Thank you again to Jennifer Snyder, real estate marketing consultant, speaker and blogger at Marketing Ideas for Agents for contributing this post.
Email marketing is alive and well! Just like social media it is working for those that are doing it right. The main challenge in writing an email newsletter is developing the content. Before you can write the content you have to think about the dynamics of your newsletter first. If you do this up front you have a better shot of people reading and engaging with your email newsletter!
Here are five steps that will help your newsletter get read:
1. Make it personal. There is nothing worse than a bland, obviously generic email newsletter. You know the kind. The intro that doesn’t feel like the person you know actually wrote it. Or the content is so canned that it doesn’t apply to you. Those are the emails that give email marketing a bad name.Email is still effective and like social media, it is more effective when it is personal. When you decide to add email marketing to your strategy also commit to being personal. Commit to being you and putting yourself out there. Talk about what’s going on in your life or your business. Talk about wins or even losses for the month. Be real and be you. This is how to engage your clients in your email marketing.
Make it personal for them.
2. Make it useful. The number one way to get your email read is to make it useful. I know that sounds like a daunting task. Here’s a way to make it easier. Sit down and brainstorm about your clients. What do they like? What did they have questions about during the sales process? What is going on in their lives for work, family, vacation, etc. Make a broad list of topics about your clients.
Then think about issues they may face in their lives. Could you see some that have issues with work-life balance? Send them a post that you read that might help them with that issue. Do you talk to sellers that want to know what really helps their resale value? Send them tips with ideas. Look for ways to solve their issues in this newsletter and you will keep clients engaged.
Are you solving something for them? Provide useful information.
3. Don’t only talk about your listings or sales. On the heels of making it personal and useful please don’t only send emails that have information about your listings. If you send an email that is only about your sales or your listings your clients won’t read it. Or worse, they may even unsubscribe from your list. This information is not useful to them unless they are moving. Now I am not saying don’t include this information at all. You should! You do sell houses for a living after all. What I am saying is don’t make your email all about your business. Make your emails personal and make them useful to the end user.
Listings are great and all but let’s be more creative.
4. Write to one person. Something that overwhelms me when I write my newsletters is the thought that I am writing to hundreds of people. To make it easier I try to pick one person on my email list and write like I am writing only to that person. In the marketing world we call that an avatar. If I feel like what I wrote Joe Smith will improve his life then I know I have written a good newsletter. I think newsletters become too sales like if we act as though we are writing to a massive list. By bringing the focus back to one person on the list you will increase your engagement.
Pretend you are writing to one person. Not a huge crowd.
5. Make it pretty. Invest time in making your newsletter look good. Long gone are the days where you can type out an email in Outlook and bcc everyone when you send it. Take the time to graphically design your newsletter. Use images that help convey your message. Email services like AWeber and MailChimp offer great templates for you to use for your newsletter. We are more a visual population than ever before so use this to your advantage with a well-designed email template!
Email marketing is still a powerful marketing strategy. The list is personal and people are on the list because they want to be. To keep them engaged use the five points above to make your email stand out from all the others your clients receive!
Jennifer Snyder is a real estate marketing consultant, speaker and blogger at Marketing Ideas for Agents. She researches marketing ideas, tools and resources that will make real estate agents’ lives easier and help them grow their businesses.
