How to Write an Email Newsletter that Actually Gets Opened

Think nobody uses email anymore? Think that everyone prefers text messages? You may want to think again.

Real Estate Email Newsletters Can Be Very Effective

The truth is that email is still a very effective strategy for prospecting and lead generation in the real estate industry. In fact, 95% of people who opt-in say that the email they receive is useful. In fact, 70% of consumers say that they always open emails from their favorite companies. With that in mind, how can you become one of those favorite companies whose emails are deemed as “useful”? Yesterday, in our hour long webinar on Simple Strategies for Becoming an Email Marketing Ninja, I provided all sorts of tips and tools for knocking it our of the park with your email.

Become an Email Marketing Ninja

Here are the top 5 takeaways from the webinar:

1. Don’t be spammy. Identify the people who are interested in receiving your emails (such as buyer and seller prospects or past clients) and only send your emails to them. Slowly increase your email list over a long period of time, by adding new leads and prospects as you meet them. You can also offer items of value (such as market reports or informational eBooks) on landing pages in order to increase your list and identify future buyers and sellers. Do not buy an email list. Repeat… Do not buy an email list. The only people who will read your emails are people who have asked to hear from you or who have shown interest in what you have to offer.
2. Be conversational. The best emails are the ones that are conversational in nature and do not appear to be “canned” or “templated.” It’s as simple as this: “Hey there. I saw that you were on my website looking at homes in San Marcos. Did you see any that you want to go check out?” Always end with a question in order to increase the probability of a reply.
3. Provide valuable information. Consider breaking your audience into groups. The information that is interesting or valuable to a homebuyer may not be valuable to a home seller. And, neither group might interested in what you have to tell a past client who purchased a home one year back. Look at content curation or social media sites such as Pinterest or Buzzsumo in order to identify cool content for your next email.
4. Write compelling headlines. You have about 1 second to make an impact on your prospect before your email goes unopened and into the trash. It’s all about the headline. Check out this helpful article on Copyblogger or use the Headline Analyzer on Coschedule’s website in order to make sure your headline knocks it out of the park.
5. Look at the read reports. Most email newsletter products provide you with very specific analytics as to who has opened your newsletter, what each individual clicked on, where they are located, what time they opened, and much, much more. If you look at the data, you might be surprised about who is really paying attention to what you are doing. If someone is opening every email you send, this person is a fan and you should be reaching out personally to offer your services or to say hello.

There is so much to master with email marketing and the process is always evolving. It is a great, cost effective way to get in front of lots and lots of homebuyers and home sellers, and it is also a nice way to keep in touch with past clients and referral partners.