One of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to market your real estate business is through email newsletters, which undoubtedly continues to be one of the most popular and widely-used methods of advertising.
While this method of digital marketing is not new, it has gathered more steam with the current Coronavirus pandemic that disrupted nearly everything from personal interactions to market behaviours.
In the real estate industry, email newsletters continue to gain popularity as one of the most common techniques of engaging readers and customers.
The important value to newsletters today
Even web design and creation professionals agree that having a website alone is not enough. Without making your websites look good, optimised for search and performance, and providing quality content, people find no other reason to go return to your website and are better off finding one that will address their needs.
There are several formulas to having a reliable and performing real estate website, one of which is content generation such as blogging and conducting special promotions such as contests and offering lead magnets.
While the abovementioned factors are essential, you need to ensure traffic that is expected to return to your website especially when they see fresh and compelling stuff on your real estate website.
Another major consideration is that you need to make sure that this free newsletter service will make it worth your while, meaning readers do not only open and subscribe to your newsletter but also make them respond to your calls to action.
How To Develop A Successful Email Newsletter
According to a recent study by an online business intelligence form, performance is measured by key metrics that can determine the success of your newsletter.
Open rate– this is measured in terms of the opened emails divided by emails sent minus those that bounced.
This report is generally run by your email service provider by removing the number of emails that bounced from the total count, then divides it by the number of emails opened by your subscribers.
Click-through rate– calculated similarly with the above that identifies the rate at which subscribers clicked on links that are found within your email.
This is calculated by clicked emails divided by the number of sent emails minus all bounced emails.
This is a critical metric because it shows that subscribers took action upon reading your email newsletter as opposed to simply just receiving it and are likely to return to your website in the future.
Click-to-open Rate– it gauges how your email results in a conversion, such as subscribers who are convinced to open your newsletter and the percentage of those who responded to your CTA.
It is calculated by the number of unique clicks over unique opens by subscribers.
Spam and Unsubscribe Rate- this metric also helps you assess the quality and effectiveness of your newsletter content and how your subscribers feel about it. It will help you know if your content is doing what is expected of it or one that makes it a valuable tool to market your products and services.
Tips on how to increase your click and open rates
Working with your newsletter data can make you work smarter with your marketing campaigns since it will show you your strong points and identify weak areas that you need to improve on.
By understanding how you make use of your newsletter data you will be able to streamline and make crucial improvements that will allow more people to subscribe, open your email newsletter, and will never hesitate to return to your website.
No sign-ups
This is a common issue that hounds businesses and must be given careful and serious attention.
Several scenarios can be affecting it but it all boils down to your newsletter subscription form and how it is being presented to your potential subscribers.
If it is a pop-up, that could be a reason for that. Online behaviours have changed in recent years and pop-ups are losing its touch as an effective tool since it has now been commonly abused and associated with lead generation freebies, push notifications, cookie consent, site warnings, etc.
Readers can simply dismiss it so make sure that you avoid using a pop-up to push for your subscription form.
Instead, make it more compelling such as revealing the number of existing subscribers, offering a free item, or offering exclusive access to your site features can help pave to way for building a relationship with your readers and convince them to subscribe to your newsletter.
Think of a good offer that will make them decide to move forward to subscribing and returning to your website.
Small open and high bounce rate
When bounce rate is too high and there aren’t many subscribers opening their emails, you may check on how your email get to their inbox.
Check your sender email and see if it matches your brand or image. If your email address or domain name does not match with your website, then this could be a reason for your email newsletter to go to your receiver’s spam or junk folder.
Also try to check on your subject titles, which can be effective by improving them to reflect your content updates, topics, or what you have to offer.
Make your subject lines inviting, short, and snappy, one that catches your reader’s attention and make them open the email.
Click-through-rate is too low
Remember that knowing your open rate is critical to assessing your newsletter performance especially when you do not get your desired clicks, then your web design and content could be problem areas.
Do they get value out of the newsletter material? Is it easily navigable? Do you have carefully placed CTA’s?
Make sure that the newsletter is designed to be reader-friendly and provide value to your readers for them to take action and respond to your CTA’s.