As a real estate agent, one of the surest ways to ensure you stay in the minds of your prospects is by sending them a series of drip emails within specific time intervals.
The contents of these emails could be anything from reminders of ongoing promotions to roundups of new content on your website that they might find useful.
To build deeper relationships with prospects, you may want to send out more targeted email blasts with explicit propositions such as a suggestion to check out your open house on a particular date.
These targeted emails are the better approach for leads that have engaged with you in some way online. They could have requested a property valuation on your website or opened the links in your previous drip emails.
However, before you can start sending any of these emails to people, you must build a database of contacts that you’ll be using. How, you wonder? Read along to find out.
Start With A Functional Opt-In Form On Your Website!
Your real estate website can be your most powerful tool as far as building email lists is concerned. All you have to do is optimize it into a conversion machine for email opt-ins.
The chances are that your site already receives quite a few prospective homebuyers and property sellers in the form of visitors. A good number of these are potentially looking to engage you, but don’t know where to begin.
To capture their details for your email list, add a custom sign-up form to your website or landing page. This makes it easier for the site’s visitors to provide you with their contact information.
Your opt-in form should explain why people need to subscribe to your email list – what do they get when they sign up? People need a clear incentive to opt for anything. As such, be sure to take some time to evaluate what you want to offer them and why they would want that offer.
Typical real estate email opt-in incentives include updates on new home listings, industry news, tips on home improvements, and more. Researching your market well beforehand will help you come up with a practical selling point that will give people reason to sign up.
You may also want to include additional fields, other than name and email address sections in your sign-up form, where you can gather any one or more critical details about your subscribers.
Such additional information as the location of the user or whether they are selling or buying can help you send them more targeted and useful information. Be sure to keep the fields to a minimum. Asking for too much can discourage some people from proceeding to sign up.
Leverage Social Media!
If you don’t already have an active presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter then it is time you jumped aboard the bandwagon – you’re missing out.
These networks contain a vast audience that you can tap into and drive to your website for sign-ups. Facebook, for instance, has a call-to-action feature that you can customize by connecting to the sign-up form on your website.
Alternatively, you can use this call-to-action button to drive visitors from your Facebook page to a landing page that is set aside specifically for attracting new email subscribers.
Instagram, Twitter, and other social networks can equally drive subscribers to your website or landing page for email opt-ins when you frequently accompany relevant posts with links to your sign-up form. Be sure to mention the benefits of signing up to your email list on these posts to encourage more people to open the links.
Make Use Of Open Houses
Open houses allow prospective buyers a chance to view your property without having to go through the appointment process. To the realtor, these events are perfect means of meeting interested homebuyers and establishing lasting relations with them.
Use these opportunities to encourage these prospects to subscribe to your email list for even more interesting future deals. There are two ways to go about collecting the email addresses:
#1. Download a suitable sign-up form app to a mobile device and carry it around with you or leave it near the entrance for people to fill in their details. MailChimp Subscribe for instance will store the collected data locally on your Android tablet or iPad even when you’re not online, so they can be automatically uploaded to your list once you have an internet connection.
#2. Place a sign-up sheet (paper) and pen at the entrance of the home where people register their details as they enter the property.
Whether to use the paper signup sheet or mobile signup app is solely for you to decide. However, the latter is hands down the better alternative due to its convenience. The app automatically adds the new signups to your email list. With the paper signup sheet, you’ll have to enter the email addresses manually to your list.
Like any email list building option, the signup form must include a brief description of the incentive for subscribing. People will build expectations and have reason to leave their email addresses with you.
Use A Suitable Lead Generation Software Program!
There are various email extractor tools that you can use to create your email list from scratch. These are tools designed to speed up and automate the collecting of email addresses from websites such as CrunchBase, LinkedIn, AngelList, Inbound and more – where you may find high-value prospects.
Most of these tools scrape the specified sites for email addresses of users and allow you to download them in your preferred format such as a CSV file. You can then transfer this list to your CRM.
Wrap Up!
Email marketing is vital to any lead generation campaign, all the more so in the real estate industry. To successfully attract visitors to your website, retain and nurture leads into buying customers; you need a solid email list that gives you direct access to the target customers and prospective leads.
Whether you already have some contacts or you are just starting off on a new email list, these guidelines should help.