How to build an email list for property management companies

In today’s climate, property buyers and renters spend months searching online to find the right property and agents to work with. Email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools to build trust and stay top of mind. With the competition growing, agents who use personalisation and really take the time to know their customers and send relevant content have a real edge.

The ROI of email marketing is £35 return for every £1 spent. Meaning the nurturing of your customers is much more cost-effective. This is also a benefit as purchasing a new property is a long decision process so being consistent and relevant.

For example, one London agent saw a 28% increase in viewing bookings after introducing a segmented “new-to-market” email series matched to search criteria.

People typically spend anywhere from 3-12 months actively searching for their new home before finding the one. This shows how we need to nurture your customers and learn more about them to send them weekly or monthly emails with new properties that match their criteria. There is nothing worse than getting an email with properties that don’t match what you are looking for. It can make you feel unheard and that you are never going to find that dream home.

When people are looking for a new property, they spend on average 20hrs before they book a viewing, the average homebuyer will view between 5 and 8 properties before making an offer, some get lucky and find the dream on viewing one while others will view upwards of 20 properties. The importance of following up with customers to understand what they liked or didn’t like is so important to understand what can be better.

Stats show that 50% of people search properties at least once a week, so we need to understand the true browsers. 70% of them will search for around 30 minutes and the rest would be for between 30 minutes to an hour.

When a client comes to your website you need to understand if they are an active buyer or a dreamer and someone you need to keep inspired and learn more about.

How we can do this is a sign-up form where we ask them a few questions to determine what stage they are at. Are they interested to buy now, 3 months, 6 months or just browsing. From here we can then segment your customers based on this and the more active customers we can be in more contact with and the customers just browsing we can contact them monthly with your top properties.

Once a customer is signed up it is so important to welcome them to the company this is your first impression so make it count, share success stories and why they should trust you with buying their next home.

The welcome email should consist of the below:

• Personalised subject line & greeting
• Intro into your business and value proposition
• Your contact information
• High-quality images of your business
• Clear branding
• Clear CTA.

Keeping branding consistent so if they see a for sale sign, meta campaign or post they recognise it as your business, this builds brand awareness and trust,

When sending your weekly new-to-market emails, ensure to segment them and bring in relevant properties to your audience’s needs and wants.

Personalising your email content can drive 20% higher open rates and 139% higher click rates compared to non-personalised emails. 

• Personalised subject lines using the recipient’s name, location or even the neighbourhood they are interested in can increase open rates.
• Tailored content – If you know someone is looking for a 4-bed house in Manchester, ensuring this is the content in the email will drive more engagement with your emails and build trust between you and the customer.
• Segmenting your audience – Understanding who your customers are by looking at buyers, renters, investors and ensuring you send the email tailored to that audience.
• You don’t need to triple your workload to be personalised; create one email and use dynamic content blocks to personalise your email to the audience.
• Personalisation isn’t just inserting the name, it’s about sending the right message at the right time.
• Maintaining your data, ensuring your database is cleansed regularly, ensures you are only contacting people who are wanting to hear from you and who are engaging with your content. You must also ensure GDPR/UK data privacy compliance when using personalisation.

Key emails to send to your audience

• Lead generation emails
  • Free valuation
  • Latest homes in your area
  • Last sold prices in your area
  • Exclusive investments in (City)
• New property alert emails
  • Price reduction
  • New 4-bed home in (area)
  • New properties to rent in (area)
• Newsletter/ Market Updates
  • Interest rates news
  • House price increases or decreases
  • Business sale time (sold in  7 days)
• New build developments
  • Introducing the new development
  • House types available
  • Show home images
  • Open events
• Open houses/ Events
  • Invites to open houses or development open days
  • Investor breakfast meetings
• Re-engagement
  • 1 year post-moving into their new house
  • Refer a friend
  • Review requests
  • Industry stats i.e interest rates or house prices

Even though people tend to only move 6 times in their lifetime, there is always ways to stay connected. We have a circle around us that is all in different stages,so staying relevant and personable ensures people will always recommend you to their friends and family.