Whether you’re a new real estate agent or an established realtor with billions of dollars in closed sales, you have something to say. You have news to share. And email might be the best medium you have to share it. That’s considering these stats:
Moreover, sending a monthly real estate newsletter helps you keep top of mind with past and potential clients. Realestatebees.com’s survey of Realtors shows that during the pandemic more people were opening their emails at a higher rate than ever before. GetResponse saw the same trend in their recent study Email Marketing During COVID-19 and Beyond.
But even though the overall engagement rates went up, this industry’s still very competitive. And if you want to make 2021 count, your real estate newsletters need to stand out.
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How to create a real estate newsletter that drives sales?
Newsletters tend to overwhelm readers with both content and design. You want to use the right pops of color, the right images, with the right content that’s pertinent to your reader.
At the same time, you’ll need to make sure your emails are designed correctly so that they not only look good but also reach the inbox.
Below, we’ve listed 11 real estate newsletter ideas and tips that’ll ensure your emails make a punch.
To learn more, consider reading this thorough email design guide and this guide to email best practices.
1. Personalize. Always.
A real estate newsletter isn’t just another email. It’s your chance to show that personal side of your brand. So while you want to automate your real estate email newsletters, you don’t want to lose that personal touch.
Here are some ways to do that.
- Write your real estate newsletter emails in a way that your readers feel like you’re talking to them directly.
- Personalize your subject lines by using your contact’s first name or location.
- Segment your readers based on lead source, location, or engagement. If you’re serving different communities in the same city, you might put up city events or community events. Which of those would a reader pay more attention to? You also want to increase the frequency of communication with engaged leads. Folks opening more of your emails should probably be in another list.
Read more: How to personalize emails with dynamic content and merge tags in GetResponse.
In the above example from Zillow, the content is tailored to the contact’s needs. This real estate newsletter uses details about the home a potential buyer saved in their profile and how the price of this estate changed over time.
Did you know? GetResponse Email Creator comes with slick and mobile-responsive newsletter templates that you can start using right away. Start your free trial now and start building your campaigns in less than 5 minutes!
2. Optimize for deliverability.
You don’t want to send beautiful emails that land in the SPAM folder. Optimizing for deliverability is how you avoid your emails ending in the junk folder, from where they eventually get thrashed or forgotten. To avoid deliverability issues:
- Consistently and periodically remove unengaged subscribers from your list. For example, someone who has not opened any email from you in the past 3 months is most likely not going to call you.
- Don’t mass email random lists. Most of these folks have probably not opted to receive correspondence from you. Email marketing that works is permission-based.
- Add in an unsubscribe button in your email newsletters. This is a requirement for GDPR-compliance.
- Don’t design emails with large images or too many images. They come off as promotional and Internet Service Providers tend to favor more balanced and text-based newsletters.
- Warm up your list with a welcome email that creates a great first impression. If you wait 1-2 months before sending your first email, your prospects would probably already have moved on.
- You could experiment with a double opt in – to create a more engaged list.
- Always send emails from a company domain that’s properly authenticated with SPF and DKIM.
Read more: How to Improve Email Deliverability and Reach the Email Inbox
This email from Compass encapsulates how important getting that initial engagement is to your email marketing results. While it’s just a confirmation email, it reassures the new home buyers that they value their privacy. Folks who take the time to verify their subscription are more qualified and usually more engaged, so don’t be too worried about losing potential leads.
3. Use a hierarchy for readability.
Well-designed emails with engaging images see a boost in retention over bland emails, as confirmed by the data from the latest Email Marketing Benchmarks report.
Conversion optimization expert and founder of CXL, Peep Laja says “visuals influence the split-second purchase decisions that consumers make without even realizing it”.
But on the other hand, visuals in email can get really overwhelming and messy. The average reader spends 1.1 minute on an email with over 2,000+ unread emails in their inbox. So it’s easy to land in the trash folder.
To create a balance between content and design, you want to use a visual hierarchy. Some examples of visual hierarchies in email design include
- The inverted pyramid puts the most important information at the top and then concludes with the call to action (CTA).
- The Gutenberg diagram, that breaks up content into four quadrants. The CTA box is larger and fills up a quadrant. This is great for dense content.
- The Z pattern, based on the path that readers follow when browsing web pages. That is, the reader scans the title, then down and across to the left, moving in a Z-shape pattern
The point of all these is to break up content, using a lot of white space for improved readability.
Read more: Email design best practices for 2021
Here’s a great example of an email with a visual hierarchy using a v-shaped or inverted pyramid hierarchy. You can see that the email is fun to read, the content isn’t overwhelming and the CTA stands out from the rest of the email. It gets the readers curious and engaged through its clever copy and simple design.
4. Fulfill the promise.
You probably made a promise with your ads, landing page, direct mail. Now they are on your email list, expecting that you’ll fulfill that promise or at least set their mind at ease. They have signed up to your list, which means they probably trust you enough to give out their personal details. The first thing you need to do is: Give them exactly what they want.
Don’t bait and switch prospects – you might offer incredible service but it’s a bad frame.
This welcome email starts off the relationship the right way. It welcomes the new subscriber, shares the next actions you may want to take, and provides an easy way to get in touch.
It’s also designed well so that it’ll look good no matter if you’re viewing the message on your desktop or a mobile device. This is achieved through a single-column layout, big fonts with lots of whitespace around them, and easily clickable CTAs (perfect for accessibility!)
Read more: How to create an effective welcome email (11 examples)
5. Get creative with dynamic content.
Although email blasts are still an important part of most email programs, tailored email campaigns are proven to deliver an even better outcome.
Especially, if you put your creative hat on and use engaging interactive content such as surveys, videos, or whole content blocks dynamically created based on your customers’ behavior.
Source: Joshua Anderson (Behance)
This example uses dynamic content to customize information about average home values and average annual home taxes based on a specified zip code. This type of dynamic automation is especially great when you serve a lot of zip codes.
If you’re not very familiar with dynamic content, you’ll want to ask your developer to help you set this up.
Also, you can use tools that integrate with your email marketing software of choice. For example, using Sendtric you can add a countdown timer to your email and with Niftyimages you can personalize your images.
Read more: How to personalize your emails using dynamic content
6. Highlight your branding.
Emails could set the tone for your prospects’ future interaction with your brand. That is, making it easier for prospects to spot your brand anywhere. Unsurprisingly in emails, larger objects get noticed first. This means there’s a better chance to direct people’s attention to your branding.
The more people see your standout branding on emails, retargeted ads and on your website, the more you can leverage the familiarity principle to build your client base.
Here’s an example of an email template you’ll find inside GetResponse. To add your own branding, you can just insert your logo, adjust the color palette, and pick the right font style.
Learn more about the GetResponse Email Creator and our pixel-perfect newsletter templates.
7. Don’t overwhelm with options.
Want to increase your click-through rates? Then make sure to use only one primary call to action in your newsletter templates. That’s going to ensure that you don’t overwhelm your audience with too many options and will focus their attention on your main offer.
Naturally, if you want to promote more than one offer in your email, it’s still allowed :). Just make sure to follow visual hierarchy and emphasize which offer is the main one.
Smith and Berg’s email uses captivating images, visual hierarchy, and minimal to-dos to capture attention. They use a lot of white space and delineate the CTA buttons in a way that stands out from the rest of the email.
Read more: How to increase email click-through rates
8. Make it all about them.
Your real estate email newsletters should have content aimed at clients in specific stages of the purchase cycle and in particular situations.
For example, a client who receives a well designed video email with a birthday song would probably not forget about you for a while.
In 2021, email marketing is predominantly personal and your email program should embrace that.
For example, the email below targets a specific persona (a semi-fictional customer prototype).
This email from Wilkinson ERA realty goes out to couples about to tie the knot. Note that it uses a lot of second person pronouns, “you” and “yours”.
Apart from that, it’s an email prospective couples might be happy to read because it speaks directly to them. This kind of personality in your emails can only be achieved when you research your customer persona’s demographics, goals, interests and behaviors.
9. Use great images.
To maximize the effectiveness of your newsletter, you need more than great content, you need great design, and many times that includes great images. The highest image in your email (hero image) has more propensity to drive attention to itself. You want to make it pop.
Stunning images have the capacity to grab attention and ensure people not only read your email but retain information and click through to the linked page. However, don’t push it. Balance your images with text content and make sure your hero image is not too large else your email might end up in the spam folder.
This email invitation was for the opening of an Atlanta arm of a luxury real estate group. The email uses high-quality images, reinforcing the company’s branding. Once anyone opens this email, what catches their attention? Obviously, the stunning large central hero image.
10. Be exciting.
Your real estate newsletter emails need not always be about your new blog posts, community information, or market stats. Think up ways to excite and engage your readers. The best ways to do this include:
- Ask your subscribers for their suggestion on something (include a survey)
- Create a competition and give out gifts
- Organize an event
- Create content on a favorite new recipe or your travel experience
- Send out personalized holiday or birthday video emails
This celebratory email from Zillow creates a fun vibe that makes you want to read through the full message and share it with your friends.
They’ve successfully used visual elements that resemble confetti, trophies, and badges – all of which make you feel good.
11. Get creative with colors.
The point of colors is to draw attention to your message. Bright colors catch the eye, but this doesn’t mean your email template should use all colors of the rainbow. Simplicty is key – you can achieve a nice color-blocking effect even if you use two or three colors as the foundation of your message.
This email newsletter from OpenAgent uses a nice blend of green, black, and a lot of white space to enhance readability. The visuals have also been carefully edited to foster a nice color balance with the rest of the email.
What to do in 2021 and beyond
Emails will continue to be a prime way we communicate with potential customers in 2021. But while realtors pay a lot of attention to the content of their real estate newsletter emails, they need to pay equal attention to design. Designing great real estate newsletter emails isn’t about slapping up one or two images with your content – it’s so much more. Follow the above rules and start creating standout real estate newsletter emails.