August 22 2018
According to a study by the Radicati Group, 269 billion emails are sent each day. In real estate, email marketing is one method to nurture leads, whether you met them at an open house or they signed up to your newsletter on your blog. No matter what kind of email you're sending, they have to be opened and read to make an impact on your bottom line.
Whether a beginner or expert, we have tips and checklists to help you create simple and responsive designs, find the right template for your message, highlight your call-to-action, and craft a great email signature.
Email marketing doesn't have to be hard. With many free and affordable tools on the market, knowing HTML and other code isn't necessary.
Here is a roundup of some of the best email template tools out there to get the job done:
Using the same fonts, styles, and photo aesthetic is incredibly important in email marketing. The leads that receive your emails want to know what they're going to get when they see your name pop up in their inbox. While your content and themes should change, your overall style should be coherent and consistent to make an impact on your open rates.
If your email is a photo in a frame, you want the photo to be your content and images and the frame to be the design—what you're saying should be the star of the show, supported by a clean design that lets your work shine. To make sure your message cuts through the clutter, keep your message streamlined and your design as simple as possible.
When you are branding your template, don't go overboard—with emails, less is more. It's all about making sure your personal brand shines through every part of your message: from the header to the signature, utilize the graphic elements that set you apart (even in simple introduction emails) to give your readers a consistent visual presentation. One caveat: don't let your brand presence overwhelm the story you are trying to tell. Put your content and images at the forefront, with your brand taking a supporting role.
Emails are now opened more often on mobile than desktop, so your messages need to be mobile-friendly (or else they might not be opened at all). Decluttering really helps your cause here! A few musts for a responsive email setup: images with alt tags, smaller image file sizes, bullet point lists instead of paragraphs, and short subject lines, to start.
Not every email is created equal. Real estate agents send a variety of email types with totally different purposes—to introduce themselves, to send an update on a listing, to thank a client for working with them, the list goes on. The template layout you choose has everything to do with what type of message you are trying to convey, but they should always match your branding—every template you choose has to use your brand colors, fonts, logos, and images.
Keep this email template short, sweet, and to the point, with a focus on your introduction paragraph. Say hi, tell them what you'll be sending them in the future, and include your email signature at the bottom. Above all—focus on where and how you got connected and weave that into your email. We provide two different use-case examples below.
Real estate emails have a 3.47 percent open rate, and you want to make sure your message gets read. To make a newsletter that stands out, your template should have a strong visual flow that draws your reader's eye with an emphasis on your blog links and CTA.
To do this, include a main "hero image" (large image at the top) with several smaller images below it to guide the eye through your content. Newsletters are all about getting people to visit your website and/or blog, so make your links and images the most prominent by only including minimal text—a short introduction and one-sentence blurbs for each link will do the trick.
Don't have enough links for a newsletter? Learn how to start your own real estate blog.
These are the emails agents send the most often—check ins, listing information emails, and other updates about real estate. While your newsletter might feature home listings, these informational emails are usually more direct and tailored to the client you're working with, meaning they only include listings they have asked to see or relevant associated information that they need.
A template for informational emails needs to be straightforward and relatively simple. Include a short intro sentence, high-quality home listing images, text that links to the relevant home listings, and as always, your email signature.
The most important aspect of your email is getting someone to leave it and go where you want them to. Whether that means replying to you, reading your blog, or visiting a home listing, funneling email leads into the right place is done through your call to action (CTA).
We have a few quick tips to optimize your email CTA:
Your email signature is one of the most important parts of your message. It conveys who you are, what you're about, where you're located, and more. It's basically the digital equivalent to a billboard.
Make sure you've got everything in this checklist down before hitting "send" on your next email.
To view the original article, visit the WolfNet blog.