Whether you’re just starting out as a real estate agent or trying to improve your brand, email marketing is always a good idea. Email marketing can help you convert leads into clients. It’s important, though, to understand how to write subject lines with high open rates and content that gets your readers excited about your business.
We’re going to look into how to create a top notch real estate newsletter that subscribers look forward to receiving in their inbox, whether that’s on a weekly or monthly basis.
Provide an enticing opt-in for your newsletter
Before you even start creating and sending an email newsletter, you’ll need to build your audience. There are a number of ways to generate inbound leads from offering gated content like white papers and infographics, to simply offering the newsletter itself. When you’re designing your website, make sure to have some kind of form or pop-up that requests their name and email – this will get them added to your mailing list.
If you want to offer exclusive content for leads, you can use resources like Instapage to create landing pages that help you convert viewers into subscribers.
Here are some ideas to help you create your own lead gen magnet:
- Home selling checklist/guide
- Home buying checklist/guide
- An infographic on the home buying process
- Local market statistics white paper
- Spring cleaning checklist/guide
- Neighborhood park and restaurant guide with a map
- Free real estate phone consultation
- A guide to home loans
It’s always valuable to experiment with different wordings, placement, and colors when it comes to your lead gen forms. You’d be surprised how a simple color change can significantly boost your opt-in rate!
Build trust with your sender name and subject line
The last thing your subscribers want is to join an email list where they don’t trust the sender. When you design your email newsletter, make sure that the sender block is simply your name or something that identifies your brand. For us, we do Team Virtuance or From Virtuance. That way, the reader knows exactly who is sending it.
Likewise, your subject line needs to be intriguing but not click-bait. Avoid the subject lines that build up an otherwise very normal topic. For example, if your main article in your newsletter is about kitchen trends, don’t put “trend #5 will blow your mind” and its matte black faucets. This is the quickest way to lose trust with your audience. Sure, they are going to click through, but for how long?
The more you use click-blait gimmicks to drive your click through rates, the faster you’re going to see a drop off of subscribers. People don’t like to feel tricked. Instead, tell it how it is. Share a subject line that you believe will interest your subscribers while staying genuine. Don’t waste anyone’s time and they won’t waste yours!
Consider the design and content for your newsletter
While choosing what content to add to your newsletter as well as the overall look and feel may seem burdensome, there are plenty of examples to pull from. Naturally, you’ll want to see what other real estate agents are doing for their newsletters. Don’t be afraid to subscribe to their newsletters. This will give you an idea of what your competitors are talking about.
If you’re stuck on design ideas, whether you want to add a complete HTML embedded template or keep it simple with text and buttons, you can do a/b testing to see which works best!
Here are some tips and best practices to get you started:
- Explore different mailing options – many offer slick templates to choose from
- Always use high-quality listing images, like professional real estate images
- Use plain text over images with text on them
- Offer clear calls to action that readers understand
- Make sure your email looks good on mobile
- Check your color choices for legibility
So, what content should you add to your newsletter? It may be best to try and stay consistent for the first few newsletters. This will help you easily plan ahead and also help your subscribers know what to expect.
Here are a few ideas on what to include in your real estate newsletter:
- A round-up of popular homeowner/homebuyer articles
- Real estate industry news for local market or national
- Tips for home design or landscaping
- Your listings of the week
- Listings you think home buyers will like
- Tips on preparing to buy/sell
- CTA for a checklist or infographic
- Case studies on previous clients
- Home value estimator
Analyze your results each time
Instead of blindly sending your weekly or monthly newsletter to your real estate audience, you’ll want to view your results. This is a great way to better understand what content works and what needs to be tweaked. If you see that you got a lot of click throughs on a case study story, but none the next week on your industry news, you’ll want to increase the amount of case studies you promote.
Analyzing your results is especially important when you conduct a/b tests on your subject lines or test different times of day or days of the week.
Real estate email newsletters are a fun and informative way to connect with your prospects and clients. While they are a continuous work in progress, you will learn a lot about the needs of your audience through seeing what content, subject lines, formats and CTAs they find most interesting. Here is an awesome list of email newsletter examples to inspire you: 17 Email Newsletter Examples We Love Getting in Our Inboxes.
