How to use email marketing in commercial real estate.

CRE Success Principle: Good email marketing is not about broadcasting what you’ve just listed. It’s about building know, like, and trust at scale.

Most commercial real estate agency businesses already have a valuable asset sitting in the background: their email database. The problem is, very few are using it to its full potential.

I see a lot of agencies dutifully collecting contacts, but not enough attention is given to actually engaging with them. When used properly, email marketing is one of the highest leverage activities in your business.

Why Email Still Works

Unlike social media, your email database is something you own and control. You are not relying on algorithms to reach your audience. When you send an email, you can expect a predictable level of reach, which makes it a powerful channel for building relationships at scale.

The Three Cs Framework

The three Cs approach I recommend is simple: Cadence, Content, and Calls to action.

Cadence is about consistency. A weekly or fortnightly rhythm helps you stay top of mind and build familiarity.

Content should go beyond listed, sold, and leased. You need a mix of awareness, authority, and affinity to build trust.

Calls to action ensure your audience knows what to do next, whether that is replying, clicking, or contacting you directly.

Turning Attention into Opportunity

When done well, email marketing builds know, like, and trust at scale. It can even generate inbound enquiries without direct selling.

If you want to get more from your database, start applying these principles today.

Listen to episode 264 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership to learn how.

Episode transcript:

Most commercial real estate businesses have an email database, but many commercial real estate businesses undervalue and underutilize that asset.

Because your email database is a list which you've probably spent years diligently collecting and adding to, but maybe you're not spending as much time turning that list into value.

So, in today's episode, I want to give you some principles of how you can be working your email database, specifically the three Cs of email marketing, which are the cadence, the content, and the calls to action.

Welcome to episode 264 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. I'm Darren Krakowiak. We've just wrapped up a previous best-of series, four episodes that we've presented on leadership, leverage, and agency growth, which means it's time to move into another special series.

We're talking right now about tools, productivity, and modern commercial real estate execution.

And I'm going to do that in a way which may seem a little bit counterintuitive because this episode is focused on a bit of technology which doesn't seem particularly new or cutting-edge, which is email marketing.

And the reason why I want to start here is because I think that most commercial real estate agencies are not doing anywhere near the level of email marketing that they should.

They're very good at collecting the email, putting it into their database, but then they're not actually getting the leverage of having done that work by contacting people through the channel of email.

A lot of people are focused more on social media, which is kind of like building an asset on a platform that you don't actually control or own, whereas email is proven to have better cut-through rates.

In terms of like, if you post on social media, let's say you've got 10,000 followers, you don't know if 25% of your followers are actually going to see that content.

It depends on the algorithm. It depends on what the post is about. It depends on the quality of the content.

Whereas with email marketing, if you send out an email to 10,000 contacts, there are industry averages which will just tell you that you are likely going to get about 25% of people opening that email.

Now, you could influence that in terms of having better subject lines and more regular communication.

And we are going to take you through a three-C framework in today's episode.

We're talking about cadence; so how often should you be sending emails to your list?

We're going to talk about content; so what is it that you should actually be putting inside the emails?

And also calls to action; so how can you get the person who's reading the email to take an appropriate next step?

So, if you've been diligently building up your list of contacts but you're not actively engaging with people via email, this is going to be an important episode for you.

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In today's episode, I want to talk to you about how you can be working your email database.

And in previous episodes we've talked about the fact that marketing is leveraged but sales is not. And when you are working your database, you are doing something which is a highly leveraged activity.

It's marketing to many people but through activity, which is just writing the email, scheduling it, and then sending it out to your list.

Now, great marketing makes sales so much easier. And in fact, sometimes if your marketing is so good, it even makes sales unnecessary.

I've spoken to people who have been putting out content, who have been consistently emailing their database, and then out of the blue someone will call them and they are ready to go based on all of that know, like, and trust, which we'll define in a moment, that has been built up through the consistent email contact that you've been making with your email database.

So, I want to take you through today the three Cs of email marketing because sometimes I hear from people, “You know what, yes, I've got this email database. I don't know how often I should be contacting them. I don't know what it is that I should be putting in the emails, and also, I don't know how to get people to actually respond or contact me once I have sent them the emails.”

So, the three Cs that we're going to talk about are cadence, which is just how regularly it is that you're contacting your email database.

I want to talk about content, which is what you do put in each email.

And finally, I want to talk about calls to action, which is the “so what?”. What is it that you want the recipient of the email to do next?

So, let's start off with cadence. And a question I often get is, well, how often should I be sending emails?

There's no right or wrong answer, but if you want me to give you an answer, I would say every single week is a good sort of cadence, rhythm to get into when it comes to email marketing.

Now, if you can't commit to every week, I would encourage you to at least be sending emails every second week.

Now, if you think that every week is a little bit excessive, let me just give you a couple of points to consider.

The first one is that only 25% of people on average will actually open and read the emails.

So that means on average, if you send an email every week, people in your email list will probably open and read, on average, one per month.

So that doesn't sound like too many when you consider the average open rates.

I think when you commit to contacting people on a regular basis, that's how you build a relationship.

And by being consistent with the emails that you send, you're actually positioning yourself as someone who is consistent, who can be relied upon.

And if you're putting valuable content in that email (and we'll talk about content in a moment) you're going to be seen as someone who potentially is someone of value, who can be contacted when they do have a question, when they're ready to take the next step.

Now, one concern that some people have about email marketing, and particularly sending emails once a week, is that, well, what happens when people start to unsubscribe?

Well, I guess my answer to that is if we are worried about people unsubscribing to emails, then we would never actually send out email marketing.

And if we actually send regular emails, the research shows that people will actually be less likely to unsubscribe because we build up that relationship and they are expecting a regular email from us.

If we only sporadically email our list, people sometimes think, well, what's this? They don't know what it's about, or there's no regular relationship that's been built up, and that makes them more likely to unsubscribe.

But the other point I want to make about this is don't not communicate with people who want to hear from you just because you're focused on the very small, tiny percentage of people who will hit unsubscribe.

If you're focused on the people who hit unsubscribe, and it's not uncommon for maybe half a percent of people to unsubscribe when you do send out email marketing, that's fine because all of those other people who do open and read the email, they're the ones we want to focus on and build up the relationship with.

And another way to think about this is your job is to get more people to be added to your list each week than those who unsubscribe each week.

So ultimately, we want to be adding more people to the list than people who do unsubscribe.

And again, I do promise you, if we get the content right and if we establish a great rhythm, a cadence, then people will be less likely to unsubscribe.

So let's talk about the content. There are three types of content that I'd recommend, and you can use this framework for content on social media as well as content that you put into your EDMs, your email blasts.

One is awareness, and that is your listed, sold, leased, all of that information that I think when people do send out email marketing, it's usually “we just listed this, we just sold that, we just leased that.”

That has a place in your email marketing, and certainly you want to be sharing that information to create awareness about the deals that you're doing and the opportunities that you have available for people who are on your list.

But also, I think we want to be building up our authority. The ways that we can build up our authority is to maybe showcase awards that have been won, maybe client testimonials.

Perhaps you want to talk about what's going on in the market and provide your take, and that then becomes a valuable piece of content as opposed to just self-promotional content.

When people realize that your email is not just listed, sold, and leased, they're more likely to open the email because they know it contains value.

So we've got awareness content, we've got authority content.

The last bit of content that I'd recommend that you include in your emails is content that builds up affinity.

So you can share information about yourself or your team.

A few examples might be when there are babies, when there are engagements and marriages, sponsorship of local sports teams, charitable initiatives that you or members of your team have been supporting, maybe your commitment to the local community.

Many different ways that you can build affinity by showing people a little bit of who you are through your email marketing.

And what the awareness, the authority, and the affinity content does is it builds up the know, like, and trust, or it accelerates that know, like, and trust process at scale in a more leveraged way.

So in order for people to do business with you, they need to know you, they need to like you, and ultimately they want to be able to trust you.

To know you, that's the awareness content. To like you is the affinity content. And then they'll be able to trust who we are and what we can do for them when we build up our authority.

Another way to think about the types of content that we are sharing, particularly around authority posts but maybe also around affinity, is: what is the one thing that you would like you or members of your team to be known for?

Do you want to be known for being a great negotiator, for having innovative marketing campaigns, for having the best auction campaigns in your market?

Maybe it's just your local roots, the fact that you've lived in the local area and that you've got a deep connection to the area, to the patch which you're covering.

These are all things that you can reinforce through your email blasts.

And in terms of how you can check what content is resonating, have a look at the click-through rates for certain types of content. For subject lines, you can test different subject lines. And what the research shows is that if we use very simple language, that's usually what works.

As opposed to “just listed” or “just sold,” that sounds like marketing. If it sounds more like an email that they're going to receive from a friend, that probably is going to increase the likelihood that they will open that email.

So, these are all a few different tactics that we can use to improve the deliverability because if we use spam words, they're more likely to be caught up by spam filters.

But also, when people see it in their inbox, if it doesn't look spammy, they're more likely to open it.

The last C that I wanted to talk about today was calls to action. And this is really: what is it that you want the reader to do as a result of having opened that email or read through a specific piece of content that's within that email?

So, you can post questions, you can ask for feedback, you can offer appraisals. You can maybe talk about a deal that you've done, but on some instances, you might hold back certain information and then you can say, “If you'd like all the details, give me a call, reply to this email, and we can talk about it.”

When we treat clicks as indicators of interest, we also have a call to action for ourselves, and that is to follow people up.

So, what I mean by that is if you have a click-through report and it shows that somebody has clicked on, say, a listing 18 times, that probably indicates that that person is interested and it would be incumbent on you to give them a call.

Because even if they're not interested in buying or leasing that property, there's some reason why they're clicking on it 18 times.

So let's take the initiative to find out why it is that somebody is very much engaged with that particular piece of content.

So just to recap what we talked about, email marketing: you've got an email database in your business. You've probably got thousands of names on it.

If you just let it sit there dormant and not do anything with it, or if all you do with that list is send through emails about what you've listed, sold and leased, then you're not using that email list to its full advantage, for its full benefits to your business.

So, let's remember the three Cs of email marketing, which are the cadence—how regularly we are emailing our list; the content—so not just talking about listed, sold, and leased, we're also looking for content that builds up our authority and also creates affinity between us and the reader.

And finally, we want to make sure there are calls to action, that people know how to take the next step, that they're reminded of how it is that we can help them, but also that we are looking for any calls to action for us, such as people who are opening or clicking through emails many, many times because that indicates that something has piqued their interest.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.