As a Realtor, I know you are constantly looking for new and improved ways to connect with your target market. Utilizing email marketing (e-blast) to its fullest can be tricky. This marketing method is very powerful, but is often easily abused. May the following Tips & Tricks make your email marketing campaign planning, easy and powerful for you.
Add a personal touch to your e-blast – the use of people’s first names in a subject line and in the salutation creates a secure feeling for the person receiving the email, makes them feel less like a number and more like a valued contact. This often makes people feel that the email they just received is safe to click through and review, they often assume they must have given their personal information to the email sender and are instantly interested in what the email has to offer.
Avoid “$$$” signs in your email messages – “$$$” signs make your subject line and marketing message look like spam. People detest spam email. Many email users have filters setup through an anti-spam tool in their email program that move anything containing “$$$” to the trash immediately.
Stop the marketing emails during Holidays – Many people go away for the holidays and tend to spend little time with their computer, allowing email to pile up. So, once they do return from their vacation they most likely go through their email as quickly as possible, discarding the unimportant emails first, maybe skipping yours all together. If you are going to plan a holiday special, send it out two to three weeks prior to the actual holiday. Just like Macy’s puts up their x-mas trees before Thanksgiving even arrives, you can send out your pre-holiday e-blast.
Create a clear call to action? – If people have to second guess what your Real Estate e-blast is about, your call to action isn’t strong enough! So many times I will get a great e-blast that’s nicely designed, with lots of information but no particular link to click on to get more info or to take advantage of the offer. Some very helpful questions to ask when planning an email marketing campaign are: Where will the people have to click? What links should they follow for more information? Where can they schedule a viewing? Is my message direct and clear? Is the time and place big and bold? Is it aesthetically pleasing to read, the colors aren’t too flashy or the font type and layout is broken up in a natural way? Is the form easy to fill out and send without requiring them to spend a lot of time on it?
Reflect your Real Estate Company image in your design – Your email marketing needs to reflect your real estate company image 100%. When a person receives your emails they need to know from one glance that it’s from your company without a doubt. Ensure that your company logo, colors, and general fonts are used. You should always keep your branding in mind when developing new marketing messages. If the email marketing does not reflect the corporate design, this can have a bad effect not only on the success of the email campaign, but also on the image of the company as a whole. Take your time when designing your e-blasts, you are saving cost by sending it electronically so take a portion of the savings and have a skilled designer work with you on the layout. Come up with three versions and rotate throughout the year. If you have money to spend and you are doing a themed open-house, associate the theme into your e-blast without losing the company’s branding image.
Include an “Unsubscription” link – of course, no email marketer likes unsubscriptions, however, there are two good reasons why you should offer this. 1. Subscribers who are not interested in your emails are worth nothing and the resources for sending them mail are wasted. 2. Subscribers who want to unsubscribe but fail to do so because the instructions are not clear on how to, will turn to you in the end, which means high, unnecessary administrative costs if you have to take them off manually. That is why you should make it as easy and painless as possible for your reader to unsubscribe. The most failsafe way possible is:
- A personalized unsubscription link that takes the reader to a page where they can take off their address using a prefilled form. (Plus always offer a way to unsubscribe via email).
Inform your ISP about your Email marketing actions – the connection to your ISP is crucial to your success. So make sure they know that you’re sending legitimate bulk email, otherwise they may disconnect on the pretenses that you may be spamming people, especially if complaints keep rising with the number of subscribers to your listings. If they are aware of what you are doing ahead of time, chances are you ISP will defend you against those wrongly accusing you instead of disconnecting you. If your current ISP does not agree with your email marketing then look for another one that does, until you find the perfect match.
Stay tuned for more blogs from www.realestatemarketingblog.org. Thanks for reading and feel free to add a comment to my post.