How eCommerce Best Practices Could Save Real Estate
Now that’s a bold claim.
Why would we say that acting like an e-commerce business could help save real estate?
Because the traditional way of selling real estate has gone out the door. Are customers still doing open houses and visiting sales centres? We hope not, for all of our safety. So, what can you do to stay in touch and connect in an appropriate and relevant way?
Why Email?
Preparing E-mail Outreach Sequences. What elements should you include in an email?
Note that we refer to these outreach efforts as “sequences”, so the important note is that it isn’t a single outreach and that’s it. Just like when you are building a relationship, you would constantly keep in touch with phone calls, in-person meetings, emails, social media. It’s an ongoing process, and you will see in the design elements we recommend below that you should include a hook for your next newsletter.
A personal message from your team stating why you are sharing the information in the email. If you have a phone, record a short clip to be embedded into the email - a subject that includes the word “video” can increase open rates by 20% and click-through rates by as much as 65%.
The words “Home” and “You/Your” in the subject line increase response rates by 18% and 25% respectively.
Include video, text, photos if possible, because people consume information differently — some read, some listen, some watch. With your photos, use lifestyle photos instead of project renderings.
A call to action. Registering for your project’s latest news is unlikely to be a call to action that resonates right now. But what if your action is to ask readers to share this information with others who may find it useful?
Tell then what you are going to send them next week to help them anticipate your communications.
What Could You Talk About?
The objective over the next 30 days is for your brand to stay in touch with your customers in a human way.
Tailor the Message!
We can’t stress this enough. For example, if I have a young family and I’m concerned about my children’s online learning and daycare, sending me information tailored for investors is going to be white noise.
Parents are concerned about their children’s education, their family’s safety, spending time fixing up meals or ordering delivery that’s fast, easy, and economical.
Investors are concerned with tenants not making rent while they still have to pay for their mortgages and the decreasing value of their investments.
Downsizers are concerned about their health and safety. They face issues such as no transit, having to go out for groceries and to fill their prescriptions.
Your email content should provide helpful insight for these concerns. Yes, in these very different times, we have to evolve and think of our jobs very differently than before.
You could either sit and wait this one out same as your competitors, OR you can continue to stay connected with your customers so that when they are ready, the first one they think of is you.
Below is a step by step guide to building your E-mail Sequence
Go into your CRM and slice and dice your consumer data.
Segment your lists by the concerns each of them has.
Brainstorm what types of content will address the pain points experienced by each of your target audience groups.
Come up with various content topics you can talk about each week.
Prepare content for each of the target groups.
Set up a master calendar and insert the topics.
Share your email and watch for open rates, clicks, and other engagement metrics to see which version gets you the most engagement.
The reason why our first choice is to set up an email sequence is because it’s low-hanging fruit; your customers gave you their preferences and information already, and you can readily filter out audience group insights with this data.
The question is, with a wealth of data sitting in your CRM, what are you going to do with it?
In our next blog post, we are going to talk about how you can set up live segments on various platforms to engage with your audience. See you next then!