Target Market or Email Blast - What’s best for your real estate practice

Today’s consumer is very savvy. With social media and other marketing technologies, today’s consumer is well aware when they are being marketed to. Product placement on TV is so obvious, some articles written in magazines and in the online news is blatant in its advertorial tones. Also sponsored Facebook ads are monotonous and easily identifiable. (But at least with the Facebook Ad’s they are relevant to the interests of the scroller.)

So how do we get through to consumers with our real estate marketing?

Ideally we need to be sending, timely and relevant information. 

For a real estate practice, what does that mean?

Email Blasts or employing the scattergun approach should be avoided where possible. Or if we are wanting to stay in touch with our whole database, we should be categorising and sending relevant information to each category of contacts - buyers, sellers, landlords, tenants and past clients - to name a few. 

For example - if you are communicating with buyers, try and sub categorise this group with a new group of “current” or “hot” buyers. Buyers who enquired 5-10 years ago are probably not in the market today and there are other methods to reach out and communicate with these people. 

Email blasts can be ineffective, annoying and you can be perceived to be a “spammer”. Blasts lead to higher unsubscribes and lower engagement (opens and clicks).

If you need to send to your whole database, make sure the content is broad ie; covers all areas of your business “sales, property management, leasing etc” and limit these sends to maximum 4 times a year.

Target market like QANTAS & Woolworths

Real Estate Agents need to start copying QANTAS or Woolworths in how they send emails to their customers. These companies sometimes send daily and the content is very specific to the customers likes, interests and in the case of Woolworths, their historical purchases. They send incentives and include “calls to action” to get people to “click” and return to their website and or receive one of their latest offers.

This only works when you take the time to properly categorise and update your database with your contacts current property situation.

For example - if you were sending an email to a group of “Prospective Vendors”, why not include an option to download your “Free Selling Guide” or “Top 10 Tips For Presenting Your Property Fact Sheet”. Your campaign could also include your recent sales and testimonials from past clients. 

Another example - for ‘Prospective Vendors”, rather than including them in a your weekly Buyer email blast - why not add them (with their permission) to your Property Alerts. 

Set these prospective vendors up to receive automatically other properties similar to theirs when they go on the market. This will achieve 4 things for you. 
1. It will demonstrate how active you are in listing properties
2. It will educate them as to what “price” new properties are going on the market for
3. Show them what other properties they will be competing with, and
4. Will keep you top of mind, so when it comes time to sell you are in their thoughts.

Sending this type of communication to prospective vendor is relevant and timely.  

Here are our tips to make sure you get your eMarketing mix right.

Tip # 1 
Train your staff on how to segment and categorise your database by groups. Get consenses with the team on the groups you will use in your database so as to avoid duplication. Create sub groups or groups of contacts who are ready to purchase / sell / rent now. 

Tip #2
Send weekly emails only to those “current buyer” and “current tenant groups” your properties that are open for inspection or available for private viewings. 

Tip # 3
Turn on your automated Property Alerts for current buyers, prospective vendors and current tenants and ensure the preferences (property type, price, suburbs, features) are those relevant to the contact. 

Tip # 4
Setup automations or trails for your “prospective vendors” and “prospective landlords”. Drip feed automated emails, SMS and letters to these contacts with regular task reminders for the agent to follow up. 

Tip # 5
Work on putting together a quarterly email newsletter send to all people in your database including articles of interest, testimonials and a sample of each of your for sale, sold and rental properties and ensure all links lead people back to your website.

If you would like some assistance with setting up targeted property alerts or automated email campaigns, call us today on 03 9016 0444 or contact us via our website at www.geteagle.com.au

 

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