90 Day Challenge- Day 36 – Don’t be a Drip -Evaluating Your Email Campaigns

Email campaigns became all the real estate marketing rage a few years back.  Everyone took their “database” and put them into their computer and started emailing real estate info.  Sounds great, right?

Well, if you watched the video from Merlin Mann and find yourself deleting all of those drippy emails that are in your box, you can pretty much figure that your drips are being deleted as well.  I still believe email marketing can be effective – but we need to take a hard look at what we are sending and who we are sending to.  Let’s take a few minutes to retool our drips and make them work.

1. Look at your list of email addresses. Your list is the key to your success.  To keep a good list, you need to be working it all the time.
   • Your list should only include people you know. Please do not take your kids school directory or worse yet, someone elses school directory and add them to your “list”.  Add only the people you have met.  If you want to work the school crowd – join the board, become a room mother and then you will know everyone on the list. Remember – your list should be aout quality and not quantity.
   • Segregate your list. Spending a few hours combing through your list to create groups will make your email mail outs much more effective.  Not everyone on the list needs to get every single email you send.  Maybe the groups should be something like:  past clients, farm area, personal friends and family.  Then go through the list again and think of some “action” groups with respect to real estate… so categorize by things like neighborhood, will they buy in the next 12 months?, sell in the next 12 months?, cooperating brokers?
   • Keep the list current. If an email bounces back you should be able to pick up the phone and CALL that person and ask for their new email address.  If you feel like you can’t call them, you probably should delete them from your list.  If someone asks you to unsubscribe – you need to take them off your list.
2. Send quality information.  I think this is what puts me over the edge.  I don’t want to know about a price reduction, open house or what you just listed.  I have access to all of that information in another way.  I want you to send me good information that looks like it was done just for me.  With today’s internet marketing there are much better choices for generic information distribution.
   • Blogging is a much more effective medium for your real estate content out there.  We learned about RSS subscriptions which allow people to receive your news.  Another reason blogging is a better Just Listed campaign is that you can put that postcard up on the internet at get “google juice” while reaching eyes you won’t reach with a traditional postcard or email blast.
   • Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with that sphere of influence.  In a future challenge we will learn how to work Facebook in greater depth, but by now you should be able to see how status updates and groups can easily replace those drip campaigns with a minimal amount of effort.
   • Look beyond the just listed, just sold standard fair. Facts and Trends is a great “Market Update”, welcome new neighbors, write about the local school carnival, forward a great article or video about the market.  The list of quality “sendouts” is a long one, it just requires a bit of thought.  Trust me, a little thought will yield a high return.

Your homework: It’s Holiday time… the perfect time to look over that list and do some cleanout.  Send out a holday ecard to new and improved list.  Thank them for their business and referrals.