What do you do after you send a mass mail to your prospective home buyers or Realtors and brokers?
Chances are you put a lot of effort into the design of the email, then you spend time testing the email and then you send it. Right after you send the mass mail, you likely have a look at the quick stats to see how many people opened it, but what do you do next?
Often we see the regular blasting of a registrant list all with similar results over and over (in fact, sometimes with declining open rates). A 20% open rate is not bad, but we think you can probably do better with a few suggestions on what you can do after you send out the mass mail (or before you send out your next email!)
- Read and review the mass mail detail report in Lasso. You’ll see who opened the email, who clicked on a link, who unsubscribed, as well as who didn’t receive the email because of a failure.
- Learn what the delivery failures mean and update your registrants accordingly. If you see that an email address has bounced, pick up the phone and ask the prospect if they are still interested in receiving information. If they are, ask for a new email address. A great opportunity to touch base with potential home buyers!
- Make sure that the “From” email address in your mass mail is a valid address. Often when you send out email, you receive “out-of-office” responses and many times a registrant will reply with a query. It’s important that this email is monitored and someone is responsible for responding.
- Update invalid email addresses. These are the email addresses with a typo, such as “hotmial” instead of “hotmail”.
- Try resending your email. Yes, you heard me correctly. I’m suggesting that you send it out again. But this time, don’t send it to everyone, just send it to those who didn’t open it the first time. You may want to change the subject line to include “Update” or “Reminder” or “Last chance . . .”. We’ve had a number of clients use this approach (albeit, carefully – you don’t want to be sending email so often that you annoy people). They have seen a surprisingly good open rate the second time around.
- Have a follow-up email ready to go out. If you have a link in your first email about one-bedroom units and 75 people click on this link, have a follow-up email ready to go that provides further information and pricing incentives on one-bedroom units!
- Plan some human interaction. We get so caught up in email today; however, it’s important for a human touch. Use the mass mail reporting to follow-up with those registrants who haven’t opened an email in awhile, or maybe even those registrants who have unsubscribed. Some people just aren’t into email. It doesn’t mean they aren’t interested. Don’t ignore them!
Follow these ideas and you will find that your email subscribers are more engaged and your open rates are going in the right direction . . . up!! More appointments, offers and sales will follow.
What's a good open rate? Why don't our prospects open our emails? These are questions that are asked frequently at Lasso. If someone registered on your site why aren't they opening your email? How can you improve your open rates?
Following are email stats for the Real Estate industry from MailChimp:
Open
Rate
| Click Rate
| Soft Bounce
Rate
| Hard Bounce
Rate
| Abuse Complaint
Rate
| Unsubscribe
Rate
|
| 22.77% | 4.40% | 2.07% | 3.51% | 0.08% | 0.28% |
Well, first off, an open rate of 20-30% is actually pretty good. So if you are getting open rates in that range, pat yourself on your back - you're doing okay! If you're not getting that percentage or you want to strive to do better, here are a few tactics that are worth a try:
Timing of your email - experiment with the timing of your email. Morning isn't always the best time to send email, especially if you're sending to business email addresses. If it's a project launch event that's happening on the weekend, sending on a Thursday might be more effective than sending earlier in the week. Review who you are sending to and test what works best.
Image Use - ensure there's a good balance of images and text. Can the recipient still get the gist of the message even without seeing the images? An email may just be ignored if the recipient isn't sure what it's all about. Is there a clear call to action?
Catchy Subject lines - this is where being clever and even a bit witty are helpful. Ask yourself: would you open your email if you received it? Why should your recipients? Ensure that it's relevant and compelling. Spend some time on this and even test it out by trying out a couple of different options. Instead of a subject line of "Project Construction Updates", be more specific and try something that includes what's currently being worked on - maybe it's a specific comment about the unique flooring being installed or the environmental measures being taken.
Email Address - be consistent with your sender email address. There's always the debate over should it be a personal email address or a generic "info@" or "sales@" address. The most important thing: the "from" address contains the name of your real estate project or company and be consistent. Always, always, use a corporate email address - don't use a generic ISP email address or your Lasso email address.
Frequency - there's such a thing as too frequent and there's also such a thing as not frequent enough. If someone signed up on your website 3 months ago and you're just sending something now, they may have forgotten about you and not recognize your email. Conversely, if you're emailing brokers and realtors daily or even weekly with information that really isn't important to them, don't expect them to open the email!
List Quality - if you're sending an email to an old list, don't expect great results. In fact, be a bit wary of using it, you can get caught in spam traps and future emails sent to that ISP can be blocked. Don't keep sending to prospects who aren't opening your email. Pick up the phone and find out if they are still interested. It may look good and sound good to say you send out to a list of over 10,000 names but if you really only have a small percentage who are actively engaged, you're doing more harm than good by blasting to everyone.
Email Content - think about your own over-crowded inbox and the number of emails you get. What makes you open one email over another? Typically, home buyer prospects don't like to read too much - make it easy to read your email and have a clear call to action.
Email should only be sent to those who have requested it. If you're following that email marketing rule than you are halfway there. Always test your emails and monitor the results. Review your mass mail reports so you can see what works. Don't be afraid to sign up to receive updates from other projects and companies, so you can get ideas from those around you. Follow these ideas and you'll find your open rates and click-through rates improve!
A few weeks ago, I posted a blog article about the importance of Domain Authentication. To-date this has been one of the most popular blog articles on our site. As much as I'd like to take credit for this, it's likely because email marketing is a pretty important component to a real estate sales & marketing strategy these days. It's not only inexpensive -- it's relatively easy and it can reach a large uniquely targeted audience quickly.
Making sure your domain is authenticated is definitely the first step to improving deliverability. But what else can you do?
There are several ways to improve deliverability to the inbox. First of all, let's talk about what the internet service providers (ISP's) do with your email. Think of them as body guards for your email recipients. They will do one of three things:
- Throw you aside - delete this email and not deliver it to the email address.
- Allow you through but search you first and possibly flag you as a troublemaker - deliver the email to the account, but mark it as spam and send it straight to the recipient's junk folder.
- Welcome you in - deliver the email straight to the inbox.
Obviously, we'd all like the third option! The reality is that it's not our decision and it can be pretty tough to get through that 250 pound guard at the door, especially considering that for some of the major ISPs, 95% of the email sent is considered junk! As a result, they have every right to be cautious. It's therefore important to play by the ISPs' rules.
Here are a few things you can do to improve your relationship with the ISPs and increase deliverability:
- Keep your lists clean - I'm sure we sound a bit like a broken record but it's important. What does this mean? Don't keep sending email after email to the same people who never open your email. Not only is this pointless, many ISPs will shut the door on you and none of the email will get through . . . even the ones who want to receive your email. ISPs are monitoring whether emails get opened or if there's activity within accounts. If you keep sending to an email address that is non-active, the ISP is going to assume you are junk and block all your email. Sounds drastic but when you consider the millions and millions of spam email that is blocked each day by ISPs, it's no wonder they consider you guilty until proven innocent!
- Watch for spam-type words - although this doesn't come into play as much in a business to consumer environment, choose your words carefully. We have had a client who used the words "mortgage rates" in their email and this was the root cause of the email going into some junk folders. Choosing your words carefully is important especially when you're sending to corporate email accounts like brokers. While you're at it, make sure that you have titles on images, and try to avoid using a lot of different fonts and colours and large text. A SUBJECT LINE ALL IN UPPER CASE LETTERS WON'T NECESSARILY GET MORE ATTENTION . . . and it can trigger going to junk. Test your email by sending it to yourself using different email accounts.
- Email Frequency - this is a tough one. Sometimes it may be okay to send email on a daily basis but most of the time it's not. In fact, often weekly is too often. When someone signs up to receive information from you, let them know at the same time how often they are going to receive emails. If you're sending too frequently they will either opt-out of email or worse, they will mark the email as spam and the ISPs may not allow you back in. The flip side to all this is don't go too long without sending an email. Your registrants could forget who you are and it's a common fact that email addresses change. Always be consistent with the "from" address - let the recipients become familiar with the sender and be able to identify your email easily.
Email Marketing can be really effective but it does take some work and creativity. You can't just keep sending to see what sticks. It takes work managing your lists and really developing a strategy, but the return on investment is extraordinary. It's important to work with and understand the ISPs, they are the ones who will determine which mail gets delivered. For more information refer to the following white paper on email deliverability.
Let's keep in touch" is the kind of phrase we all say when we actually have no intention of keeping in touch. We say we'll "keep in touch" to those we see at the high school reunion; we assure our most irritating relatives that we'll "keep in touch" each holiday season, and then we somehow lose their phone numbers.
One area in which we should say and mean "keep in touch" is in real estate sales. Communication is the lifeline through which we maintain the momentum of the sales process. It can mean the difference between an encouraging sales center visit that results in a signed contract, and a visit that goes nowhere fast. And in today's digital age, email is a critical component of any savvy sales communication strategy.
Most of us have been using email so long as part of the real estate sales process that it's almost become second nature. Let's take a look at four common categories of email marketing, and in doing so, hopefully it will help us remember why email marketing is so critically important, and maybe help us discover a few new ways to try the same old tricks.
1. The pricing and/or features update: This is probably the most common email sent out to prospects - a simple update on new pricing offers or an announcement of new features/floorplans available in a community. The key with this category of email is to present enough information in a clear way as to drive some critical "call to action," usually either a visit to the sales center to learn more, or a click-through to the community website for further details. It's also important to develop a strategy concerning what information is released, and when. Too many emails will earn your notes a spot on the spam filter list; too few and the buyer may have already sought out another community. The goal is balance.
2. The upcoming event notice: These emails are pretty straightforward, but don't forget that events at your community aren't the only events taking place in your area. A local art festival, a holiday parade, a block party-these and more are all good reasons to send out an email to prospects. Not only do they provide valuable information, but they also help sell the neighborhood and surrounding community to buyers along with the features and advantages of your homes.
3. The content reminder: Anytime new information is available on the community website, it's an excuse to send an email and stay in touch. This should act as a key motivator for the marketing team to maintain an active and dynamic site that is frequently updated with new pictures and video. The rise of YouTube, Flickr and other video/photo sharing sites has helped place new emphasis on the value of user-generated visual content-instead of spending thousands of dollars on a video crew and editing team to produce a few minutes of content every couple months, a marketing team can spend a few hundred dollars on a small portable video camera and upload new home tours, buyer and sales team interviews, and video profiles of amenities and community features.
4. The personal note: This category of email is perhaps the most important - a salesperson should send a true personalized note from their email address to help cement the early stages of a relationship and to remain in contact throughout the course of the sales process. Many prospects actually prefer to communicate regularly via email rather than phone; respecting this boundary can help establish a strong relationship far better than ignoring the preference and relying on more typical and frequent phone calls. At the same time, after a few unreplied emails, a phone call is an appropriate way to attempt to reignite the buyer's interest.
Making every effort to "keep in touch" with prospects is a critical component of the sales process, and email is a powerful tool. However, using it carefully and strategically is vital; otherwise, your communications become just as annoying as your Auntie Zelda or that classmate from your high school biology class.