Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Email marketing is an essential strategy for businesses across all sectors, and the real estate industry is no exception. Agents rely heavily on email marketing to connect with prospects and grow their business.
Email marketing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. According to Emarsys, 81% of small and midsize businesses rely on email marketing as a primary customer acquisition channel. Furthermore, Benchmark found that 63% of real estate businesses engage in email campaigns, and 21% of companies plan to in the future.
With email marketing continually evolving and playing a crucial role in real estate business growth, agents need to stay on top of any trends that may impact their email marketing strategy.
Here are five email marketing trends agents should watch in the upcoming year.
More than ever, today’s potential clients want to receive personalized emails. Personalized emails make clients feel special, and they stand out in their inboxes, which means they’re more likely to open them. Without personalization, clients may find emails irrelevant and ignore them.
Personalized emails can also generate more revenue compared to non-personalized emails. A report by Adestra and the IDM (Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing) revealed that 56% of marketers believe that personalization in email marketing can increase sales.
With personalization continuing to evolve, agents must go beyond basic tactics, such as using a recipient’s first name in an email.
Micro-segmentation allows agents to dive deeper into personalization. By dividing their email list into niche segments based on consumer data, agents can deliver highly personalized emails that prospects find relevant and exciting.
For instance, instead of sending a mass email that includes all property listings, agents can target specific, potential clients with only property listings relevant to them. If they want to target homebuyers with dogs, they can update them with recent home listings located near a dog park or those that feature a fenced-in yard.
People receive hundreds of emails each day. Through creativity and interactivity, agents can make their emails stand out among the rest.
Interactive features such as videos and GIFs have become more popular in email campaigns. Other interactive email elements include animated buttons, rollover effects, user-controlled image carousels, polls, surveys, and accordion features to make long-form emails more concise.
Agents can engage and captivate clients by including more interactive features in emails, increasing their click-through rates and conversions.
In previous years, a formal tone and voice were standard in email marketing campaigns. With laid-back millennials becoming the most significant consumer demographic, marketers are now shifting to a more casual and informal voice.
Instead of sounding like a robot, agents should adopt a more conversational tone in their emails. They should consider their specific target audience and speak directly to them.
Agents also shouldn’t be afraid to let their personalities shine through email. Humor and playfulness is an excellent way for them to make emails enjoyable and showcase their personal brand.
Agents can try to experiment with A/B testing their emails to see which ones yield better results.
Artificial intelligence is on the rise, and it’s making email marketing more effective. According to Statista, 41% of marketers agreed that using artificial intelligence (AI) in email marketing helped improve their company’s revenue. Other benefits of AI use in email marketing include improvements in click-through rates, open rates, and deliverability.
AI can pinpoint trends and predict prospects’ future needs. This allows agents to understand their clients better and customize emails with relevant content.
For example, agents can target potential homebuyers with a newsletter that includes tips on the purchasing process. Or, they can send those who have purchased their home years ago any information on the current market and other content that may get them to consider selling their property.
With AI, agents can send more personalized emails that lead to higher engagement from potential clients.
EmailMonday reports that mobile email will account for up to 77% of email opens, and Statista reveals that the number of smartphone users worldwide will increase to 3.8 billion by 2021. Agents can no longer afford to ignore smartphones and tablets when creating email marketing campaigns.
With the staggering number of prospects reading emails on mobile devices and tablets, agents must ensure their emails are responsive to screens of all sizes. Recipients should be able to view them easily without any issues on their smartphones.
Agents who don’t make their emails mobile responsive risk a decline in engagement and unsubscribe rate.
Email marketing is one of the best ways for agents to engage existing and potential clients. Therefore, agents must keep an eye on trends, such as personalization, interactivity, artificial intelligence, and others that continue to shape email marketing. Applying insights from these trends will help agents achieve excellent results in their email marketing.
