How Property Data Can Make Those Critical Email Open Rates Take Off

Property data is a must-have for any broker or agent who sends out email to customers.

Why?

Research shows that poor, unappealing content is the No. 1 reason why people ignore or even (oh no!) unsubscribe from emails lists.

Let’s face it. Every business person loves email. You can launch a message out to thousands of people with just the click of a mouse. For little to no cost. There are no stamps, no envelopes, and no post office.

Therein lies the problems. There are so many emails spewing forth onto the web that people have developed blinders on what’s coming into their inbox anymore.

Consumers have heightened filters for bad emails – they can pore over subject lines faster than an airport scanner and delete the trash quicker than the neighborhood garbage man.

And after all the work a broker or agent has to do to get those email subscribers, you certainly don’t want them hitting that dreaded “unsubscribe” button (a feature that is required by law by the way).

Sure emails are free. But it doesn’t mean a broker or agent does not have to invest both time and resources to make them effective.

Because if they don’t, their competitors will.

Take open rates for example.

Where are your open rates? According to MailChimp, an email delivery platform, the average open rate for real estate agents is 20.84%.

If your emails are not hitting that level, then you’ve got a problem. Not only that, you are leaving purchases and listings on the table. Your email is underperforming.

If you are hitting that level, why not make it better? After all, every increase in open percentages means more potential business.

The great benefit of email to brokers and agents is that you only need one response from an email blast, to make it more than worth the effort. Unlike someone who is selling a watch for $9.99. The price point you are dealing with is a bit higher, say 5,000 times higher.

But it goes even deeper.

Say you have successful open rates for your email blasts. That’s great.

But what’s the click-through rate? (See, we told you, the email landscape is a complex one).

The click-through rate is the number of people who open the email and then proceed to click on a link in the email to visit the website (and advance in that precious sales funnel.)

It’s a simple equation and frankly one that’s kind of fun to watch. The more a consumer advances, the more qualified they are as a buyer or seller. In other words, the more they move toward the site and around the site, the hotter they become as a leat).

According to MailChimp, the average real estate email has a clickthrough rate of 1.91%. Frankly, that’s not a great return for all that effort in building a list and sending out emails.

If your click-through rate is low, then again, you are leaving business on the table. But 2% is not much to rant about either. Plenty of opportunities there.

Property data adds power to your email content

How can you fix this?

The solution is a simple one – content. Interesting, relevant, hyper-local content.

Where do you get that content?

From property data providers such as Home Junction, Inc.

Home Junction is part of the new breed of BIG DATA providers who have the ability to amass a tremendous amount of real estate information from a number of different sources.

Those sources include government records on the county and city levels, information from schools, listings of businesses, etc. etc. etc.

One of the big advancements in BIG DATA has been the ability of these providers to feed that information to a local agent in Anytown, USA.

However, that agent doesn’t have to order giant bulky disks full of information. By implementing a few lines of code, that information is fed directly into an agent’s website on whatever page they want.

For example, if an agent is geo-farming That’s A Great Place to live community, the agent can insert hyper-local data about that community alongside listings.

That hyper-local data includes:

• Recent Homes Sales
• Trends for Property Prices
• School Information including student-teacher ratios
• Local Business listings based on distance
• Demographics such as age and income
• Crime Statistics
• Cost of Living indices

And much more.

Add punch to those subject lines

Now’s that’s perfect content for an email blast.

Instead of just sending another listing, why not put something to this effect in the subject line?

“What You Should Know About The Local Housing Market”

“Prices Are Rising In Your Area. See Charts”

“See Latest Real Estate Data On Up And Coming Neighborhoods”

“Here Are Some Reasons Why You Might Buy In This Community”

Interested consumers will have an interest in this type of property data.

They know it’s not hype, it’s not salesy, it’s factual.

The beauty of email is that brokers or agents can experiment with different subject lines to see which ones get a maximum open rate.

Some systems even allow A/B split testing for email subscribers lists that have a large enough sample for a decent comparison of one subject line versus another.

They key point here is that you now have valuable data at your fingertips to promote – property data that is local, relevant, accurate and current.

Another beauty of finding great subject lines is that you can use them over and over again, with just a slight modification.

For example, with this subject line: “Check Out Latest Price Trends In My Favorite Neighborhood For July.” If you see this subject line works, all you have to do is change the month. Home Junction will supply a new bit of fresh data every month. It’s that simple.

Do the same type of experimentation to increase click-through rates.

You might not want to splash all that local property data directly on the email page.

Perhaps, just put in some teaser information with a link back to the real estate data on your website.

You could even experiment with putting a contact form someone on your page before the information, prompting people to fill out the form if they are interested in learning more about local listings or selling their property.

(But be careful with this, because any bit of friction before a user reaches their destination on a website might cause them to leave. Maybe put the pop-form after they visit the page. Home Junction can help with this as well).

There’s more to email marketing.

A broker or agent can segment their lists, for example. Just send certain emails to people interested I Want To Live There Neighborhood, for example.

The time and day are also important.

So is inserting the prospects name, etc.

Bottom line. Even with all those features, if you are not sending interesting content, you are not going to boost your open and click-through rates.

It’s that simple. All it takes is one phone call. Then you will give your email blasts a property data rocket to boost their marketing power.