Creative Real Estate Email Marketing Tips and Ideas

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Real estate email marketing is a powerful and inexpensive way to stay in touch with your prospects, sphere of influence, and past clients. Sending out creative email campaigns can bring traffic to your site as well as add value to your expertise as a real estate agents. Very few agents take advantage of using real estate email marketing, which makes it an even more lucrative opportunity to constantly stay in contact with your prospects.

If you are new to email marketing for Realtors, the first thing to do is to decide how you will send out your email marketing campaigns. There are a variety of different programs that can do this for you, most of them with fees ranging between $10 a month and up, depending on which services you need.

Here are some popular options for email marketing campaigns:
Constant Contact FREE 60-Day Trial
iContact – 15 day free trial
MadMimi – Free w/upgrade options available
Aweber, a popular email platform for bloggers and internet marketers

Most of these tools can be used to create dynamic looking email marketing campaigns easily and quickly with no design talent necessary. With easy to customize templates and client list management, they are easy to use and affordable options. There are other ways to go about sending out mass email campaigns, but these are the least frustrating and time consuming. (If you do know of others that you’ve used and liked, please share them in the comments below!)

So now that you’ve figured out how you will send your emails, and have an email list to start working with, the next question is what creative real estate emails can you send out? Below we’ve listed a few ideas:

Creative Real Estate Email Marketing Ideas

Monthly Newsletters: A Monthly newsletter is one option for sending out to your email list. Your monthly newsletter can include any of the following ideas: a market update (be careful it is not too boring or written in entire real estate jargon), latest news, home seller/home buyer tips, and best blog posts you have written. You’ll want to be careful it doesn’t look too cluttered, but you’ll also want to make sure it provides information your email list will be interested in reading and highlights you as the real estate expert.

Open House Invitations: If you have a list made of mostly buyers, an online open house invitation is a great way to let them know quickly of a “must see” open house. Make sure you list the selling points of the home, pictures, and to contact you for directions or to schedule a different showing date.

Your Blog Posts: Sometimes you’ll write an incredible blog post and you want people to read it. A quick email with a catchy headline and link to your post can bring more traffic to your site as well as show to your real estate email list that you’re on top of things.

Neighborhood Reports: Is there a neighborhood or area that is “hot” right now? (Okay, so “hot” in a bad economy is probably not the right word to use, maybe “popular” or “preferred” is a better word?) Sending out school information, transportation, activities, nearby attractions, and other information in a neighborhood spotlight report is another idea for a creative email marketing idea.

Home Improvement Tips: Everyone wants to make their home worth more money. Simple ideas such as 5 Ways to Organize Your Home, 3 Quick Fixes to Increase Your Property Value, and other home improvement tips can be interesting and helpful to just about any homeowner on your list.

See What Others Are Sending: If you don’t mind creating a separate email address for newsletters only, you can gain a variety of different email real estate marketing ideas simply by signing up for somebody else’s. If you network with agents all over the country, signing up for their newsletter can give you many ideas, and there’s no risk to them for you competing with their business if they are in another state or area. You could sign up for other email newsletters also – HGTV and other similiar type sites all have newsletters to give you inspiration.

Frequently Asked Questions: As a busy real estate agent, you are likely bombarded with real estate questions every day. A free report of frequently asked questions and answers can help your email audience as well as confirm that you really are the real estate expert you claim to be.

Freebie Offers: Mostly everyone loves getting something for free. If there is something you can provide for free, chances are it will spark interest in at least 1 person on your email campaign list. If you can’t offer something for free, could you partner with another business that can? For example, what if you partnered with a coffee shop for 1 free cup of coffee or an ice cream shop for a free ice cream cone? It will bring the company you partner with business, and it will make your email marketing list remember you as the Realtor who gave them a neat freebie.

Seasonal Event/Reminders: Just about every month there is some sort of big event, holiday, or other thing happening. For example, you could send a reminder for Daylight Savings Time or wish them a Happy Holiday, or invite them to visit you at the big community event or fundraiser you’re participating in.

Now that you have some creative real estate email marketing ideas, here are some tips to help you make your email marketing efforts the most effective:

Focus on Simplicity: The more simple your email marketing campaign is, the easier it is for others to read and get exactly to the point. Don’t overload your email newsletters with fancy fonts, too many graphics, or too much text. Remember if you have a blog or website, you can easily do all those things on your website and then simply link to it from the email.

Build Your List Constantly: An email marketing campaign to 10 people won’t be nearly effective as a campaign to 100 or 1000. Whenever you meet someone, asking their email address and if they would like to receive your email updates for helpful information can help you build the list. You’ll also want to remember to get emails of colleagues or other business associates, family members, and just about anyone else you can think of. Just make sure you have permission – you do not want to get in trouble for sending unsolicited emails.

Include an Unsubscribe Link: You do not want to send emails to anyone who doesn’t want to read your emails, otherwise it will have negative effects. At the least, they’ll delete them without reading them – at the worst, they’ll decide they will never work for you for any reason. A simple unsubscribe link works well, and you may even be able to set up a short survey or comment box on why they are unsubscribing to help you understand.

Send Emails Out Sparingly: It wouldn’t matter if you were my best friend, if you sent me emails everyday I would likely get tired of them and stop reading them all. Less is more – once a week should be the absolute max, bi-weekly or monthly is a nice friendly reminder that you’re still in real estate and interested.

Do you have any other creative real estate email marketing tips and ideas? Share them in the comments below.