Automate, automate, automate. It’s the word seemingly on every marketing person’s lips and for good reason. Automation saves you time, while keeping avenues of communication (and lead generation) active. 

But, effective automation takes more than toggling on a button.

Like any other email campaign, an automated email should be crafted for maximum conversion, with specific and strategic goals in mind. Not only that, but in an industry that relies on relationships, it’s important that your contacts still feel like a person is speaking to them. An automated email that feels tailored to one person can make all the difference between an enquiry, an appraisal or nothing at all.

Recently, we spoke about what emails you should be sending out every week, month and year, and how automation can help you to remain consistent in your sending. Today, we’ll be going one step further, focusing on tools to make your automation not just consistent, but effective.

So before you press go on that automated campaign, here’s what you need to consider:

• Your Purpose

• Your Contacts

• Your Words

Let’s start where you should be starting, with your purpose.

Your Purpose

There are a plethora of options when it comes to automation, from property alerts to welcome emails. When faced with all of these options it may feel easier to simply switch all of them on, but it pays to be more considered in your approach.

Start by considering your purpose in setting up an automated email or a fully automated sequence of emails. Establish your end goal before you begin, and you will then be able to establish what types of emails you need to set up, who you should be sending to and how you want to address your audience and format your email template.

What might an automated email sequence look like if your end goal is an appraisal request?

You’d first consider your audience. 

You might want an audience of only your hottest potential sellers. In that case you only need to set up a single automated email. These contacts are already making a move in the market or are on the verge of doing so, so a single well-timed automated  appraisal email suits their needs.

Format your email so it looks like it’s coming directly from your inbox and focus on a call-to-action (in this case, probably ‘Request an Appraisal’). Providing a call-to-action increases your chances of conversion significantly. Specificity in your language and concise copy is also a must – Tell your contacts what they need to hear as quickly as possible.

If your audience is slightly cooler, build an email sequence that balances nurturing communication with actively lead generating content. A 2-month long automated appraisal campaign would look something like this:

• Your local sales results

• A call-to-action for a market report

• Evergreen selling guides and toolkits

• A call-to-action to catch up or request a call back with an agent

• An appraisal request

Clearly setting yourself up with goals makes it easier for you to determine the success of a campaign. Plus, starting with a purpose makes managing your contact targeting and your content a breeze.

Your Contacts

Sending an automated email to everyone on your database is unlikely to give you a high return, unless your goal is a high unsubscribe rate!

To minimise your chances of unsubscribes and increase your chances of successfully meeting your goals make sure to categorise your contacts. So, how do you manage the initial categorisation of your contacts to ensure you’re sending to the right people?

If you’re using a CRM you likely have mailing lists, categories or groups already set up, if you’re confident they’re up-to-date use them! But, if you’re not regularly updating these lists, don’t stress. There are other marketing tools at your disposal to categorise your contacts.

Surveys are a powerful tool. Regularly survey your engaged contacts to ensure they’re categorised correctly and receive relevant information from you. The beauty of surveying your contacts in iRealty, is that our contact profiling is then stored in our system so with the right filtering in place you won’t even have to update your automated emails to ensure the right people are receiving the right content.

Once you’ve established that you’re sending to the right people, the next step is to craft powerful copy to achieve your goals.

Your Words

You know why you’re sending your automated campaign and you know who you’re sending it to, but if you don’t have the right copy your automated emails could potentially make your contacts feel like just another number in your database.

Automated campaign content tends to have to balance two competing priorities:

1. It needs to be evergreen so it can be sent at any time throughout the year and it needs to be general enough that it can be sent to multiple people.

2. It needs to be personalised and tailored enough to accomplish your goals.

Once you’ve categorised your database, this becomes much easier. The key is to be as specific as possible. For instance, if you have contacts categorised by what suburbs they’re interested in, you can write more localised copy. If you have your contacts categorised by their level of market interest, the length of time since they last bought or sold property, even the length of time since they last spoke to you, your copy will vastly differ from category to category.

Let’s imagine you have a group of first home buyers who you know are interested in suburbs in North Brisbane. When setting up a Just Listed email alert to them you have plenty of opportunities to personalise. 

‘These opportunities have just hit the market and I immediately thought of you! They’re perfect for first home buyers, offer a great lifestyle in North Brisbane and they’re generating plenty of interest so I wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to make an offer or enquire.’  

This feels personal! The opportunities are tailored for this group of contacts, but the content remains evergreen because you haven’t mentioned a specific property or a specific timeframe. This means the same copy can go to a different group of first home buyers months and months down the track with an entirely different list of opportunities.

Your words should also draw people to the action you would like them to take. The above example asks contacts to enquire about the properties and creates a sense of urgency to do so. Our top tip: Focus on how the action you want your contacts to take benefits them!

With automation as part of your marketing toolkit the possibilities are endless. Not only are the possibilities endless, once you’ve set one automated email up – that’s it! You don’t have to worry about it again.

Just sit back, relax and let the leads come to you.