Email marketing is MADE for real estate sellers….:) These little creatures rarely come into your orbit right when they are ready to put their house on the market. Instead they show up after they hired the worst agent in the area, 2 years before they are going to list or some other non-convenient for you time.
THAT is why you need to make sure to have a way to keep in touch with them for days, weeks or even years! In my post Realtor Marketing – Should You Use WiseAgent, Top Producer or InfusionSoft? I think I make a pretty good case for why you need a big kid, real internet database to do your real estate email marketing.
So what would email marketing to prospect for sellers look like? First off, you have to get people onto your email list who might want to eventually list with you! You could…
- Send out a postcard and offer a free neighborhood newsletter if they give you their email address
- Hold open houses in the farm area you are targeting and take down names and email addresses of “nosy neighbors” (who are actually listing prospects)
- Go door to door and ask them for their email address
- Send a monthly paper newsletter with a call to action like, find out what the last 3 houses in your neighborhood sold for (and what they were originally listed for!) That little twist could make someone curious enough to contact you!
- Ask everyone you meet at networking what neighborhood they live in (you are not going to seem as creepy as asking them for their house numbers!) – since you already have their contact info on their business card, you now can connect the dots and put them on a neighborhood email list
In general, you need a way to get your farm people onto your email list. Now, I have heard things like having a Facebook page for the neighborhood, but alas, that is a lot of work AND doesn’t get emails in your database. It is a nice idea but not a hard core marketing strategy.
So now you have a couple of lists. Sellers in general who you don’t know where they live (these are really your contacts from your sphere and networking who you haven’t asked yet), sellers who live in a farm area, and sellers who live in a town or area but who you don’t have enough of to set up a real farm for.
Let’s go through these one by one…
General people in your database – These people you want to try and get their neighborhoods so that you can market effectively to them! If you have phone numbers, now might be a good time to give them a jingle and tell them you are surveying people in your sphere to find out what their neighborhood is. No phone number, shoot them an email and ask. Tell them that you are having a drawing for a $50 gift certificate for the best restaurant in town (talk to the restaurant and see if you can get this for free – but that is a post a for another day!)
Sellers who live in your farm area – These are the gold in your database. Make sure you invite them to your open houses, send them pictures of the neighborhood garage sales, monthly mail them market stats just for their neighborhood, let them know when any house lists or sells. I would not send them emails more than once a week or every couple of weeks, but seriously, these are the people who need to know that you are the neighborhood expert and that you are ready to help!
Sellers who live somewhere else – now, what to do with people who don’t live in your farm areas but who do live in a place you would service. You need to have a plan that you will talk about their town (sending the same info as above), asking them if they have any neighbors who might like some info, etc. Now, if you stay in contact you WILL get those “come list me” calls from some of these people at which time you might consider having a new farm area for them, gathering emails, doing open houses and door knocking.
One last thing, you CAN do paid advertising on the Google Adwords that allows you to target specific keywords that would be used by prospects and even set up campaigns that only target specific geographic regions. While paid advertising is not my first choice, once you have everything in place, it would be a decent way to dump people into your email database!
Incoming search terms:
- email marketing proposal for realtors
- real estate sellers