Real Estate Marketing Automation: Our Guide
Marketing Automation for Real Estate
Marketing Automation refers to a software or platform that allows Marketing and Sales to automate repetitive and everyday tasks in order to improve engagement with buyers and customers and increase department efficiency. Depending on the software you choose, it can also perform processes such as customer segmentation and customer data integration as well as campaign management.
In the real estate industry, marketing automation is used to stay top of mind with buyers by way of automated, timely campaigns and automated follow up and marked completed Actions recording a buyer’s information and stage in the sales cycle. When choosing the right marketing automation tool for your real estate company, making sure there is a lead‑nurturing CRM component is also important:
How Marketing Automation Works
Put simply, it automates Marketing and Sales tasks. However, there are two major goals of marketing automation that need to be differentiated before we dive into the How and Why automate. That is, the difference between using marketing automation for lead generation and lead nurturing.
Marketing Automation can generate an initial buzz or push to prospective buyers or customers on a much larger scale and help you build your email and remarketing list of interested and qualified leads. This generation can take place by email campaigns, social media, display marketing, and even by automating blog or post content on your website to generate organic traffic and leads.
Captured leads are then aggregated into one place and distributed to Sales, if they are sales ready, and entered into a workflow that alerts Sales of actions taken, automates follow‑up, enters the lead into a drip campaign, and remarkets the product or community they are interested in by way of emails, social media, and banner ads.
On average, 8 out of 10 leads aren’t sales ready. However, these leads have now already been introduced to your brand and your product. While Sales is following up more diligently with the 2 leads that are sales ready, marketing automation follows up with the remaining 8 (consequently the larger portion of leads) and nurtures them to sale with less effort.
Why Choose Marketing Automation Over Manual Marketing?
The odds of qualifying a lead is 21x higher if contacted within the first 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after a lead submits their information according to a 3‑year study by Lead Response Management Study. And 60x more likely than if a company waits 24 hours. If you’re getting a good amount of leads, follow‑up can be a very daunting task and even impossible if you don’t have a large enough sales team. Marketing automation guarantees timely and continuous follow‑up, provides more insight into the actions a buyer takes, and helps your Sales team manage a multi‑touch sales process effectively. In turn, converting more leads to sales.
List Verification and Email Deliverability
Another important thing to note as you set up your email marketing calendar and start automating campaigns and follow up is keeping your list clean. Great content and automation can only take your campaigns so far. If your emails are unable to reach a user’s inbox due to a lack of list management or undeliverable emails, you will not see a desirable open or click‑through rate.
- Having a clean and up‑to‑date list will ensure your users are ready to engage and ensure a higher delivery rate.
- Using the recommended minimum 60% text and maximum 40% image ratio and avoiding spam words in your subject lines will also help deliverability.
Choosing a marketing automation system that integrates with a list verification service and spam testing tool will take your campaigns one step further – that is, inbox by inbox further. A clean list and non‑spammy emails will also keep your IP Address in good standing with popular email clients. If your IP address develops a poor reputation, it may get blacklisted by clients like Gmail, Apple iPhone, and Yahoo – about 57% of email client market share.
Choosing SmartTouch® NexGen for Your Real Estate Marketing Automation
SmartTouch® NexGen was created by real estate marketers for real estate marketers. It combines the power of marketing automation and a lead‑nurturing CRM to improve the productivity of both your Marketing and Sales teams.
The automation component helps the Marketing team generate and nurture leads through the typical 6‑12 month new home decision process – sending targeted and timely emails, and allowing for the tracking and scoring of a buyer’s interests via clicks, form submissions, and website visits in real time.
The CRM component gains Sales full transparency into a lead’s activities in real‑time by recording and alerting Sales via email when a lead takes action. With SmartTouch® NexGen, your Sales team can easily manage buyer relationships and automate messaging all in one place. Helping them focus on the most important goal – selling homes.