Email marketing is one of your most effective tools to stay connected with your contacts. It builds trust and keeps you top of mind when they decide to enter the real estate market. Email’s effective because it helps you communicate with a massive audience at a relatively low cost and time commitment. Campaign Monitor says every dollar you spend can generate a $44 dollar ROI.
However, there is more to email marketing than building a newsletter and clicking “Send.” Your campaign statistics are arguably your most valuable resource in terms of email marketing. They allow you to identify people interested in your services, and better understand their interests, but where do you begin? Most email systems provide so many statistics it’s hard to know what you’re looking at.
Not all statistics are created equal. So, if you are starting out, you should focus on three numbers that can help you diagnose the effectiveness of your campaigns, and create a plan to improve your future newsletters.
Open Rates:
Your campaign’s Open Rate is the number of subscribers who viewed your email, out of the total subscribers that received it, and is a strong indicator of how your campaign performed. The Real Estate industry average open rate is 20.84%. From this, you can determine how your open rates compare, and decide if you need to act.
Action:  The first thing to consider when trying to raise your open rates is your subject line. According to Easy Sender, 33% of people will determine if they want to open an email just by its subject line. To learn more about improving your email’s Subject Line, check out “5 Ways to Improve Any Subject Line.”
Another way to improve your open rates is by changing your emails send time or day. While every audience is different, there are some days and times that are statistically better than others. To learn more about this, check out our recent research into this subject by clicking here.
Click Rates:
Your click rate describes the rate at which your subscribers click on content, such as listings or news articles, and highlights the content your subscribers find relevant. Click rates below the industry average of 1.91% usually mean your content isn’t captivating your contacts, or you’ve already provided the details they want, so they don’t need to click to learn more. Every click shines a light onto your contact’s interests, and helps you target future content to their needs.
Action:  Try segmenting your database to improve your click rate. By grouping likeminded contacts and creating targeted campaigns, you can deliver shorter newsletters with more pertinent content. This improves the odds of clicks, and strengthens your client’s trust in you as the expert with all the right answers.
The design of your email also has a major impact on your click rate. Does your email display well on all devices? Is your content arranged well? Did you include effective calls to action to convince your subscribers to click? Generally, you should put the most important listings or articles first to increase their views, followed by other helpful content.
Deliverability:
Many people overlook deliverability, but it’s essential to your campaign’s success. Your deliverability rate is the total subscribers that received your email, compared with the number of contacts to which you attempted to send. Any subscriber that did not receive your email is a bounce, and your bounce rate determines the quality of your contact list. A high bounce rate indicates a stale database, usually caused by subscribers changing their contact details. According to Effective Database Management, your contact list can be 50% out of date in only a year.
Action:  But don’t worry, there are simple actions you can take to keep your database fresh. Add new subscribers often, and ask your contacts to update their information regularly with an online survey or form. You can also get in touch with your bounces to update their email addresses.  A good email marketing system will have features that help you filter out inactive clients from your fortnightly mailing list. Try sending something different, and less frequent, to your inactive clients, like a market update or a list of local sold properties. This will help you keep connected with your entire database, while focusing on your most active subscribers, and identifying your future clients.