Email Marketing For Real Estate Agents
By AWeber April 20, 2010
Did you know that a key component of real estate marketing is relationship marketing? A successful real estate professional should focus on customer trust in the same way an internet marketer does.
In both fields, trust and reputation are important. And once both are built, you should have no problem growing your marketing sphere of influence.
Let’s take a look at how you can use AWeber to your advantage in the email marketing and real estate worlds.
Why Build Relationships?
Building a good relationship with your contacts is a must in today’s marketing world. It can take you into the realms of stellar achievement both on the local and global marketplaces.
Also, a home can the biggest investment a family will ever make. It’s very important for people to have a high level of trust in you. This is the place their family is going to come home to; they’ll create many special memories there.
Once you have built this trust, your contacts will always come to you when they need something. In addition to this, your customer’s word-of-mouth business can prove invaluable.
Some Relationship Building Ideas for Realtors
Because of it’s dynamic nature, real estate marketing can lend itself to creative ideas. Building your reputation can be a unique adventure.
Here are a few that you may find helpful for your prospective referrals:
Local Email Newsletter or Blog
Instead of going for a sale every time you send out an email newsletter, why not offer your subscribers interesting information about their area, including:
- Local news and current events
- A historic blog about your local area
- Information about city or township related issues, regulations or laws
- Changes in homeowners association regulations, fees, events and news
- Local school district statistics and events
Broadcast Listings
As a Realtor, there are several events that you can use our email newsletter tool for:
- Getting a new listing
- Putting a listing under contract
- Closing a deal (either on the buyer or seller side)
I highly recommend segmenting your list when sending to these different categories. You can easily notify different types of people, based on which of the above events happened.
Open Houses
AWeber can be used to broadcast open houses as well as broker’s open houses to colleagues. You can have an email list for homeowners, let’s say, and a separate list for agents and brokers in the area.
Periodic CMAs
Why not send a monthly or quarterly Comparative Market Analysis, or CMA, to the people on your list? It will spark their interest and start a dialogue in case they are interested in buying or selling property.
Offer Free and Personal Help
What better way to gain trust as well as a potential client than to offer free information based on their needs? Not only will you learn much more about who they are, but you can develop the type of quality in your relationship that is so important.
Of Realtors and SPAM
It’s very important for Realtors to know which practices are acceptable and which aren’t. There is a bit of a difference between traditional real estate marketing as opposed to what is acceptable in the email marketing world.
Realtors use a technique called farming in order to reach out to people in their area. This can be done in the form of sending unsolicited postal mail to a given area, over long periods of time.
Farming to email addresses is considered SPAM – bottom line. Because SPAM is such a problem worldwide, it is completely unacceptable to send out unsolicited email to those who have never asked you for it. This includes people in your local board of Realtors, NAR, or from any type of directory.
If you have any questions about specific marketing practices, please feel free to contact us. We would be more than happy to answer your questions.
A Realtor Apart
The merger of real estate and email marketing can be a very exciting and lucrative one. If done correctly, it can add a new level to your creative approach and set you apart from the rest.
I invite you to take a look at a couple of previous posts about content for real estate emails, and real estate email tips.
Keeping the points above in mind, how can you use AWeber to establish and strengthen relationships? Share your ideas.
Want to Learn More?
For more information on email marketing for real estate, view our complete Email Marketing for Real Estate Agents Guide.
Karin H
4/21/2010 5:55 amI’ve given up on Estate Agents to be honest 😉
Tried to engage them in email marketing (cross-fertilization of contacts, i.e,. strategic alliance) but do they even want to bother? No sir, too much hassle.
Most tell me they don’t even keep their prospects/clients email addresses after the sale has been closed – what a waste! They “opt-out” on creating word-of-mouth in the most simple way.
Hope the attitude of Estate Agents in the USA is a better one than here in the UK.
(Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
Ron Davies
4/21/2010 10:33 amReal estate agents need leverage and are time-strapped more than just about any professional I deal with.
Effectively leveraged social media systems, like ping.fm, Twitwall.com, etc., provide the front-end leverage, but the real masters and networkers in RE are the ones that know how to build and communicate well with their lists both in their virtual (online) and offline communities.
List building, or network building, is the cornerstone of any profession, and any RE agent that does not do this is quite literally kissing away millions of dollars, chances are, to my clients, whom I have made into masters of the model.
Works for me 🙂
Great article Ron! (Great name too!)
Ron Givens
4/22/2010 8:39 amKarin,
It’s amazing at how some agents ( not very seasoned or savvy ones, I would presume ) will close a deal, and then not follow up with their clients on a regular basis.
What happens when that person or family decides to sell their house a few years down the road and purchase a new one? Will they call the agent who took their commission and ran for the hills, or will they go with the agent who took the time to learn about them, offer additional assistance, and check in every once in a while?
That’s a no brainer…
Ron,
I could not agree more. Especially with the great name part 😉
I have had the pleasure of working with some pretty high end agents and brokers. The one thing that I was always impressed with was their ability to develop a high level of trust in their community by being involved as much as possible through, as you have mentioned, list building and network building.
I am happy to hear your clients were able to benefit from the business abandoned by those who did not wish to go that extra mile.
Ernest O'Dell
4/22/2010 4:42 pmI have to agree with Ron Givens in his response to Karin in England. Not only that, but I have to say something in addition to that: most real estate professionals won’t even take the time to develop a good email campaign to bring in future sales, much less keep in touch with former clients.
I have one of the simplest systems that they could put in place, for a little over a dollar a day, and I would even manage it for them; but do you think they would go for it?
I have always thought that RE professionals were fairly bright people, but a friend of mine (who also happens to be a real estate agent) countered me by saying that the majority of them "…weren’t the brightest bulb in the value pack."
I’m wondering if he’s right.
So, I put together a presentation that allows RE pros to read it in their spare time and put it in a language that they can understand.
Think it worked?
No.
But…
…if I offer a "free" seminar and SHOW it to them, they’ll sign up.
So… they’re not totally "out of it."
Give them time. Eventually some of them will "come around" if you patient with their education.
B
4/22/2010 7:44 pmIs there an AWeber forum where members could interact? Just curious. It seems to me one of the biggest problems is that outside of the online marketing sphere people aren’t aware of the power of lists.
As an example, a mobile study showed that 40% of mobile internet users check their emails as a core opportunity. Now if one realize the localized nature of real estate, you can see how much sense it makes to collect email addresses and mobile numbers and follow up with people.
Or, let’s say a storage company list owner mentioned a particular real estate agent in his or her weekly news letter.
Al
4/23/2010 6:02 amI have a friend RE and he’s a little ahead of his counterparts, however he does not do any list hygiene. Asking people periodically whether they still want to receive his emails is also very important.
You simply can’t assume that you can continue sending emails forever once you have their permission. Some people may and usually they do get ticked off and start hitting the spam button. That’s when you can run into the problem of getting your messages blocked by ISPs.
Ron Givens
4/23/2010 1:33 pmErnest,
I’ve seen both sides of the spectrum ( And every hue
in between. )
I am very surprised that you didn’t get as good as response as
you obviously should have for your initial presentation. All the
“hungry” agents I know would have jumped at that opportunity, but
then again, you have differing levels of commitment across the board.
Most Realtors do “come around” when they realize the techniques
of old aren’t going to work all the time. Sink or swim.
B,
Feel free to interact as much as you wish here on our blog at any time.
But you may also want to try some of the more well-known forums out there.
I am sure you will find similar people with GREAT ideas, such as yours.
Thank you for the stats, by the way.
Al,
You bring up a great point – list hygiene.
Good, relevant and timely follow ups will certainly assist in proper
maintenance of email lists as well as your suggestion.
I understand, also, that some Realtors can be a little lax in how they
handle their contacts. Instead of just acquiring and hoarding contact
information, attention must be paid to that maintenance of your
contacts over time as well.
Excellently put.
Ernest O'Dell
4/23/2010 7:58 pmYou make some excellent points, noting that:
“Most Realtors do “come around” when they realize the techniques
of old aren’t going to work all the time. Sink or swim.”
The problem that I’ve run into is that a lot of them are not aware that some of their old techniques are not working as well as they used to…
…then they scratch their head in wonderment when they find themselves working a 2nd (and sometimes a 3rd) job, flipping hamburgers or "hacking" at Best Buy.
Nial Fuller
4/24/2010 7:03 amI have a friend in Real Estate who does mail outs, but he does not get a good open rate or inquiry from them. I think most of the time Real Estate emails are spammed. Does AWeber support such image, design, and html intensive mail outs? Real Estate emails also have a high level of complaints and unsubscribes are huge in this kind of niche; won’t that hurt the quality of the delivery rate?
Ron Givens
4/26/2010 9:50 amErnest,
With the state of the real estate market over the past years, there are many more “sinks” than “swims” out there. It would seem almost natural to try new techniques and keep on top of current trends and technology.
Old habits die hard, but they must die.
Nial,
“I have a friend in Real Estate who does mail outs, but he does not get a good open rate or inquiry from them.”
Do you know how they collected those email addresses?
“Does AWeber support such image, design, and html intensive mail outs?”
We do not host images (if that what you are asking ), however we do instruct and educate our subscribers on how to host their images elsewhere and insert those images into their HTML email messages.
When you say intensive mail outs, what do you mean? If you mean volume, then yes, we can handle anything a customer has to offer as far as sheer numbers. But I would need more clarification on what you mean by that.
“Real Estate emails also have a high level of complaints and unsubscribes…wont that hurt the quality of the delivery rate?”
If you are sending out relevant real estate information to people who have asked you for it, there should be no issues at all with SPAM complaints. Yes, they will happen from time to time, however this will not be the case if you are simply giving people what they want and what they have specifically asked for.