The welcome emails your real estate agency is the online voice of your business, setting the tone for all present and future interactions – online and in person.
Email marketing should play a huge part in your overall marketing strategy, because when done correctly, it can be incredibly effective. Getting it right first-time, however, isn’t always easy. Read on to uncover our 4 steps to getting email marketing right.
1. Be timely
When you’re sending out a welcome email that opens up a path of communication with a potential customer, you want to be timely about it. In fact, research backs this statement up – the most effective welcome emails are those sent promptly after the person subscribed to the list.
The reasoning behind the success of welcome emails is simple. When they land in a new subscriber’s inbox, your company is already on their mind. If you were to leave it a few days before sending, however, it’s likely that they will have forgotten about you or lost a lot of interest.
2. An irresistible subject line
Think about it – with real estate, a property’s exterior is the first thing people see. You could have the most incredible interior, but if there’s paint peeling on the outside walls, you’re going to lose a lot of business.
This is also the case with emails. It doesn’t matter how great your email copy is if you’ve got a subject line that’s letting you down. It’s the first thing subscribers see and if it isn’t eye-catching and doesn’t cultivate curiosity, you’re going to see it in your stats.
Research has shown that adding the recipient’s first name into the subject line can boost open rates by up to 14.68%. Everyone’s favourite word is their own name, after all. Most email marketing platforms will have a personalisation option, where the first name will automatically be pulled from the database if you add in a specific phrase – they usually look something like {{first.name}}.
3. Be realistic
As with anything (except maybe PPC), results don’t happen overnight. Although you might start out with a high conversion rate, your results are still going to be affected by how many subscribers you have.
Set clear expectations for your email marketing, based on what open rate and click-through rates you hope to see and test, test, test. If you’ve got a subject line that’s negatively affecting your open rate, split-test it against a new one. You’ve got nothing to lose.
It’s also smart to be aware that some people just won’t like your emails. Let’s face it – people do just get fed up of endless business emails hitting their inbox, so you will get some unsubscribes. One good way of reducing this number is specifying in the welcome email how often you’re going to be getting in touch.
4. Add value
You can’t just send endless emails to your list asking them to use your services, because it won’t work. On the off-chance that this direct marketing target does work, the results you’ll see will be a fraction of what you could get if you added value.
Use your welcome email to go over some of the benefits subscribers will get for staying on your list. Think about it – what sort of list are you building?
If you’ve set up a subscription form on a specific page of your website, what’s the demographic likely to be? As an extension of your content marketing efforts, think about the hopes, dreams, problems and aspirations that your subscribers might have.
Next, think up some content ideas that they’ll find useful based on these. If you can answer their questions and keep them engaged, you’re on a path for email marketing success. Your welcome email is the perfect place to start this off.