7 Powerful Real Estate Email Ideas That Actually Work (2023)

Would you like to be able to craft emails that potential buyers and sellers not only open but actually click on to see your offer? Are you curious about what other real estate agents are averaging for their open and click-through rates? In this post, I’ll cover seven successful real estate email ideas that you should be using in your own email marketing strategy.

I use these seven tips with my email list of over 10,000 subscribers, and they help me generate a six-figure income.

If you would rather watch or listen to this content, check out the video or podcast below!

1. The Format

First, you want to pay special consideration to the format of your real estate emails.

While it’s important for your email to be professional, this is only true to a certain degree. You want to avoid coming across as overly professional, as this can actually hurt your chances of connecting to your audience.

As professional as a beautifully formatted email with images, tons of data, and plenty of details may seem, they can end up decreasing your engagement rates.

Not only that, but they take forever to craft, and most real estate agents struggle to create these types of emails consistently.

An email that is professional but doesn’t make an effort to be personal can end up being impersonal and detached. Instead, your email should seek to build a relationship with your target audience.

For this reason, the emails you send should focus on being personal. Personally, I prefer to create simple, plain-text emails that are anywhere from only a few sentences to two paragraphs long. I space these sentences out into separate lines, which makes reading the emails much more comfortable.  

Keeping your emails short is important to ensure your reader doesn’t get bored and click away. Because you’re working with such a short length, you need to make sure every word counts and has a purpose.

If you’ve captured the real estate lead’s first name, consider using it in the body or even the subject line.

You can also use things like emojis, images, and gifs to make the email fun, light-hearted, and more personal for your readers.

Think of email marketing as a small step above text messaging a prospect, and your email response will drastically improve.

2. Tracking

Tracking your email metrics is key to having a successful email marketing strategy.

Be sure to use an email marketing service provider that allows you to track your open and click-through rates. I prefer to use AWeber as it is easy to set up and cheaper than many of the other choices out there.

Additionally, be sure to include only one link or call-to-action per email. There are two reasons for this.

First, you don’t want to overwhelm a prospect with too many choices. Instead, it’s better to send a few separate emails with one call-to-action each. This increases the likelihood of your potential client actually completing the action without getting distracted by another link.

It also makes your “ask” clear, so there is no confusion about what your target audience is expected to do.

This reduction of call-to-actions includes your email signature with links to social media and your website. Leave links like those out of your real estate email ideas.  

This is also important to help you come across as more personal rather than stiff and “salesy.” When you sign off with just your first name, it forms a closer connection with your readers.

The second reason for only including one link per email is for tracking purposes. To accurately track your click-through rates across emails, you need to have only one clickable link in the email. Otherwise, your data will be skewed by leads that click a different link than your desired call-to-action.

I strive for a 30% email-open rate and a 5% click-through rate. As you send more emails over time, you’ll see patterns that will show you what type of real estate email ideas your subscribers respond to the most.

3. Consistency

Consistency is the successful real estate agent’s secret weapon. In my observation, nearly all real estate agents fail at the business because they lack persistence. This lack of consistency applies to prospecting, marketing, follow-up, and email marketing.

First, don’t ever stop sending emails. Developing a consistent schedule is the first step you should take when coming up with a real estate marketing strategy for your emails.

In general, it’s better to aim at the side of communicating more often rather than not enough. Sometimes you’ll need to test a few different approaches to see what gets you the best response.

At worse, the lead will unsubscribe. However, I would rather over-communicate than risk not reaching out enough.

At least when I over-communicate, I’ll know when someone either doesn’t need or want my communication any longer, rather than not hearing any feedback at all from them.

A clean real estate CRM database full of leads that receive consistent email communication from you and actually want to stay on the list is much better than one that is rarely communicated to but has tons of subscribers.

4. Value is Key

Of course, your targeted emails need to contain useful and valuable information that is actually relevant to your prospective client’s needs.

Think of your emails as a representation of your brand. Even though these emails can be written quickly and don’t need fancy formatting, be sure that whatever you send or provide is worth the prospective buyer’s time.

Always remember the ultimate goal of the email is to get into a dialogue with the prospect. It’s challenging to help someone buy or sell a home without having a conversation with them first.

Your emails should also contain a consistent call to action in addition to valuable and relevant information.

A call to action can include having the lead contact you, reply to your email, visit a blog post, or click on a landing page. When you give the lead clear instructions on what to do, it can produce effective results for your real estate marketing email campaign.

“Hey John, I found a home I thought you might like, but I didn’t have your phone number to call you on. What’s a good number to reach you at?”

Real Estate Marketing Ideas You Can Use In Your Emails

Real Estate Newsletter

A weekly newsletter is a great way to keep your leads informed about the latest housing news in the local real estate market. And if you produce blogs or YouTube videos, you can also use this as a place to promote the content you published during the week.

In these emails, you can include statistics about housing prices, the latest homes to enter the market, and what price they’re currently being listed at.

You can also include other helpful information that could help a potential seller in your area reach a decision about listing their home if they’ve been considering doing so but have been waiting for the right moment. When they do, you will be the one they reach out to for help.

Blog Post or Other Content

You can also send out emails every time you publish a blog, YouTube video, or other types of content you want your audience to interact with. Sending out emails whenever you publish something is a great way to increase engagement rates and get more eyes on your post. And your leads will be sure to benefit from your helpful content.

How-to Guides

Another type of email you can send to your leads is a how-to email. You can use these types of helpful emails to inform your potential buyers about a variety of topics related to real estate.

For example, you can send how-to guides on home renovations and repairs, home staging, cleaning, and organizing around your home, and a how-to guide for first-time homebuyers.

Local Events

Next, you can also spotlight local events and activities in your area. This is especially helpful for your past clients who are new to the area and are unfamiliar with what it has to offer. Send out a weekly roundup of upcoming events in the area. You can also highlight local attractions and other interesting things your location is known for.

Local Deals

Also focused on your local area, you can put together an email containing deals or special offers from local businesses or services, especially if you have a partnership with them. Your audience will benefit from the service, and the local businesses will benefit from more customers.

Seasonal Content

Seasonal content is a great way to keep in touch with your clients. At the start of spring, summer, fall, and winter, you can send them a themed email with activities or tips for that time of year in your area. Or if there are specific upcoming holidays, you can send emails to your audience simply wishing them well for that holiday.

Home Improvement

You can also send emails related to home improvement or renovation tips. People are constantly seeking to upgrade and improve their homes, so this is a great way to stay top of mind with them.

Give them DIY tips or tips on hiring the right contractor. Sharing this knowledge is a great way to position yourself as an authority in the real estate industry and your local market.

Personal Branding

Personal branding emails are a great way to remind your audience that you are ready to serve their needs.

You can find a potential buyer by sharing information like case studies from past clients who have found their perfect dream home or testimonials from satisfied clients you’ve helped. You can also share information about your background, experience, and what value you can provide them.

Even if your past clients don’t need your services at the moment, they may know someone who does and can give you a referral.

However, try to keep these types of emails where you are the main subject to a minimum. Otherwise, you risk coming across as “salesy.”

You can find more real estate newsletter templates and email ideas online. Do some research to see what strategies work well for other agents.

5. Keep It Light

Your emails should be casual in tone. As mentioned above, think of emails as only one step above a text message.

Your leads won’t want to read your email if it’s stiff and formal. Instead, use a light, easy-to-read tone.

Consider different types of emails you can send to your audience. For example, an email that utilizes humor will frequently get people to respond.

But a funny email is just one type of message you can send. You can also send emails with a professional (but light) tone, informational and educational tone, or an upbeat, optimistic tone.

Humorous emails are one of the most popular archetypes. This is because it shows prospects that you are a real person with a lighter side, rather than a salesman looking to convert your next lead.

However, that’s not to say every email has to be funny. I would guess that about 50% of my emails have some form of humor to them. Whatever type of email you send, it should have a light, casual tone.

6. Call To Action

No matter what, be sure that your email has some sort of call-to-action in it. Calls-to-action include:

• Clicking a link to a video you made on your YouTube channel
• Clicking a link to a blog post you wrote on your website
• Replying to this email
• Sending you their phone number or other contact information you need
• Clicking to see a new listing
• Setting a virtual or in-person appointment with you on your calendar via Calendly
• Segmenting themselves into another list/tag (more information on this below)

Calls-to-actions are important because they encourage your lead to interact with your email in some way, rather than just reading and deleting it. You can increase your engagement rates, and ultimately your conversions, by asking something of your audience.

You can also increase the traffic and click-through rate on your website or YouTube channel.

The goal of a good call-to-action is to inspire the reader to take action immediately. You need to craft your message in such a way that it can stand out in your lead’s inbox.

For example, say your call-to-action is just one line at the end of your email that says “click here,” “sign up,” or “learn more.” This isn’t quite enough to motivate your audience.

Instead, use the entire body of your email to lead up to your call-to-action. Every word in your email should have the goal of getting your reader to take that action. Make sure it’s apparent what sort of value the lead will receive when clicking on the link or whatever action you’re having them take.

For instance, say you have a blog post to help first-time home buyers. Instead of a link or button to your blog post that just says “click here,” try one that addresses the lead’s problem and presents your content as the solution. This could be a link that says, “read the must-know advice for first-time homebuyers here.”

7. Segmentation

Don’t worry too much about segmentation when you are just getting started with real estate email marketing. In fact, I wouldn’t worry about it until your list is at least 1000 contacts or more.

You can always go back with an extensive list and ask for contacts to segment themselves.  

My motto is to keep things simple. That means I have one list that I send a new email to every few days. For the first few years, I didn’t even have separate lists (or tags as AWeber uses) for buyers and sellers.  

It’s much more effective to send less targeted emails consistently than highly targeted emails sporadically.  

First, get email marketing down to a science and prove that you can email your list multiple times every week. Then, you can think about segmenting your list.

Real Estate Email Ideas Done Right

When you follow these real estate email ideas and nail email marketing, the business of selling real estate gets much more manageable. Even when many think that email is dead, I get excited about showing up in leads’ emails every week.

As your list grows, so too will your sales production. Treat your email list like gold, and it will pay you back ten times over!

Final Thoughts on Real Estate Email Ideas

Emails are an essential part of your real estate business marketing. If you work to develop a comprehensive email strategy, it will boost your lead generation and get you more clients. With email marketing, you have the creativity to come up with whatever real estate email ideas work best for your business.

What are some of your best real estate email ideas, practices, or scripts? Let me know in the comments below!