For The Savvy Digital Marketer

When you hear the words "email marketing", what type of content comes to mind? In real estate, agents tend to think of promoting listings through emails, which is in fact how email marketing is widely used in the industry. However, agents tend to abuse this type of marketing which can cause contacts in their sphere to become annoyed and potentially unsubscribe. Sound familiar? Now before pumping the brakes on marketing your listings through email, consider a more intentional approach to communicating with your sphere and staying top of mind.

All of us, as consumers, are inundated with marketing messages every day , and that does not exclude the people on your contact lists. The solution to avoid landing automatically in the "Trash" folder or being "Reported as Spam", is not only a straight-forward subject line (more on that here), but a clear, visible Call-To-Action (CTA) as well.

So, you like to live life a little dangerously? Whether you're staying on a 5 in blackjack, you keep a glass of water next to your laptop, or you use web fonts and embed videos in an email, you know there can be value in taking risks that don't necessarily have a 100% success rate.

Perhaps I've been watching Hamilton too much recently, but have you ever noticed that people seem to have more time than you do, specifically in the written/marketing content that they're putting out?

According to the National Association of Realtors 2019 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends, 37% of homebuyers consisted of millennials. When it comes to millennials, technology plays a large part in their house-hunting, because this generation relies heavily on mobile devices to search, view properties, and communicate with real estate agents. With this in mind, in order for a real estate agent to market to a millennial, they should be prepared to include text messaging in their digital marketing strategy.

Spheres are very powerful, magical shapes in the world of real estate marketing. An agent's "Sphere of Influence" (SOI) is the collection of contacts or prospects with whom they have a relationship, whether in the short-term for the purposes of buying or selling property, or over the long-term so that they "stay top of mind" for when a short-term opportunity arises. Building, growing, and maintaining your SOI is key to successful real estate marketing, as it is akin to constantly yet moderately pedaling your bicycle to keep your momentum and forward progress going while you work on your more immediate deals.

Why force consumers to drag their heels down to their mailbox only to find irrelevant coupons and numerous advertisements? This waste of paper ends up residing as a coaster on the coffee table or build-up in the trash. The days of traditional paper mail marketing are slowly fading away and making room for targeted and meaningful email marketing. Email marketing is a great way to get your products, deals, and company at the tip of consumers’ fingertips. Although this type of marketing makes for an easy “in” with many clients, there are a couple of tips to remember in order to fully reap all of the many benefits.

I want to talk about deliverability. Before you run away, give me a minute to explain. Everybody has their own feelings about deliverability and what it means to them. At the base level deliverability can really be broken into two areas. Delivery to a mail server, and delivery to the inbox. These may sound like the same thing, but really, they're quite different. One is all about the tech, and one is all about the content. Since I'm a tech guy, today we're going to talk about the tech side and what it takes to get your email to at least make it to the server (for tips on the content side, see here!).

When I order a package online, I'm usually given an expected delivery date and time - and this is amazing. There's so much that goes into the delivery of that package: where it's shipping from, how busy the facility is, delivery schedules, the day of the week, staffing, etc. And as the recipient, I don't have to worry about any of this, because there are a ton of people and good processes working behind the scenes so that I can trust that date. In short, their reputation precedes them.

With the country preparing to reopen, virtual open houses will likely continue to be implemented going forward. This is actually a good thing because it will allow you as a real estate agent to reach outside of your normal boundaries. Doing virtual tours gives you viewers not just within your country, but across the globe. The number one key when it comes to virtual tours is making sure that you freshen up on your digital skills, because any good virtual tour starts with a lot of digital marketing.