Email marketing is an invaluable tool for real estate agents to build relationships, nurture leads, and promote listings. Studies show that email generates up to 40x the return on investment compared to other marketing channels. With open rates in real estate often exceeding 25%, email simply offers the highest bang for your buck.

In the world of real estate, effective estate agent email marketing delivers multiple benefits:

• Lead Generation: Send listings and neighbourhood reports to capture new leads. Email CTAs allow prospects to easily schedule showings or consultations.
• Lead Nurturing: Maintain consistent touchpoints with past clients and new prospects until they are ready to buy/sell. Automated drip campaigns keep your brand top of mind.
• Listing Promotion: Showcase new properties, open houses, and price reductions. Include beautiful photos/videos and links to virtual tours.
• Client Engagement: Send market updates, social proof, and real estate tips to build trust and expertise. Strengthen relationships with current clients.
• Referrals: Request referrals from satisfied past clients. They are your best source of word-of-mouth marketing.

To maximize results, familiarize yourself with key email marketing terminology:

• Contacts: The recipients on your email list. Also called subscribers.
• Segmentation: Dividing your contacts into groups based on preferences like location and price range. Allows personalized communication.
• Automation: Using pre-set systems to send scheduled emails like welcome sequences and reminding prospects about listings.
• Delivery rate: Percentage of total emails that reach subscriber inboxes. You want this to be as close to 100% as possible.
• Open rate: Percentage of email recipients who open your message. The benchmark open rate is around 20-25%.
• Click-through rate (CTR): Percentage of email recipients who click on any link within the message. Good CTR is 2-5%.
• Conversion rate: Percentage of recipients who complete your desired action after clicking – like scheduling a tour.

What’s a good email for a real estate agent? – Essential Real Estate Email Campaigns

As a real estate agent, you should be leveraging email to connect with leads and clients on an ongoing basis. The most effective email campaigns include:

• Welcome Emails: Make a great first impression by sending an automated welcome email to new subscribers. Thank them for signing up and sharing an appealing call-to-action like viewing new listings.
• Email Newsletters: Send weekly or monthly newsletters to provide valuable content and stay top of mind. Include new listings, market data, neighbourhood spotlights, upcoming open houses, etc.
• Listing Alerts: Allow buyers to sign up for alerts on new properties matching their criteria. Nurture these high-intent leads by sending listing emails whenever you get a new match.
• Open House Invitations: Promote your open houses by sending eye-catching email invites to local residents and interested buyers in your database.
• Drip Campaigns: Automate follow-up email sequences after initial contact with leads. Slowly provide more value and build the relationship over time.

Best Practices for Real Estate Emails

• Personalize each email with first names and other details for more opens. Segment your lists.
• Use attention-grabbing yet professional subject lines. Avoid spam trigger words.
• Write brief, scannable content with headings, bullets, and emphasis on key info.
• Embed high-quality photos and videos of listings. Link to virtual tours.
• Time promotional emails like open house invites arrive in the morning when engagement is highest.
• Send newsletters on a consistent schedule so readers know when to expect them.
• Use email automation to save time on welcome sequences, alerts, and follow-ups.
• Track open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes. Continuously refine based on data.

How do I create a real estate email?

Choosing the right email marketing software

To execute a successful email marketing program, real estate professionals must lay the proper groundwork. This includes selecting the right software, building your subscriber list, segmenting contacts, designing compelling campaigns, and optimizing your approach.

Begin by researching email service providers that integrate directly with MLS listings and contacts from your CRM. Look for an intuitive platform that makes it easy to create professional emails with drag-and-drop editors and pre-designed templates. Mailchimp and Constant Contact are popular among real estate agents.

Building and Segmenting your list for targeted campaigns

Next, focus on growing your email subscriber list. Offer multiple opt-in points on your website, listings, business cards, and other materials. You can incentivize sign-ups by providing a valuable lead magnet like a neighbourhood guide or market report. Ensure you have permission before uploading existing contacts.

Important types of real estate email campaigns

Once you have subscribers, segment your lists according to buyer stage, locations of interest, price range and other attributes. This allows you to deliver content tailored to each group’s needs. For example, send new construction alerts just to those interested in new builds.

When designing real estate email campaigns, include a mix of promotional and educational messages. For promotions, newsletters with new listings, open house invites, and price reduction alerts work extremely well. For education and nurturing, send neighbourhood reports, local market updates, home-buying tips, and videos.

Craft subject lines that create curiosity and urgency, while reflecting the content. Research shows subject lines with 6 to 10 words have higher open rates. Avoid spam keywords like “free” and “act now”. Test different subject lines to see which resonates most.

Personalize each email using merge tags to insert the recipient’s first name. Reference their location, price preferences, or past listings they’ve shown interest in. The more relevant your message, the higher engagement it will receive.

Every email needs a strong call to action that drives the next step, whether it’s scheduling a tour or downloading a report. Place the CTA prominently with contrasting buttons. Offer limited-time incentives to increase conversions.

Lastly, confirm that your email templates are mobile-friendly. Use column stacking to adapt layouts for small screens. Ensure images, fonts, and buttons are sized appropriately on mobile. About half of emails are opened on mobile devices.

Real Estate Email Design Best Practices

The design and content of your real estate emails have a big impact on engagement and conversions. Follow these best practices to create professionally designed, visually appealing emails:

Rather than starting from a blank canvas, use pre-designed email templates tailored specifically for real estate. Services like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Beefree offer a wide selection of templates for realtors. Look for templates with an image banner, clean fonts, and a mobile-friendly layout.

Showcase your listings with high-quality photos and videos that grab attention. Embed a slideshow of listing photos directly in the email or include a video walkthrough hosted on YouTube or Vimeo. Videos can boost click-through rates by 200-300%.

Make sure to prominently link to the full listing page on your website so recipients can easily view more details and schedule a tour. The listing link should stand out as a call-to-action button.

Build trust by featuring social proof in your emails. For example, share positive testimonials from past buyers and sellers. Or include stats on how many homes you’ve sold in a neighbourhood.

Set yourself apart by sending local market update emails with recently sold data, average days on the market, and other metrics specific to the recipient’s area. Use charts and graphics to visualize the data.

Take advantage of email automation to send alerts when new listings matching a buyer’s search criteria are available. Use lead nurture sequences that provide useful information to prospects over time.

Other email design tips include using an eye-catching image in the header, keeping paragraphs brief, highlighting important text, and limiting links. Stick to a consistent brand colour scheme and font package. Before sending, preview the email on both desktop and mobile.

Analyzing Your Email Marketing Results

Key Metrics to Track

Carefully monitoring email analytics will reveal what campaigns and strategies are working or need refinement. There are several key metrics every real estate agent should be tracking:

• Open rate – This shows what percentage of recipients opened your email. Benchmark open rates in real estate range from 20-25%. If your rate falls below that, re-evaluate your subject lines, sender name, and email copy.
• Click-through rate – The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within your email. Aim for CTR of 2-5%. Low CTR indicates your CTAs, content, or design need improvement.
• Bounce rate – What percentage of emails failed to be delivered due to invalid addresses or spam filters? Keep your list clean by promptly removing bad addresses. Also, avoid spam trigger words.
• Unsubscribe rate – The percentage of recipients who opted out of your emails. This shows sender fatigue. Reduce by scaling back your send frequency or improving relevancy.
• Conversion rate – For promotional emails, what percentage of recipients took your desired action after clicking (like scheduling a tour). Track conversions to each CTA.

A/B Test Your Emails

The best way to optimize your email marketing is to continually A/B test different variables. Try testing:

• Different subject lines to improve open rates
• Various email content formats and lengths
• The number, wording or placement of CTAs
• Different sender names like your name vs company name
• Timing of sends like Tuesday afternoon vs Friday morning

Each test will reveal what resonates most with your recipients to improve results.

Troubleshooting Low Engagement

If you notice decreasing open or click-through rates, apply these troubleshooting tips:

• Ensure your contact list is segmented so each email is highly relevant. Generic blasts achieve poor results.
• Analyze your email analytics to identify recipient fatigue. Adjust the frequency of sends if needed.
• Check for invalid or stale email addresses bringing down your deliverability and metrics. Clean your list.
• Review email copy length. Extensive text is ignored while too little content lacks value. Find the right balance.
• Test your subject lines. Don’t overuse urgency words like “alert” or “act fast”. Avoid spam keywords.

Continual Optimization

Treat your email marketing strategy as a continual work in progress, not a one-time initiative. Apply lessons learned from campaign analysis, troubleshooting, recipient feedback and A/B testing to refine your approach over time. The most successful real estate email marketers are obsessed with optimization.

Email Marketing Tools and Resources

Top Email Service Providers

These email marketing platforms are popular among real estate professionals:

• Mailchimp – Very intuitive for beginners. Integrates with major CRMs and has templates made for real estate. Pricing starts at $14/month.
• Constant Contact – Another highly rated provider with excellent templates. Starts at $22/month with a free 60-day trial.
• Sendinblue – Affordable all-in-one marketing platform. Plans start at $25/month. Good automation.
• ConvertKit – Focused on lead nurturing with powerful automation. Pricing from $29/month.
• Drip – Specializes in campaigns targeted to the customer lifecycle stage. Starts at $49/month.

When choosing a service, evaluate integrations, deliverability, segmentation capabilities, automation, analytics, ease of use, and customer support.

Recommended Free Templates

These resources offer free, professionally designed email templates for real estate:

• Mailchimp Email Blueprints
• Constant Contact Email Templates
• Beefree Real Estate Email Templates
• Stripo Real Estate Email Templates
• Email on Acid Templates

Look for mobile-friendly templates with image headers, customizable colours/fonts, and layouts tailored to real estate promotions.

Handy Email Marketing Apps

These apps integrate with top email providers to enhance capabilities:

• Mailshake – Lead generation and email tracking
• Lemlist – Find targeted email lists
• Mixmax – Scheduling, tracking, automation
• MailerLite – Email builder and analytics

They help realtors supercharge productivity, automation, deliverability, and analytics for email campaigns.

Staying CAN-SPAM Compliant

To avoid legal issues, ensure your real estate email marketing adheres to CAN-SPAM regulations:

• Always include a one-click unsubscribe option. Keep lists current by honouring opt-out requests promptly.
• Identify your business as the sender. Don’t disguise the origin of emails.
• Use accurate subject lines reflecting content. No deceptive practices.
• Include both a valid physical mailing address and email address in emails.
• Obtain affirmative consent with double opt-in before sending emails.

Email Marketing – Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the ROI of email marketing for real estate?

Email marketing is an estate agent digital marketing strategy that involves using email to promote products, services, or any other form of communication with your target audience. It is an effective way to reach and connect with your customers directly.

2. How can real estate agents benefit from email marketing?

Real estate agents can benefit from email marketing in several ways. It allows them to stay in touch with their clients, build relationships, promote new listings, share market updates, provide helpful tips, and establish themselves as industry experts.

3. What is an email campaign?

An email campaign is a series of email messages sent to a group of contacts with a particular goal in mind, such as promoting a new product, driving website traffic, or nurturing leads. It often includes multiple emails strategically designed to engage the recipients.

4. How do I build an email list?

Building an email list involves collecting email addresses from individuals who are interested in receiving communication from your business. You can do this through website opt-in forms, social media lead generation, offline events, or by offering valuable content in exchange for email addresses.

5. What is an email template?

An email template is a pre-designed layout that can be used to create professional-looking emails without needing to code or design from scratch. It helps maintain brand consistency and saves time when creating and sending emails.

6. How can I run a successful email marketing campaign for real estate?

To run a successful email marketing campaign for real estate, you need to define your goals, segment your audience, create valuable content, use engaging subject lines, personalize your emails, track and analyze results, and consistently test and optimize your campaigns based on the data.

7. What are the best practices for email marketing subject lines?

Some best practices for email marketing subject lines include keeping them concise, using action-oriented language, personalizing when possible, avoiding spam trigger words, A/B testing different variations, and aligning them with the email content.

8. How can I automate my email marketing efforts?

You can automate your email marketing efforts by using email marketing software or marketing automation platforms. These tools allow you to set up scheduled emails, and trigger-based emails, segment your audience, and personalize messages based on specific actions or criteria.

9. What are drip campaigns?

Drip campaigns are a series of pre-written emails sent to subscribers over a specific period or based on certain triggers.