Real Estate Drip Campaign Examples, Types & Strategy

• Which drip campaigns to create for each part of your sales funnel.
• How to create each type of drip campaign (Welcome Emails, Newsletters, and Behaviour-Targeted Drip Campaigns)
• How to use dynamic content to increase the effectiveness of your drip campaigns.
• How to improve email deliverability (a major problem for real estate email marketers).

How To Design Your Drip Campaign Strategy

The purpose of drip campaigns is to move prospects through the stages of your sales funnel. You should have a drip campaign targeted at each stage.

Top Of Sales Funnel:

• Welcome Email: introduce prospects to your business, describe what you do, and describe how you can help them.
• Newsletter: share helpful information about your services and offerings, as well as info that helps prospects resolve their problems and achieve their goals.

Middle Of Sales Funnel:

• Newsletter: share helpful information about your services and offerings, as well as info that helps prospects resolve their problems and achieve their goals.

Bottom Of Sales Funnel:

• Behavior-Targeted Drip Campaigns: use prospects’ actions on your website to send targeted drip campaigns that influence action.

The goal of each drip campaign is to move prospects to the next stage of the sales funnel.

You can also use dynamic content in each real estate drip campaign to share different types of content depending on info about each prospect.

How To Create Each Type Of Real Estate Email Drip Campaign 

Welcome Email

Welcome emails are emails that get sent when a subscriber first joins your list. They’re one of the most important emails for all marketers, including realtors.

A good Welcome Email should start your relationship with subscribers on a strong note by:

 #Introducing subscribers to you and what you have to offer.

So you can build a personal relationship with them. People want to do business with other people, not faceless brands. And prospects will choose you over equally competent competitors if they feel they know you more.

 #Telling subscribers what to expect.

Tell subscribers how often they’ll receive emails from you and what the emails will contain. Then live up to those expectations. This builds trust and anticipation.

Telling subscribers when to expect emails builds anticipation and increases open rates. If you tell them they’ll receive an email every Monday morning, then your emails will be on their mind every Monday morning before they’re even sent.

By telling subscribers what kind of content you’ll share and how it’ll benefit them, you’ll build anticipation for your upcoming emails. 

You should also eliminate negative expectations in order to build trust by:

• Telling subscribers you won’t flood their inbox.
• Telling them you won’t sell their information to 3rd parties.
• Inviting Engagement

The best way to build a strong relationship with anybody is by actually engaging with them. You should invite subscribers to reach out to you for any requests or information and share your contact info to tell subscribers the best way to reach you.

Welcome Email Example 1: Valley Realty Welcome Email

What This Email Does Right:

• Tells subscribers about the valuable content they’ll receive: market trends, property listings, maintenance tips, etc.
• Introduces subscribers to the realtor and including a picture of him (very important)
• Invites subscribers to reach out for questions and advice, and shares the contact info to do so.
  

Welcome Email Example 2: Seven Hills Properties

What This Email Does Right:

• Sets expectations by telling subscribers to expect an email every week.
• Telling subscribers about the valuable content they’ll share: featured property listings, open house information, snippets on the home buying market.
• Prompting engagement with their brand/site by including CTAs that prompt subscribers to search their listings and visit their website.

If you want to know more, Check our welcome email examples  guide where we discuss 9 Welcome Email Best Practices and have 46 Welcome Email examples. We have rounded up examples from multiple industries that you can use as an inspiration.

Real Estate Newsletters

A newsletter is an email that is regularly sent to subscribers for the purpose of:

• Providing subscribers with valuable content so they stay in touch with you.
• Sharing lead nurturing content to prime subscribers for your sales pitch.
• Sharing promotional content to sell products and convert subscribers into customers.
  

Newsletters provide real estate agents with several key benefits:

• These real estate agents enable you to generate repeat business by maintaining contact with customers long after purchase.
• These real estate agents enable you to nurture new and existing customers for future sales by sharing content that demonstrates that you’re the best realtor to help them get what they want.
• Even if subscribers aren’t looking for a property now, they may recommend you to friends and contacts.

How To Create Content For Your Email Newsletter

There are two central questions that form the core of all of your estate email marketing messages and content:

Question 1: Who Is Your Target Market?

Who is your ideal customer? Who, specifically, do you help? (if you don’t already have a target in mind, you should pick and define one)

Some examples of suitable target markets include:

• Families and young couples seeking a home
• wealthy people seeking high-end properties
• developers seeking lucrative properties to purchase

Question 2:  How Do You Help Them Solve Their Pain Points (beyond merely helping them find and buy a property)?

Different customers seek different properties for different reasons. The content you share in your newsletter should speak to their specific needs and pain points.

• What pain points do prospects experience that lead them to seek out a property/your services?
• What are the specific needs and problems that compel prospects to seek the properties they seek? Discussing these in your newsletter demonstrates to prospects that you understand them better than anyone else.

• What pain points do prospects experience in their search for a property? When they start their search for a property, what problems will they encounter? Again, this demonstrates that you understand prospects and the problems they’re experiencing.
• How do you resolve those pain points and help them find the best property ?
  • How does your expertise/approach help them tackle and resolve these pain points?
  • Paint a picture of what working with you is like so prospects can have a better understanding of how the process will go (this also builds comfort with the idea of working with you.)
• How will prospects feel after they work with you and get the property they desire?
  • Your email marketing messages should paint a picture of how great life will be after prospects work with you and buy a property. This helps them visualize and anticipate the prospect of hiring you.

All newsletters will contain two types of content 

Content Type 1: Nurturing Content

Nurturing content is content that aims to keep prospects on your list and opening your drip email campaigns. In order to do so, this content must be valuable (in that it educates or informs prospects) and enjoyable (in that prospects are entertained by consuming it).

Nurturing content doesn’t need to be directly related to your service. But it must be on the same topic. 

Two basic categories of valuable, nurturing content include:

 Educational Content:

Articles that teach prospects how to do something, like find properties in their price range, negotiate with seller leads, increase the value of their property, share useful home services (like plumbers, electricians, decorators), etc.

 Useful Marketing Tools & Resources

• Calculators that help prospects quantify their optimal price range.
• Calculators that help prospects quantify the value of their property.
• Buying guides and checklists.

 Entertaining Content:

Content that prospects will enjoy reading or watching like:

• Entertaining articles about the area you sell in.

Content Type 2: Promotional Content

Promotional content is content that also aims to nurture prospects, but with a focus on convincing them to hire you. In order to do so, it must discuss and demonstrate how you’re expertise and approach helps prospects resolve their pain points and find their ideal property.

The key difference between promotional and nurturing content is that promotional content is more of a hard sell.

There are basically 3 types of promotional content:

Direct CTAs

These are direct solicitations inviting prospects to contact you for a consultation. They very succinctly describe the benefits of working with you.

Articles & case studies that demonstrate how you resolve pain points for your customers.

This content should go into greater detail about your work with existing customers and discuss:

• The problems the customers faced that led them to hire you.
• The approach you took with them and how it helped resolve those pain points.
• How you helped them find and close their ideal property.
• How great their life is now that they hired you and got what they wanted.

 Your Listings

You can use your newsletter to promote your listings. Listing promotions should include a high-quality, well-staged photo of the property, a captivating description of its major selling points, and, more specifically, how the listing is well-suited for your target prospect.

Also, read  email newsletter ideas guide where we mention 24 ideas to keep your audience engaged.

Real Estate Newsletter Examples

Some great examples of real estate newsletter drip marketing done right include:

1) Blue Elephant Realty

What Works About This Email

Positioning

Often, your emails don’t need to be mind-blowing. They just need to be positioned in a way that makes them unique and useful.

Unique

The newsletter helps recipients find houses and condos that are above or below a certain price range.

Useful

The newsletter positions itself as a curator. They find the best properties in certain price ranges for you so you don’t have to do the work.

2.) Zillow

What Works About This Email

Utility

Zillow’s newsletter is even simpler and focuses entirely on utility. The email is targeted at prospective home buyers. It’s a great way for potential buyers to keep tabs on properties in an area that they want to live in without having to actively and continually run searches. Zillow makes the shopping experience easier for buyers and, thus, nurtures them for the sale.

Prospects can sign up for the email list and customize the settings so that they receive emails that share:

• Properties in an area they want to buy in.
• Properties at a price range they’re interested in.

Attractive Thumbnail Images

To help promote the properties, Zillow includes attractive thumbnail images of each property on the list.

Easy Save/Share Buttons

Each property includes a button that recipients can click to share the property. This helps Zillow promote its listings to even more people. Each property includes a button that recipients can click to save the property to their list and return to it late.

Check our Email Newsletter Examples guide where we have collected a huge list of 60 Newseltters from different industries. We go in great detail to explain whats in the newsletter, how newsletter helps business. It covers everything related to email newsletters.

Browse Abandonment Email Campaigns

Browse-abandonment Email campaigns are retargeting emails that are sent to website visitors who browse products on your website. The emails promote the products they browsed.

For example:

• When someone views a Bed & Breakfast on your site (or multiple), they’ll receive an email soon after that promotes the properties they looked at.
• Often, these emails try to incentivize conversions by offering a discount if the recipient makes a purchase within a specified time frame.
• i.e 10% off for the next 24 hrs.

Browse abandonment emails have a host of benefits:

• Browse abandonment emails are one of the most effective methods for personalizing your email content and boosting email engagement.
• Browse abandonment emails have an 80.9% higher open rate than traditional emails.
• Browse abandonment emails have a 50.5% higher click-through rate than traditional emails.
• 26% of all browsers that open browse-abandonment emails will click through and return to the site.

Browse-abandonment campaigns are especially important for interest-based businesses like United Country Real Estate.

To get the most from them, you should retarget browsers with nurturing and promotional content.

If someone browses your Country Home listings, your browse-abandonment emails should include:

• Nurturing content that educates them on the ins and outs of buying country homes:

• What to look for in a country home.
• Red flags you should look for in a country home.
• How to valuate a country home.

• Promotional content:
  • Promotions for the country homes they browsed.
  • Promotions for other country homes in the area they were browsing.

Browse-Abandonment Email Timing

You should experiment to discover the best times and frequency of your browse-abandonment emails.

#Email 1.

• Sent 24 hours after abandonment
• Email invites recipients to take another look at the country homes they browsed.

Email 2

• Sent 7 days after abandonment
• Email includes educational content about buying/living in a country home. It also promotes the country homes they browsed.

.Email 3

• Sent 21 days after abandonment
• Email includes educational content about buying/living in a country home. It also promotes the country homes they browsed.

Read more about real estate email marketing here

Using Dynamic Content

The goal of dynamic content is to make your email content more relevant to each subscriber and audience segment, and there are infinite ways to do so.

If a realtor/agency markets to both buyers and sellers, here are a few ways they can employ dynamic content in their emails:

Share Relevant Nurturing Content

Share buyer tools and resources with buyers, and seller tools and resources with sellers. In other words, Buyer email includes a mortgage calculator; Seller email includes a property valuation tool.

Share educational content to buyers and sellers based on the type of property they’re buying/selling. For example, how to buy/sell certain types of properties:

• Lifestyle Properties
• Land Properties
• Country Properties

 Share Relevant Promotional Content

You should use the info you gather on your prospects to share promotional content that’s most relevant to their needs and situation. For example:

Promote Relevant Case Studies

• Buyers: receive case studies of buyers you’ve worked with.
• Sellers: receive case studies of sellers you’ve worked with.

Segment Listing Promotions To Different Buyer Segments.

• Promote listings based on geographical location (using data collected at sign-up and/or search behavior).
• Promote higher-end listings to higher-income buyers

Read more about email segmentation.

Retarget Subscribers With Properties They’ve Already Browsed.

• i.e. Browse-abandonment marketing campaigns (more on this in next section).

How To Improve Deliverability

There are many ways to improve your deliverability – which is why the best way to do so is by working with an email deliverability expert.

But some easy ways to improve deliverability on your own include:

1) Use a double opt-in for your list.

After signing up for your list, an email is sent to new subscribers where they must click to confirm their opt-in. This helps ensure you avoid SPAM folders.

2) Maintain A Consistent Email Volume

Open rates & CTR affect your sender reputation. By maintaining a consistent email volume, subscribers will know when to expect your emails and will be more likely to open and click on them. Spikes or drops in email volume can adversely affect this relationship.

3) List Hygiene

Keep your list clean of invalid email addresses. The more bounces you get, the more email clients will come to see you as untrustworthy. Immediately delete any hard bounces.

4) Don’t Buy Email Lists

Purchased email lists don’t work. Many ISPs set SPAM traps – i.e. planting fake email addresses in paid email lists to catch spammers. If you get caught sending emails to these addresses, you’ll get labelled as a spammer.

Dont buy  email list. Why?  Read this article where we go in more details.

5) Live Up To Expectations

Tell subscribers what kind of content you’ll send them when they sign up. Then live up to your word. When you betray subscribers’ trust, they’re more likely to mark your emails as SPAM and harm your reputation.

Looking for someone to work on your drip campaigns? Hiring a Top notch email marketing agency would be the best option to do so.