Drillid.com

Email marketing is an important tool for the real estate agent. At the center of it all is your database. The better the detail of your database, the better your email marketing results will be.

As technology further supports real estate, the database and the way you use it will become increasingly robust. The best real estate people have a database that they manage themselves and are constantly growing through cold calling and prospecting.

Each person you speak or meet with must be entered into your database with the relative contact detail and connection record. This would include email contact, although not everyone will want to be contacted with ongoing listings and property details, so it is essential to comply with email spam rules and regulations based on your country.

The only people who should receive regular emails from you regarding any listing for sale or rental of properties, are those who have specifically recorded their agreement to do so.

So let’s assume you know the email spam rules in your area, and you’re doing the right thing in that regard. Here are some other great ideas for ongoing email contact.

1. When you capture people’s information in your database, you really need to include the person’s contact criteria and what property they are now looking for or may own. Your database has to have enough flexibility for that tabulation of information.
2. Keep a record of all the property details that have been sent to the person so that you can refer to them when necessary. Don’t send too many emails in a short period of time. One a week or one a fortnight is generally the general rule.
3. Make sure your email allows the recipient to unsubscribe from future contacts. Make it very easy for them to do that. Don’t send things to people who don’t want them: the process will give your business a bad name, if it doesn’t expose you to litigation for violating email laws.
4. Have a privacy statement on your website that tells people how you manage their email and contact information. People are increasingly sensitive to privacy online, and laws now say that you must tell them what you will do with your information and how you will manage it. Confidentiality is critical with your database and email contact list. Do not share them with anyone else.
5. If you send emails that contain property details, you can send them as plain text or as HTML. The big trend is HTML because of the presentation advantages it has achieved, and there are many excellent programs for real estate agents to use in this way. It is important to note that the HTML design must be consistent with your brand and corporate image. You can get or create HTML templates to use in that regard and then put the property details inside the template.
6. Format some of your emails to read on a small smartphone screen. This means that the email format should be long and narrow. Today, many people first receive their email on their portable device and choose to read or delete it at that point. This makes their task easier.
7. If you send brochures by email, please send them only as a pdf attachment (not in Word format). That will preserve the layout and presentation just the way you want it.
8. Autoresponders are common tools of choice for real estate offices now. The autoresponder should take the query from the website and respond to the prospect immediately. This allows you to handle the inquiry later in the day with more specific property information or a phone call.
9. Website signup forms are commonplace now and should appear on all the main pages of your website where people first land. This way it will collect the query automatically for your database. The query generated by the website should be immediately sent to your database and office for response and follow-up. The content of the subscription form that you use on your website must be considered and planned. The content you capture should be what you want for query tracking, but you may also want phone numbers and some property details they require.
10. Landing pages on your website need to be strategically planned. A landing page is something that is designed to attract both people and search engines. Your real estate website should have more than one landing page; Within limits, you could have multiple landing pages, including ones for the key suburbs you have in your territory, or the real estate disciplines you serve (sales, leasing, property management). That means your website could have about 5 landing pages so they are optimized for search engine exposure.
11. Freebies should also be handled in a squeeze page layout. Every real estate website should have a squeeze page designed for one use only. That is to attract people to your database in exchange for some free information or offer. The capture page is different than the landing page mentioned above. For example, your landing page might offer a property report of local rental trends for landlords, or a list of issues to help tenants find new business.
12. Personalize your emails with the name of the person you’re sending them to. Your auto responder should be able to do this for you.

These email marketing tips will help you start building that database. Keep your real estate database current and it will become an important part of the success of your business.