In the ever-digital world of the 21st century, your online marketing efforts can never be second rate. That’s as true for realtors and their real estate business in the same way it is for everybody else. It’s of course just one of many ways you should be approaching the challenge of prospecting for new clients, and that aim is really at the core of everything you do as a realtor when you’re not providing services to existing ones.
Here at Real Estate Leads, our online real estate lead generation system for Canada is an excellent way to harness the power of the world wide web and get it working for you to provide you with real, genuine quality leads that put you in touch with people who are equally genuinely considering buying or selling a home in your locale. Nearly every realtor who gets on board quickly comes to see it as money well spent as part of their business promotion or marketing budget, and we’ve been very pleased to see how beneficial they’ve been finding it.
Email marketing campaigns are, like anything, only effective when done right. A ‘drip’ email campaign is particularly highly recommended because it’s less obtrusive and tends to land on recipients who’ll be more open to receiving the communication. Today we’re going to discuss the basics of putting together one of these email campaigns, so let’s get into the 4-step process.
This is something you can do on your own, even if you’re the most digitally non-savvy person around.
Why a From-Scratch Real Estate Drip Email Campaign
Pre-designed real estate drip email campaigns that you can buy ready-made are usually not a good option. Done badly and they’ll result in a prospective buyer or seller hitting the ‘unsubscribe’ link – and that’s the end of your communication channel with them.
With that warning out of the way, you also need to know that they are NOT getting the same email from your competitors.
How Often Should Emails Be Sent?
Email every day? Once a week? Every month? More? Less? Generally speaking, the protocol regarding this will depend on local market conditions (the ‘speed’ with which homes are moving), the type of market, and the properties of clients you typically serve. If it’s a ‘fast’ market, you may prefer to send emails at the beginning of your real estate drip email campaign with greater frequency / less of a gap between them.
With ‘slower’ markets you can let the be spread out a bit more.
Keep in mind that no matter the type of market, the frequency of emails MUST drop off as you move further into your campaign. This is important. Successful long-term real estate drip email campaigns will typically only send out 1 email roughly every 3 months once the first few have been distributed. Make sure you do the same
Email #1 – 2 Days After List Entry
This real estate drip email campaign is for buyers but can also be used for sellers.
Prospects will have already received one email prior to this, and that would be the auto-responder email.
Most agents will determine their email recipient list from forms filled out on their website site, As a result of this, prospects will receive one email that is delivered with a document (or a link to the information) along with a thank you. That first email is immediate, and it should be sent two days later.
The aims with this email are as follows:
- Appraising them of the process if they decide to buy or sell. In the first paragraph they’ll learn that this is the first of four emails they’ll receive. This should always be done because often there’s a large decrease in the unsubscribe rate if they make the recipient aware that they’re not going to be spammed incessantly.
- Giving them a link to valuable information, including links to area maps and descriptive pages for the area. You’ll almost certainly be covering an area larger than just one suburb or the like and people get confused about all of the area names found in the MLS.
- Use of wordage and sentences that results in a a high click-through percentage and low rate of unsubscribers.
Email #2 – 5 Days After List Entry
The first email introduced the prospect to the MLS area maps and descriptive information. Now, your 2nd email informs them that they can stop doing manual searches and enjoy the convenience of automated email alerts sent with new listings and price changes for listings that are a match for their property criteria.
They will be more familiar with the areas now, and they’ll likely use that information to tailor their searches even more.
Many soon-to-be serious buyers will spend some time in this automated email listing alert system setting up a search, and that’s especially when you want automatic listing alerts to be hitting their inbox nearly every day.
Email #3 – 8 Days After List Entry
A considerable number of your email recipients / prospective clients still won’t yet be ready for the automated listing reports. For this reason it’s advisable to take them back to your IDX search page instead, and show them how to get a lot more detail on each listing that hasn’t been displayed in the IDX results.
By doing this you’ll make it more likely that they return to the site again and again requesting expanded listing reports. You’ll need to manually create these reports and send them to these prospects, but if put effort into them and prepare solid reports that are also laid out cleanly and attractively in the document then you’ll be making real progress with securing interested buyers as new clients. Put your best effort into all of this!
Email #4 – 12 Days After List Entry
The last automated email extends your appreciation to these would-be clients for sticking with you and not choosing to unsubscribe, and it also informs them that you’re happy to keep them on your follow-up list for quarterly sold property statistics reports because they seem to be interested in making a move in the local real estate market.
You acknowledge the prospect’s continued interest in the market, as well as reaffirming that they’ll only receive four emails a year. Done right this keeps them interested enough to stay on the list.
Long-Term Follow-Up
Right after each calendar quarter-year ends, it’s smart to go into your MLS system and generate a sold property statistics report. Define it by type of property (i.e., residential or commercial). It should require only about ten minutes of your time to produce a PDF file and upload it to your website.
Next, go to your email list and send out a blast email to the entire list providing a link to the report, and if you have some solid relevant commentary to add on the previous quarter and the numbers in the report – go ahead and add it.
Stick to this drip Email protocol and you’ll very likely see a low unsubscribe rate. In most cases when people do choose to unsubscribe it’s because they’re no longer interested, or have purchased a home in another market. The ones that continue to stay subscribed are worth more of your attention, and if you have a strong feeling about one or more of them you can even get back to the good old tried-and-true basic approach of making a visit to them in person.
Be confident, and do everything you can to have the knowledge you need to be local real estate expert before you do!
Sign Up Today!
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It’s a dynamite way to supercharge your client prospecting efforts, and we can’t recommend it highly enough!
