Are your unread emails sitting at 0 or 30,000? If it’s the latter, you’re not alone. Yet, you’ll probably open up emails that seem important or are addressed to you. Your prospective and current clients are the same. Email marketing is still a strong way of communicating with your clients as long as personalized and contains information that’s important to the recipient. On the creation side, though, it can become time-consuming to send or respond to all the email. What do you do? Enter the email template.
Having email templates as part of your real estate business process is a time-saver; it also ensures consistency of information conveyed as well as provides timely information to the people who most need the information. The key to using email templates effectively is being aware of the different types of people you interact with on a regular basis and creating a timeline for each, with emails being a part of that timeline. Here are 4 types of email templates to use in your real estate business on a regular basis.
The Open House Email
Open houses are a wonderful way to meet both prospective buyers and prospective sellers. However, follow-up is key to maintaining contact with those you meet and to ensuring that you remain their preferred agent. Having a process in place to automatically reach out to those you’ve just met an open house is a great way to continue the relationship, and using an open house email template is a quick and easy way for you to reach out to those buyers and sellers.
Set up a quick email template in your preferred client relationship management (CRM) system or in your email provider that allows you access from both mobile and desktop. That way you can send something out immediately following your open. You can either use a generic template, that doesn’t include a lot of personalization, or really start to nurture a relationship by having a template that includes prompters like [include personal note] or [other properties they’d be interested in] which remind you to include details that show you were paying attention.
The Referral Email
Whether attending a company event, an industry conference, or some other meeting, chances are good you’ll meet other business people who you’ll want to stay in contact with the hope of a future referral opportunity. Having a referral email template or two in your repertoire is a way to stay on people’s radar as well as start a communication chain to stay in touch. So, the next time you attend an event and collect a stack of people’s business cards, have a referral email or two lined up in your email to use right after the event to remind people of who you are, how and where you met, and to offer your assistance with any referrals for real estate help in your local area. Of course, if it’s a real estate agent in another area, offering reciprocity is something that is appreciated and helps encourage further referral opportunities.
The New Buyer Email
Any time you take on another buyer client, you want them to have the same basic information as the previous buyer client you took on. How do you ensure that consistency? Templates! When you have templates set up for any new buyer you take on, you can make sure all the information you’d like them to know is included and sent through. Want to make sure they start making up a list of ‘wants’ v ‘needs’? Include that request in your email template. Need to let them know what kind of market – buyer’s, seller’s, neutral – they’re currently in? Have that information there, and what that means for them. Also, this is an excellent opportunity to start setting their expectations on your availability and ways of communication.
The New Listing/Seller Email
As with the new buyer client, having an email template ready and waiting for every seller client you start working with makes sure you can include congratulatory language with the information you’d like them to have upfront and in writing. This could be anything from advice about how to keep the home show-ready to what happens during open houses to what happens when an offer comes in. Delivering this kind of information upfront not only continues to establish you as the local trusted expert, it also proves that you’re the right agent to be working with.
Email templates are an important piece of your overall online marketing. Not only do they make you really think about your entire process with prospective buyers and sellers, they also make sure you consistently deliver the information you need to share with everyone you work with on a regular basis.
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