How to Close More Real Estate Deals with Email Marketing

If you're completely new to email marketing, you will probably want to start by sending a monthly email newsletter to your contact list. It's a great way to build your brand, engage with your contacts and establish credibility.

Once you have that up-and-running and are seeing the benefits, the next email marketing strategy to consider is called "drip email." A drip email campaign is a series of marketing emails triggered automatically to leads and clients.

"Generally speaking, the goal of a drip campaign is to turn a subscriber into a customer. They are absolutely valuable to your marketing efforts," explains Neil Patel, a New York Times Bestselling author and one of the top 10 marketers according to Forbes. We couldn't agree more!

Compared to a monthly real estate email newsletter, drip email is more targeted, goal-oriented and designed to help you close more deals. Both are valuable and worthwhile for agents, they just have different purposes.

Here are a few things to think about when considering drip email marketing.

Define your goals

Every real estate agent wants (and needs) to keep in touch with clients and leads. Drip email campaigns are an easy way to do that (you can basically "set them and forget them"), but the goal of a real estate drip email campaign goes beyond just keeping in touch.

The ultimate goal of any real estate a drip campaign is to get more clients, either by converting a lead into a buyer or seller or getting a past client or contact to refer friends and colleagues to you.

Assess your contact list

Take a look at your current real estate contact list. You probably have multiple contacts that fit one or more of the following criteria.

Do you have contacts who:

• Currently rent and have expressed interest in buying a first home?
• Must purchase a home within the next few months?
• Want to sell their home but have not yet made a firm commitment?
• Plan to list their home within the next four months?
• You want to know more about, specifically if they're a buyer, seller or both?
• You recently helped find and buy a new home?
• Will likely do business with you and refer you if you stay in touch?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, adding these contacts to drip email campaigns that are tailored to their specific situations could have a significant positive impact on your business.

Make your campaign relevant

Since every real estate drip email campaign is designed for a specific type of contact (buyer, seller, general lead, past client, and so on) and around a specific goal, there's no typical "one-size-fits-all" campaign – and that's actually a good thing!

Why? Because people get a lot of emails these days, so being relevant is extremely important to getting opens, avoiding unsubscribes and accomplishing the ultimate goal of your drip campaign – more sales.

Using a real estate CRM that includes a range of pre-defined, targeted campaigns that can be personalised and customized to your liking is one way to ensure you're sending relevant messages to the right people at the right time.

See an example

In order to demonstrate what a real estate drip email campaign could look like for you, we're going to walk through the flow of one of our automated drip real estate email marketing campaigns.

The plan detailed below is for a high touch buyer who has contacted you and must purchase a home within the next few months. The emails are sent on a predefined schedule and spaced out across a period of four months, starting on the day the lead is added to the campaign (which should be shortly after they made contact with you).

• Email 1 (immediate): Nice to meet you
  This is a friendly introductory email.

• Email 2 (day 14): I'm not that kind of REALTOR
  This email establishes trust and credibility.

• Email 3 (day 42): What kind of home are you looking for?
  This email asks for information about their ideal property.

• Email 4 (day 56): Getting the jump on opportunities
  This email provides information and offers help.

• Email 5 (day 84): What do you need to know about me?
  This email is designed to increase trust and comfort.

• Email 6 (day 98): My network
  This email explains how clients benefit from a Realtor's network.

Ideally, in any drip email program your buyer will engage with you as a result of reading one of the emails they receive. While drip email is highly effective, it doesn't completely replace the need to pick up the phone and call your contacts, especially for certain age groups. IXACT Contact's automated drip campaigns notify agents when to phone a contact and what to say based on where they are in a campaign which can improve results. After all, real estate is a relationship business!

All of our drip email marketing campaigns have been tried and tested by thousands of agents who confirm that they not only make keeping in touch easier, they also help generate more sales. Give IXACT Contact's drip email marketing a try free for five weeks!

To view the original article, visit the IXACT Contact blog.