The Advantages of Email to Your CRE Growth – and 5 Best Practices

This guest post is part of a series on the topic of online lead generation for CRE brokers and firms. It is written by Greg Schraff, Managing Director, digetry, LLC – digital strategy and marketing company. The Massimo Group has had much success working with digetry related to their digital strategies.

There are three primary advantages of using email for marketing and business growth. They are: 1) to establish yourself as a credible thought leader, 2) to promote your product and services, and 3) to reinforce your brand and keep you top of mind in the sales process.

Speaking of the sales process, what is the best way to use email for the ultimate goal of your marketing efforts – that of generating qualified sales leads and converting these leads into clients? To answer this question, we have to first look at what email is not particularly good for.

Email is not very effective in trying to attract attention to your business. Nobody wants to receive an unsolicited email, and practically speaking, until you’ve captured a lead you don’t have anyone to send an email to anyway.

On the other hand, email is much more effective when used in trying to convert and close a prospect.

At this point in the sales cycle, you have already qualified the lead and the objective now is to turn this prospect into a client.

Email can also be very effective once someone becomes a client: use email to create loyalty by delighting your clients with information and insights that they find valuable and useful.

Here are five best practices when it comes to using email to grow your business:

1. Define a clear goal for your email
2. Segment your recipient list
3. Personalize where appropriate
4. Focus on engagement
5. Test and analyze

In future posts on the subject email marketing we’ll look at all of these five practices in detail, but today’s blog is about best practice #1:  Define a clear goal for your email.

Define a Clear Goal for Your Email

Like all elements of your marketing, it is very important that you focus your efforts. Don’t try to be everything to everyone, and keep your message to one topic at a time. This applies to email as well.

Have a single goal or focus for each email, and include one action that you want the reader to take – the one thing you want the reader to do as a result of reading your email.

Here are some examples of goals for your emails (and intended actions):

Fill Out a Survey

Create an email with the goal of conducting a survey on a topic of interest to your target audience. The email contains a link which launches the survey.

Read More Content

Create an email that contains a partial blog post (like this one), with a link to the full blog post on your website, or a section of a larger piece of content, such as an e-book, white paper, or offer that the reader can download.

Register For a Webinar

Send an email to leads who have expressed an interest in a specific element of your product or service for which you can produce a webinar or a “lunch & learn”.

Request a Free Consultation

Send an email to leads that you can segment as being in the “consideration” phase of the sales cycle. For these folks, additional information that meets their needs will get them to more seriously evaluate your solution. For example, the Massimo Group offers free consults in several ways – click here for just one example.

Receive a Custom Quote

Send an email to leads that you can identify as being ready to move into the “buy” stage of the client buying cycle. Talking price will cause them to start thinking critically about making the investment.

Let me know if you found this approach to email marketing useful, and comment on how you have effectively used email for your marketing and sales efforts!

Do you know the difference between cold calling and campaign-based, targeted prospecting? The difference is huge. In this FREE, 3-part Mini-Course Rod will take you through the exact pieces needed to create a prospecting campaign that will: target your ideal prospects, warm them up before the call, and give you the best chance to win their business! You can watch the mini-course here.