Real estate email marketing: Turning potential buyers and sellers into clients

By Sean Tinney April 17, 2024

Email marketing for realtors. You’ve heard about it, but you’re not sure how it can help you connect with home buyers and sellers.

Imagine this scenario for a moment: You’re hosting another open house for a charming two-story Cape Cod home. A flood of people enter in and out, browsing around on their own without saying much to you. 

You leave out some business cards on a side table by the door and hope interested home buyers take one. But even if they do, there’s no guarantee that your card won’t end up lost in a purse or thrown out later on in the day.

If you had an email list you could ask potential homebuyers to sign up and guarantee future interactions. 

But email marketing isn’t just helpful for when you host an open house – it’s a great way to connect with potential home sellers and buyers in any scenario. And it allows you to reach a much more targeted audience. 

Email marketing for realtors allows you to stay connected with those who are interested in working with you, ultimately making it more effective than many other types of marketing.

Benefits of real estate email marketing

1 – Measurable 

Unlike other types of marketing that are difficult to measure, you can determine the ways in which your email efforts are impacting business by reviewing information such as open rates, click rates, traffic to your website, and more.

2 – Proven ROI 

Email marketing delivers a return of 3600%, according to Litmus.

3 – Preferred by clients

74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communication through email. Think about that for a minute. In order for you to send emails to someone, they have to come up to you or go to your website and sign up, already knowing they’re interested in something you have to offer.

Posting an ad for your business can be good for raising awareness of your services. But you’re promoting yourself to a wide audience of people who will most likely look at your ad and move on. 

That means there will be no future opportunities for you to engage with that person. When someone gives you their email address, however, you get the chance to start up a conversation and build a relationship with that person by sending them content that is relevant to their lives (such as information about new house listings or tips for homeowners).

4 – It frees up your time 

As a realtor, your life is a busy one, and you need a way to manage your relationships with your clients while also having time to go on house tours, attend settlements, and so on. If you set up automated email messages, staying in touch with your clients becomes hassle-free.

Step 1: Find an email marketing provider

The first step to getting started with email marketing is to research and choose a reputable email marketing provider. A few characteristics to look for in a good provider include high-quality customer service and excellent deliverability.

By having a top-notch team of email experts to help you throughout your email marketing journey, as well as the highest possible chance to get your messages delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes, you’ll be better prepared for success.

Once you’ve found your match, you can begin collecting email subscribers to grow your client base.

Step 2: Grow your subscriber base

In order to sell a house, you need interested buyers and actual sellers, right? Email marketing can help you gain the respect and trust of potential clients. But first, you need a list of people to email.

Fortunately, there are many easy ways you can collect email subscribers once you’ve selected your email marketing provider. Here are the tactics that we find work best for real estate agents:

Your website

If you have a website, chances are you get tons of visitors but not nearly as many inquiries as you’d like. Fortunately, you can tap into some of those visitors by adding an email sign-up form on highly trafficked pages of your website (such as your homepage). 

Your sign-up form should inform your visitors what they’ll get out of signing up to your emails, such as updates on new listings, home improvement tips, and anything else you plan on informing them about.

In addition to including the value of your email list, be sure to add fields to your form that ask them to submit their name and email address. While you can also ask for additional information, such as whether they’re a home seller or buyer or what town they live in, remember that less is more. You don’t want to lose potential email subscribers by making them jump through too many hoops to hear from you.

If you want to attract home sellers, create a page that explains how you can help them sell their homes quickly and for the best possible price. Then use your sign-up form to offer exclusive email updates or a newsletter with tips for people selling their homes.

To attract home buyers, create a landing page with a different sign-up form that offers another type of email newsletter that provides information on homes that are for sale and other tips to help with the home buying process.

Open houses

At open house events, place a sign-up sheet at the entrance to collect email addresses of interested buyers. Even if they’re not interested in buying that particular house, they may be interested in working with you in the future.

On the sign-up form, be sure to explain what it’s for (e.g., weekly newsletter, updates on new listings) so subscribers know what to expect when they receive your emails. You also might want to offer more details about the specific house they’re touring, which they can get by signing up to your email list.

At the end of the open house, add your new subscribers to your email list and let the communication begin!

You can also collect email addresses by having a sheet with a QR code which sends them to a landing page to sign up.

Promotional materials

If you create print materials with property details to promote each listing, be sure to include a link to your email sign-up form so prospects can easily sign up for emails. You can even add the link to your business cards!

Email signature

Your daily email correspondence can also be a great opportunity to raise awareness of your email list, so include a link to your sign-up form in your email signature as well. You might want to include a little bit of information about the benefits of signing up to your email list, too.

Facebook business page

If you have a Facebook business page, chances are you have followers who have never interacted with you or your website. Set up your call-to-action feature to connect to your sign-up form, or a landing page that’s specifically designed to attract new email subscribers.

X (formerly Twitter)

Encourage your Twitter followers to sign up to your email list and share the link to your sign-up form in a tweet. Be sure to tell them about the benefits of signing up to your list!

Real estate email content ideas

Real estate email marketing offers a unique opportunity for relationship-building, because a lot of time can pass from when someone expresses interest to when they actually make a purchase.

The idea of sending regular emails to any number of people can seem daunting. But there are a number of ideas you can use for your email content, such as the ones listed below.

Regular email newsletter

Whether you send a weekly or a monthly email newsletter, these emails are perfect for keeping your subscribers up to date on industry news and policy changes as well as tips to help home buyers and sellers make more informed decisions.

You can also create two different email lists, so you can send tailored information to those who identify as home buyers or home sellers.

Whatever you decide to write about, keep in mind that your email newsletters should not be self-promotional. Rather, the goal is to create and share content that is valuable to them and where they are in their lives. 

As you begin on the first versions of your newsletter, consider what your readers should get out of the content.

New listings

Send targeted emails that feature new listings, foreclosures, and up-and-coming areas to clients in nearby areas. So if a new house goes up for sale in a specific neighborhood, send a geo-based email to your subscribers in that area (if you collect that information in your sign-up form).

You can continue to connect with interested buyers by sending another targeted email to those who opened your email and clicked on the link to view the listing online. This allows you to continue the conversation with someone who may have been interested, but for one reason or another did not reach out to you.

Home improvement tips

From painting tips to gardening advice, there’s a lot of helpful information you can share with homebuyers (both new and experienced). Other topics might include:

• Remodeling
• Kitchen renovations
• Carpeting vs. hardwood flooring
• Designing children’s rooms
• Updating looks so they’re more modern
• Exterior decorating
• Interior decorating
• Reviews of household appliances
• Energy-saving advice
• … and more!

Ask your readers what they’d like to learn more about! This can help you create content that is relevant to your subscribers.

Industry updates

Policies within the real estate industry are known to change every now and then. Email is a great way to keep your clients up to date on the latest news that can impact them.

When informing your subscribers of a new policy or a change in an existing one, be sure to offer your own explanation of what this means for them. Remember, your clients probably aren’t well-versed in real estate industry jargon, so break it down to them in layman’s terms.

Automated email series

Buying or selling a house is no easy feat. To educate your clients who want to learn more about each topic, you can also create an automated series of educational emails that clients can specifically sign up for.

If you want to educate a variety of clients, such as first-time home buyers, home sellers, or apartment hunters, an email series is perfect for providing subscribers with important evergreen content (i.e., content that will rarely change).

An email series can consist of one or 10 emails (up to you!) – whatever is necessary to teach your clients what they need to know.

Email series topics you can offer:

• Everything first-time homebuyers should know. Give subscribers an overview of the journey and advice that’ll help them be more informed buyers.
• Tips on maximizing the value of your current home. Within each email, focus on a different way readers can increase their home value.
• Ideas for quick renovations you can do to sell your house faster. Share a new renovation idea in each email, or pick one idea and build an email series around that concept.

Tips for home buyers and sellers

On your sign-up form, consider asking your subscribers if they’re planning on selling or buying a home. With that information, you can send emails specific to each group to further educate them in their buyer or seller journey. 

When you have a clear understanding of what their needs are, it’ll help you identify content topics that will help them make the many decisions involved in buying and selling a home.

This makes for great content for your blog and social media posts, too!

User-generated content

Ask your clients to share their home buying and home selling experiences working with you. If you like them, consider including them in emails to your subscribers. This is a great way to encourage current clients that you’re the right realtor for them, as well as prospects who are still deciding whether they’re buying a house or moving.

Or increase the level of interaction you have with your clients by creating a contest that asks your clients to submit a photo of a redesign they’ve done. Share it on social media and ask for email addresses in order to enter. Leave it up to your audience to choose the winner!

Incentives

People love free stuff, so why not give your email subscribers free things to keep them interested in your emails?

Incentives you might want to offer in your emails or on your sign-up form include whitepapers, eBooks, or even a downloadable how-to guide.

Use this real estate email marketing guide

Educating your clients is essential to creating a great home buying or home selling experience. And email is a great way to maintain that relationship and gain the trust of your subscribers.

Email marketing for realtors is simple, but don’t get discouraged if it seems like a lot of work. As with any good habit, it’s important to stay motivated and stick with it. Consider devoting at least 30 minutes a day to nurturing your email list until it becomes routine. 

And if you do have any questions along the way, feel free to contact our email marketing experts at any time – we’re happy to help!

Looking for an email marketing provider for realtors – try AWeber. We’re a trusted, user-friendly platform that makes email marketing and lead generation simple and efficient. Why not sign up for a free AWeber account now and create your first landing page and newsletter today!