tech businesses as an expert in Digital Marketing and Content Strategies in four different countries. Paul is currently the Global Development Director of Mailify, an email marketing app with more than 40,000 users around the globe.
