9 Tips for Building Real Estate Emails that Get Results
Email — it's an important part of any real estate marketing strategy. Step one is knowing what type of email you want to send to your sphere. Last week, we highlighted three essential marketing emails that agents can leverage. Next comes step two: building that email and figuring out what to include — and what to avoid. Fortunately, this (and much more) was covered in a recent webinar with Constant Contact. We've distilled the email-building wisdom shared in that event below. Read on for nine tips on building real estate marketing emails that get clicks! Be mindful of short attention spans It may come as no surprise to you that in our modern era of social media and online distractions, the average attention span is now only nine seconds long. That means that real estate marketers have a very short window to grab the attention of their audience and compel them to take action. What does this mean in practical terms? Well, Constant Contact analyzed 2.1 million emails and found the messages that had the highest success had only about 25 lines of text overall — about a paragraph and a half. Consumers aren't taking the time to read long, complex emails. Instead, they're scanning and skimming those messages and looking for what's relevant to them. So keep your emails short and to-the-point and avoid long walls of text. Don't be afraid to use bullet points to highlight your key points — they're great for readers who are quickly scanning your emails. Use buttons Want your email recipients to click on a link? Use buttons rather than a plain old link. Constant Contact notes that the most successful emails use buttons. Or, as webinar panelist Matthew Montoya puts it, "Buttons are advantageous because if you give people buttons to push, they're going to push your buttons." Use three images or less Here's another important way to cater to today's short attention spans: keep the number of images in your email to three or less (not including your logo). That leads us to our next item… NEVER use an image as your whole email If you know that you should limit your images, you may be thinking, "Why don't I just make the entire email one big image instead?" Seems like a clever workaround, right? Wrong! You should never, ever have an email be 100% image. Why? Because that's a favorite tactic of spammers. Today's spam filters have been trained to send all-image messages straight to the spam folder. "You don't want to do what spammers do," says Montoya. Always link your images Speaking of images, Constant Contact recommends that you link each image to wherever you want to send recipients to, whether that be a listing details page or a "Contact me" page. By linking your images, you make it even easier for consumers to click through to where you want them to go. This best practice is great for your email success rates, too: messages with clickable images see a 650% increase in click-throughs. Don't forget to link your logo to your website, as well. "People have been taught to click on logos and images to make something happen, and so you want to make sure you're linking any image you use in your email," says Montoya. Use classic email marketing structure When creating your email message, keep this classic, tried-and-true structure in mind: Headline: What are you offering? This is what your headline communicates — and it's also how you hook readers, e.g. You do not want to miss this amazing open house! Body copy: Remember that paragraph and a half we talked about earlier? Here it is. Keep your message succinct and scannable. Need help creating this part? Constant Contact's built-in AI can write it for you. Learn more here. Call-to-action: This is the part of the email that gets results. What do you want your readers to do? Learn more about a property? Schedule a showing? Contact you for more information? Whatever it is, be explicit about what you want email recipients to do (and put it on the aforementioned button). Create compelling subject lines A great email subject line compels readers to open your message. A poor line, on the other hand, results in ignored emails or worse — emails sent to the dreaded spam folder. Here are some ideas for creating strong subject lines: Try emojis. "Emojis are very visual, and if people are in their inbox really briefly, it captures their attention," says Montoya. Employ questions. "Questions are really powerful because the only way the question can be answered is by opening the email," Montoya says. Induce FOMO. That is, a fear of missing out. Make your audience worry that they're going to miss out on your great listing or open house. Use lists. Readers love lists. They're easy to understand and highly scannable. Offer your audience three ways, five ideas, seven things, etc. "That's really beneficial because, one, everybody's in a rush, so you're basically saying, 'Here's a little bit of digestible information for you,'" says Montoya. "If you're doing an email where you're saying 'Seven curb appeal ideas,' only offer them three in the email. Make them click to read the rest." Aim for alliteration. Alliteration is when you use words that start with the same sound. "The reason alliteration is powerful is it's kind of sing-songy, but it's also a pattern, and because it's a pattern, people in their busy lives looking at their inbox are going to notice that pattern before they notice all the other subject lines," says Montoya. Be funny. Humor, especially puns and puns tied to pop culture, is very effective. People are busy and that pop culture reference or funny subject line is going to slow people down and make them notice your email. What you don't say in a subject line is just as important as what you do say. Here's what to avoid in your email subject lines: Spammy words. Words like "free," "weight loss" and "guarantee" earn you a trip to the spam folder. Unfortunately, "mortgage" and "property" do, too, but you can use those words in the body of your email. Just avoid them in the subject line. ALL CAPS. Not only are all caps considered shouting in internet-speak (and just rude, honestly), but spammers use all caps, so make sure you capitalize words normally. Too! Much! Punctuation! Didn't know this one? Neither did we until we watched the webinar. Limit yourself to no more than three pieces of punctuation in your subject line — and two is even better. Why? Because spammers routinely replace letters with symbols. Target your emails Ever heard of the "spray and pray" method of email marketing? It's where you send messages out to everyone in your database indiscriminately. In real estate, this may be sending property listings to those who aren't currently looking — or worse, to someone who just closed a transaction and who is definitely not going to buy again anytime soon. Instead, take time to segment your contact database. The messages you send to those who want to buy or sell within the next few months should be different from those sent to contacts who are inactive on the market. "Fifty-two percent of an audience will just abandon an email if it's not targeted," says Montoya. "That is something that hurts our top of mind visibility." But when you segment your audience, research shows that you'll see an 11% increase in open rates and a 27% increase in clicks. Monitor your click-throughs and follow up Clicks are the biggest determiner of an email's success. They prove your email was delivered, opened and read. Most email marketing platforms, including Constant Contact, will tell you what people clicked on. They will show you who read what and who looked at which property. "How valuable is it to know somebody clicked on this one particular property instead of the others? Now you know something about them — they're interested in this property, they have this kind of price point in their head," says Montoya. "Savvy marketers take that information and do targeted follow-up." Montoya notes that when email recipients take repeated actions like clicking on a specific property or look at a particular article, they are showing high interest. "You definitely want to reach out to somebody that does that," he says. For more great email marketing tips, watch the full webinar here. Then see for yourself how easy building emails can be with the help of AI: try Constant Contact FREE for 60 days, no credit card required.

planetRE Announces AI Video Generation and Marketing inside CRM
New features allow real estate agents to use AI Avatars for video narration with uploaded media assets and full video frame editing and syndication. SAN JOSE, Calif., May 21, 2024 -- planetRE, the nation's leading enterprise cloud vendor, today announced brand new CRM capabilities for real estate and mortgage professionals to create full ai generated videos using a library of AI avatars and voices along with user uploaded contents like images, video and text. Realistic AI avatars trained with human like expressions and voices can for example narrate videos, presentations on new listings, open houses etc. using uploaded background videos, imagery or text. A custom-built Video Timeline Editor enables editing of content images, video clips, music, graphics, brand, etc. that can be previewed right in the editor. Users can easily add text, overlays, and titles, to move from one scene to another for a seamless flow of content within the AI video. Agents can create multiple projects, review the rendering before publishing. They can edit videos like a professional using crop, trim, rotate, add multiple scenes, with different avatar and voices. Seamless integration within CRM and Zapier like tools in the works allow effortless distribution of AI videos via email, text or social marketing. Videos can boost engagement by driving more traffic with these eye-catching, innovative AI creations that helps agent stand out from the competition. With maximum flexibility and control, agents can develop new videos on-demand and update messaging for a fresh look. "The new tool removes the costly barriers of traditional video production and editing by allowing users create professional videos quickly and easily, within minutes with no prior filming or editing skills," said Subrao Shenoy, CEO of planetRE. "Agent marketing teams can unleash their creativity by customizing AI avatars to fit brand's persona, while expressing any messaging through simple typed scripts." About planetRE planetRE is privately held enterprise software company in Silicon Valley, CA. More information planetRE AI Video Marketing can be found on planetRE.com.