As an Agent, you have to wear a lot of hats. You may have not received much training in marketing even though it’s a key component of your job. But hopefully this blog post and others on the IXACT Contact Real Estate Contact Management Blog will help you improve and master effective real estate marketing.
Here are three real estate email marketing mistakes agents often make:
1. Sending generic real estate marketing emails
The “Dear Valued Client” approach and emails with no salutation at all or just “Hello” have spammy, batch and blast email written all over them. Who wants to read an email from an Agent that’s clear it wasn’t written just for them, but sent to potentially thousands of people at the same time?
So, here’s what you need to do: use a real estate CRM like IXACT Contact, which automatically personalizes each salutation. And use the system to add in custom mail merge fields within the body of the email, which adds another layer of that personal touch.
And do you think that one marketing email will be valuable to everyone in your database? Or even half your database? If you answered “Yes,” you may want to think again. Your communications need to be tailored to the different types of people whom you’re sending them to for them to be effective.
So use your Agent CRM to put your contacts into various groups, such as an A-List client group, former colleague group, open house group, hot prospects group, church group, and so on. Then, send out different emails to the different groups. And if you have some kind of shared experience with the group members, be sure to highlight that in the email.
Also be certain to take advantage of the pre-designed drip marketing campaigns in your CRM for your leads as each campaign is customized for specific lead types (buyer leads, seller leads, FSBOs, etc.) and designed to help you convert them into clients.
2. Focusing on yourself too much
You may be the #1 agent, the best in the state, have won the most awards – whatever. But all agents say they’re the best. Your prospects and clients have heard other Agents state these kinds of claims before. You need to take another marketing approach. Don’t send an email about how great you are. You wouldn’t go up to someone face-to-face and talk about how fantastic you are and then walk away, would you?
For each email you send, ask yourself this question, “Why would my contact want to get this email/ what’s in it for them?” If you have a hard time clearly answering this question, don’t send the email.
Here are some examples of emails that can be good to send out:
- Just Listed and Just Sold e-Flyers
- A monthly real estate newsletter or e-Newsletter
- Highly customized drip marketing campaigns
- An email with a specific offer (more about this in point #3 below)
Of course, your e-Newsletter and drip marketing programs need to have great, well-written content that people will enjoy. We get wonderful feedback at IXACT Contact on the content we provide to our customers (don’t believe us? Check out this video). And not all of the examples listed above would be appropriate to send to everyone in your database.
3. Not including a call-to-action (CTA)
One of the best tools in a marketer’s tool kit (and Agents are marketers too) are calls-to-action. The premise is simple: people are more likely to do something if you ask them, so tell your prospects/ clients what action you’d like them to take.
Don’t assume that someone will pick up the phone and call you about the listing you thought they’d be interested in. They may look at your email, read about the listing, forward it to their partner, and move on in their day. But if you ask them to call you to take a tour or so you can give them more information, they make in fact take you up on your offer. At the end of your email, include an offer or call to action.
Here are examples of some good types of CTAs:
- Call me now at _________ to get a free home value consultation!
- To get more information, reply to this email!
- Fill out my form below to get a free market report!
By following key best practices, it won’t be long before you start to see great results. If you’ve made any of the mistakes discussed above, it’s not too late to improve. And if you’re an Agent who would like to get more into real estate email marketing, the tips in this article are an excellent starting point.
Do you have any marketing tips to share? Please leave a comment below!