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    Real Estate Drip Campaigns Ultimate Guide

    Written By Jason Rowse - Digital Marketing Expert

    Updated: 09/06/2021

    Realtors will find the automation features of drip campaigns ideal for leading property buyers and sellers towards desirable actions. The best thing about such a series of emails is that it can help you build a strong relationship with new and old leads alike. 

    Read on to explore the meaning, uses, and elements of drip email systems for realtors. We’ve also added five easy steps to create drips effortlessly. 

    What Is A Drip Email Campaign?

    Drip email campaigns in real estate are a series of automated messages sent by agents over a scheduled period of time to convert prospective buyers or sellers. It’s also referred to as automated email campaigns, autoresponders, behavioral, or lifecycle emails. 

    Want To Send Successful Emails For Your Real Estate Business? Here Is How To Do It 

    The main priority of drip email campaigns is to pique the curiosity of home buyers and sellers.

    It can save time and overheads by using intelligent marketing techniques to strategically automate electronic messages. 

    Read on to uncover seven ways to use the drip strategy to maintain contact with responsive and non-responsive leads. 

    1. Create Practical Goals 

    Establishing the goal of the drip campaign is vital for producing successful outcomes.

    Once you outline the actionable tasks for your customer, it can enhance the experience of your prospective lead. 

    Here are a few questions you must answer to create effective goals for real estate drips: 

    • How many subscribers are you aiming to acquire with the campaign?
    • Who is your target audience: buyers or sellers? 
    • How many sales are you targeting?
    • What are your daily, weekly, and monthly goals? 
    • How many emails per drip campaign will you send?

    2. Select A Format 

    Being an automated system, drip campaigns need to be designed carefully for connecting and converting your readers. The first thing that will help you is the right format. You can choose from templates such as newsletters, landing pages, sign-up forms, or surveys to create your unique campaign. 

    3. Section The Demographic 

    With a record increase of 760%  in revenue owing to the segmentation of email campaigns alone, it’s short-sighted not to organize lists for converting real estate leads. Moreover, aiming to please all your customers identically is not a strategy for success. 

    In order to send relevant messages to the right audience, you need to create market segments. Partitioned drip campaigns divide your customers into different categories based on user attributes. By integrating with a CRM system you can reduce page abandonment of listings in addition to improving the engagement of your audience.

    From recognizing new homeowners from home buyers or differentiating leads looking for offices from those who are looking for homes, there are many benefits of segmenting your customers. You can organize buyers based on the following segments as a start. 

    • Demographic Segmentation - Divide leads by their size of the family, professional qualifications, income, age, gender, or generation. 
    • Geographic Segmentation - Optimize prospects based on the physical location of the buyer or seller, neighborhood amenities, and city. 
    • Psychographic Segmentation - Organize this segment based on personal information such as lifestyle or acquaintances in the neighborhood.   

    4. Make A Captivating Offer

    Once you have created an organized list of leads, it’s time to contour the drip campaign around an irresistible real estate offer. 

    The best way to do so is by offering value to your subscribers. Start by avoiding marketing jargon and pushy language often seen in direct ad copy.

    Instead, offer indispensable insider information and educational content such as tutorials, representative mortgage rates, or neighborhood information. 

    Simply put, create a concise and relevant offer that’s useful for your target audience.

    5. Plan By Frequency And Time 

    The secret for creating a thriving drip campaign is timeliness. If you set the campaign at the wrong time, your email might get buried in a customer’s inbox. Accordingly, decide on a time when your prospects are most likely to open their mail. You can also avoid confusion by creating buyer or seller groups based on the convenient times set by the customer. 

    According to a recent study on how often people want to receive promotional emails, the majority of the participants agreed to ‘at least weekly’ after the frequency of ‘at least monthly’. 

    While the ideal times to schedule your drip messages include Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, it’s best to test and establish the right frequency based on your audience’s input rather than sticking to an inflexible schedule.

    6. Triggered Autoresponder Emails 

    An autoresponder lets marketers set up automatic emails based on the behavior of the subscriber. On top of it, autoresponder drips help you reach the right prospect at the right time. 

    • Welcome Sequence Of Emails: A series of welcome messages are sent to people who sign up for the first time to your list. 
    • Subscriber Behavior Triggered: Ideal for nurturing existing leads, these drips are sent based on customer actions such as clicking on a new listing, showing interest in a neighborhood, or not engaging with the campaign.  
    • Transactional Emails: Actions like order confirmation, password reset, or legal updates are transactional emails that can be sent based on behavioral triggers for revenue generation via drips. 

    7. Keep A Tab On The Reports 

    Once you launch the drips for your property listings, analytics technology makes it easy to track the success rate of your efforts. Periodic analysis of results will help you improve the effectiveness of your campaigns as it identifies your shortcomings with insightful metrics such as the following:

    • Total views refer to the number of views including multiple views by the same lead. 
    • Click-through-rate is mentioned as the clicks on links within an electronic message divided by the total emails sent. 
    • Open rate is the total number of leads that opened your email based on the people who received the message. 
    • Bounce rate is the sum total of the leads who did not receive your drips. 
    • Unique open shows who opened the message including their timestamp of opening.  
    • Conversion rate of a drip campaign consists of the leads who complete the call to action specified. 

    Don't Forget To Add These In Your Emails 

    While short and plain emails are proven to work better than long and sophisticated HTML campaigns for realtors, a few must-have components should never be left out. 

    The following describes six elements that must be included in drip electronic mails:

    • Trustworthy Sender Address: Using a credible title with your real name improves the trust factor of leads and email service providers that screen for spam. 
    • Attractive Subject Line: Using an intriguing subject line that piques the interest of the realty prospect in an informal style is best for making them open the e-message.  
    • Use An Interesting Approach: In order to create a memorable and unforgettable series of drip mails, share uniquely valuable information instead of generic content with buyers and sellers. 
    • Substantial Benefits: Offering material rewards such as tutorials, videos, and eBooks are ideal for appealing to your leads via drips.  
    • Mobile Compatibility: With over 53% emails opened via phone, it’s indispensable to optimize your messages for mobile users prior to dispatch. 
    • Persuasive Call To Action: Always include a relevant CTA based on whether you want the subscriber to respond, register, or buy the listing you’re advertising. 

    Create A Real Estate Drip Campaign With These 5 Easy Steps 

    The central idea that propels a successful drip messaging campaign is the journey of your lead.  While you can share information such as housing market trends, case studies from previous customers, or real estate listings near the subscriber, consistency of messages must be the priority. 

    Take a look at the following list of five systematic steps designed to help realtors build a successful real estate drip email campaign. 

    Access Dashboard

    The first step is to log-in to your email service software and select the campaign or lead flow option. 

    Allocate Leads

    You can now assign buyers and sellers to relevant teams based on efficiency.

    Use Triggers For Plan Of Action

    This is the step to build an automated sequence of emails based on lead behavior or source of subscription. Webmasters need to set up custom triggers to make this strategy work. 

    For example, you can create triggers so as to engage the lead when they abandon or exit an office listing you featured. Alternatively, failing to respond to your welcome emails can also be added as a trigger to start a new series of drip messages with the same lead. 

    MailChimp is a trustworthy service provider that helps you set hourly, six-hourly, or daily triggers for drips based on user actions. You can even sign up for their automated messaging functions for free. 

    Make A Task List For Web Leads 

    This is where you segment the leads in order to create action plans using drips. Follow Up Boss offers a ‘Buyer Engagement Campaign’ that uses regular emails to engage your home buyers and sellers. Such a campaign can be customized according to your preferences. 

    Use this function to create different action plans for varied lists of leads such as buyers, sellers, or expired leads. 

    Advanced Lead Flow Settings 

    The last step is to direct property buyers or sellers to a compatible agent who can assist them. You can use advanced lead conversion paths to make use of tags that help in allotting prospects by pin code, geographical location, or budget in such a case. Thus, the automated messaging system saves your time by assigning high-value leads to expert brokers in your team. 

    On top of it, realtors can create custom rules to improve the efficiency of the process too. For instance, you can route all the prospects looking for office buildings around $3M in the 94203 zip code to automatically connect with Agent X while other leads get directed to Agent Y.

    Bottom Line 

    By focusing on the journey of your prospects, drips deliver relevant and consistent information to the leads to increase conversions, sales, and brand exposure.

    Once you set realistic goals, decide on a format, segment the audience, schedule timing, customize the offer, automate triggers, and assess reports, your campaigns will go through the roof.

    Get started with a trustworthy service provider to start building your drip campaign today.