In just 5 years time, Email Marketing will be half a century old!

Back in 1971, Ray Tomlinson in Massachusetts was said to have sent an email from one computer to another so in the year 2021, ‘Emailing‘ will be an online marketing tool that is already 50 years old! Many of us will be familiar with emails for approximately the last 15 years and only over the last few years, thanks to tech innovation, we have really got to grips with email marketing and improving on ways for businesses to deliver and monitor them.

Emails nowadays are for many an everyday part of life, be it for social reasons or so business, they are easily accessible and reach us 24/7 both at our desks and whilst we are on the move via our mobile devices. Businesses still rely heavily on emails despite that fast growth and popularity of social media, making sure that your key businesses messages hits the inboxes of your potential news clients and existing costumers, when done correctly, can really boost your business turnover.

  • Lists – The best way to get great results from email marketing is to send out target emails to target lists. If you are looking to email out to estate agents, instead of one general list of estate agents, spend time to list your email database by regions, counties, towns etc. Many times, you will receive the email contact data of an estate agency and it will include their location (or you can research this on line yourself) so start from today and split your general estate agency email list it to ‘segments‘ of locations they are in.
  • Audience – Spend time to build your audiences via email marketing. It may be as simple as going through all the recent business cards you picked up or recent emails you have received that you can then start to build your email lists with. Another great way is to download your connections on LinkedIn, call out for emails via other social media channels or run competitions that require ‘opt in’ name and email submissions or you can of course also, carefully, purchase in email databases that are opted in. Before you get carried away and add just any old email, you need to be aware that you can only add emails to your email marketing lists if these people have given you permission or that you are sure they would be happy to receive your emails or are confirmed opted ins.
  • Design – A good quality design of email, fully branded with clear call to action buttons will always result in better engagement over you just sending out emails using your email management system. I use Campaign Monitor (a service that costs) to help me with designing and sending emails out to my lists.
  • Frequency – They say 7 contacts before you can look to make a sale, so this approach needs to be within your email marketing too. I do not suggest just sending the same old email out seven times of course, you may wish to change the theme / design on each occasion, but nonetheless you should look to send out key messages on a regular basis that receivers eventually get the message and are inclined to make contact with you.
  • Content – Try and avoid too much of sending emails that are all about you and instead send some that are ‘what is in it for them’ style, so less of ‘We are now 20 years old and offer a first class service‘ and think ‘We will beat your current deal by 25%, guaranteed‘ or ‘How to sell your house the first day it goes on the market‘.
  • Monitoring – If you are using a professional email marketing software then you are likely to be able to check the results your email marketing offers you. You will see %’s of who opened the emails, who clicked the links and also those where the emails bounced or the receiver unsubscribed etc. By knowing who those were that opened the emails and engaged with it by clicking the links, then you have already worked out who the potential warm leads are enabling you to contact them directly or send a follow up email. Study your stats on each email you send and after a time, you will see patterns on results for the types of emails that work best for your brand and the style of emails you need to avoid – Is it the design? Is it the title of the email? Maybe it could be something as simple as what time and day you are sending your emails…

Christopher Walkey

Founder of Estate Agent Networking. Internationally invited speaker on how to build online target audiences using Social Media. Writes about UK property prices, housing, politics and affordable homes.

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