At Inman Real Estate Connect SF, one of the sessions touched on the importance of email marketing for your business. While many see this as an outdated form of communication – there is actually a lot of value that can be derived from an email campaign. With technology evolving constantly, what is popular today might be old news tomorrow. However, email marketing is a constant in this ever-changing landscape. Apart from all other activities on the web, the most used by all is still email.

So we need to use this to our advantage. Buying or selling a home does not happen overnight. Many of our customers will spend several months researching and looking at homes before they’re willing to make a commitment, while other customers may not quite be ready to buy a home, but know within the next year they will be. Communicating with our customers on a regular basis lets them know we’re here when they’re ready to begin the process.

Not only that, but email marketing is a great way to keep your brand in front of our customers after we’ve completed a sale. As an industry, many of us do not stay in touch with our customers after they’ve bought or sold a home. If that’s the case, we’re doing a huge disservice to our company and our customers. With people being in the market to buy or sell a home every few years, if we’re able to sustain our relationship with them over those years, we’ll increase the changes that they’ll buy or sell from us again in the future.

That being said, below are a few ways we can use email marketing to reach our customers:

Establish trust: Email marketing enables us to send targeted and focused messages, so first and foremost, we need to establish trust with our customers. Be sure you know who your audience is before you send any email campaign. The worst thing you can do is blast an email to hundreds of people who will not find the information relevant. Be sure you research who your target market is so you don’t send an email about new homes on the market to someone who purchased a home from you last week. By doing this, we’re establishing ourselves as the authority on our market, while building a solid relationship.

Monthly Newsletters: Keep your customers up to date on enhancements to your website, events your company is hosting, housing trends and statistics, etc. Showcase newly listed properties or properties just sold in their neighborhood and success stories of customers who had a great experience buying or selling a home from you. We already have this information available, so organize it in a newsletter to highlight important information.

Home Buying or Home Maintenance Tips:  The home buying process doesn’t end after a sale. Often times, there is still a lot of work to do on a house in order to make it feel like home. Home renovation tips and advice, for example, will come in handy to customers looking to take on home improvement projects on their own.

Community News: As brokerages, we have a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips. If you’re working with clients that are new to the area, send them community information to help them feel at home in their new city. Not only that, this is a great tool for keeping up with past clients as well. Letting them know if events and happenings in the community that month makes you the local expert.

Open Houses and Other Events: Inform current and potential customers of upcoming open houses or events your company is hosting. Through email marketing, you can target customers looking for homes in a certain price range or looking for specific features that fit the criteria of the house. An easy way to invite customers to an event you’re hosting or to show your involvement in the community is to showcase events you’re participating in as well.

Online Surveys: The best way to find out what your customers want is to ask them! Online surveys are a great way to get to know your clients better and help you get feedback on open houses or past events in order to measure overall customer satisfaction.

Call to Action Items: Be sure that you include clear call to action items in all your email campaigns as well. Readers will want to know what they’re supposed to do with this content and where they can go next for more information. Direct them to specific pages on your website that relate to the topic of the email or give them a contact person to call or email if they’re interested in speaking with someone further.

All in all, email marketing is a simple cost-effective tool to staying in touch with potential, current and past customers. With the ability to control what content you’re distributing to your customers, you can make sure the message aligns with company goals and expectations – giving you a successful email campaign strategy.

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By John Sable