Did you know that your email list shrinks by 22% each year? No one talks about it much but that’s a fact email research has identified. There’s a bunch of reasons why contacts disappear from your email list during real estate email marketing campaigns:
- people abandon their old email addresses;
- they get new jobs and so change their work emails;
- they unsubscribe.
While you obviously have no power to control the first two reasons, the third is a bit easier to manage. If you noticed more people unsubscribing from email communication recently, it’s a good time to tweak your real estate email marketing strategy.
Real estate email marketing: 5 tips to reduce unsubscribes
1. Start segmenting your list
The most obvious reason people unsubscribe from your emails is they are not interested in what you are telling them. Most often, this happens when you’re sending wrong stuff to the wrong people (for example, seller tips to buyers and vice versa). Naturally, people are less compelled to spend their time on information they don’t need right now.
So the first thing to do to reduce unsubs is to segment your database. For example, you can apply the following criteria:
- status: lead, customer, past client;
- inquiry: buyer, renter, seller, investor;
- location (for example, neighborhoods in your city);
- stage in a sales funnel (new, verified, closed), etc.
- tags and groups (pets, special requirements), etc.
Once you have this done, you instantly see which segment of people are interested in which content and offering including property alerts.
Source: Neil Patel
2) Review email frequency
If you’re actively engaged in blogging and real estate email marketing, this is not an uncommon question you’ve been struggling with. What’s the sweet spot that would allow you to stay top-of-mind, yet won’t seem like you’re doing too much?
There isn’t a definitive answer to this question so you’ll have to test things to find it out. Most companies opt in for weekly or monthly updates but some use daily ones.
3) Improve the content you send
Are you sending your emails to the right people at the right time, but they still unsubscribe more often than you expect? The time has come to review the third thing you might be doing wrong which is content.
Whatever format you chose (blog post, video, eBook, etc.), the key is to make your content helpful. Most often, things will boil down to the local area you serve and that’s a chance for you to stand out from the local competition.
Nationwide trends are hard to explain so leave that to big media. But if you could find a way to explain how these trends affect your local area and what your audience should do to maximize their gains – that’s a whole new level you just reached.
4) Offer an opportunity to change their minds
What if someone unsubscribed by mistake? Or better yet, isn’t 100% willing to unsubscribe just now? Take your chances to find this out by using a simple hack:
For the sake of objectivity, this is not going to save you dozens or hundreds of subscribers. But it may save a few who could turn into your most loyal customers anytime soon, who knows?
5) Appeal to people’s vanity and ask for a feedback
Well, the easiest way to find out why people are unsubscribing is to ask them directly. First of all, you’re showing people their opinion matters. Second of all, you can use that info to learn and improve your real estate email marketing tactics.
This is how it can be done:
Again, not everyone will take the time to share their thoughts but you may be surprised by how many people do.
What’s next?
Don’t fret if you see some people go – there’s no such thing as a zero unsubscribe rate so don’t be too hard on yourself. Do also remember to use these real estate email marketing tips to rest assured you’ve done everything to keep people who matter most to your business engaged.
