Automating Your Real Estate Email Marketing List Building
There’s a lot of power in building a solid, structured email marketing list. When done correctly, it’s a key part of building an email marketing strategy that allows you to send the right emails, to the right people, at the right time.
But because your email marketing database is made up of different types of people with different interests, sending out a blanket email newsletter to everyone isn’t enough to address the specific needs those people have. That’s where segmenting your database comes in.
Segmenting your database means breaking it into smaller groups based on the characteristics that matter to your marketing strategy, like transaction type, property type, lead source, or where someone is in the decision-making process. The more specific your segments are, the more targeted and effective your email marketing becomes.
But segmenting and managing your database manually is a lot of work, especially as your contact list grows. That’s where automation can help.
What Automated List Building Is
Automated list building is the process of using your email marketing platform to automatically create and maintain lists of contacts based on specific criteria you define.
Rather than manually sorting contacts into groups, you set up rules that automatically add contacts to the right list when they meet certain conditions. When new contacts enter your database, or when existing contacts take a new action, the automation handles the segmentation for you.
For example, automated list building allows you to:
- Automatically segment your database based on the actions contacts take on your website.
- Identify your most qualified and most engaged contacts without manual review.
- Build personalized email marketing experiences that speak to specific groups.
- Keep your lists current with minimal ongoing effort.
The result is that you can send more targeted, more relevant emails to each group, which leads to better open rates, better engagement, and better results from your email marketing overall.
★ Want to learn more about building and managing your email marketing database? Have a look at these posts:
- How (and Why) to Build a Real Estate Marketing Segmentation Strategy
- Why You Should Never Stop Building Your Email Marketing Database
- Building an Inbound Email Marketing Strategy
How to Set Up Automated Lists
The best place to start with automated list building is by identifying the characteristics and actions that define the contacts you want to group together, and then setting up rules in your email marketing platform that automatically build lists based on those criteria.
For example, you could automatically create a list of contacts based on whether they completed a home evaluation form on your website, downloaded a seller’s guide, or filled out a form that indicates they live in a specific area you serve.
You can also combine multiple criteria to build more specific, more qualified lists. For example:
A potential seller list could include contacts who downloaded your seller’s guide, live in your primary service area, and indicated they’re thinking about selling within the next year.
A highly engaged list could include contacts who are subscribed to your email newsletter, consistently open and engage with your emails, and have downloaded a resource from your website within a recent time period.
The more specific your automated lists are, the more targeted your email marketing can be. When you send an email to a list of people who share specific characteristics, the content of that email can speak directly to their situation, which makes it far more effective than a generic message sent to everyone.
When contacts meet the criteria you’ve defined, automated list building adds them to the right list automatically and continues to update the list in the background as new contacts come in or existing contacts take new actions. That means your lists are always current without requiring you to manually manage them.
Why Automated Lists Improve Your Marketing Results
When your email marketing lists are built and maintained through automation, every email you send can be tailored to a specific group of people based on what you know about them.
That means instead of sending one generic newsletter to your entire database, you can send targeted emails that are relevant to each group’s specific interests and situation. A contact who downloaded your seller’s guide gets information about the selling process. A contact who has been engaging with your content about first-time buying gets information relevant to that journey.
That kind of targeted, relevant communication produces better results across the board: higher open rates, higher engagement, more return visits to your website, and ultimately, more leads who reach out because your emails have been consistently providing value that’s specific to their situation.
Automated list building also plays a role in your broader inbound marketing strategy. Email marketing is one of the most effective tools for staying visible to the people who have already discovered your brand, and when your lists are automated and well-segmented, every email becomes a more precise touchpoint that keeps your brand present and reinforces the trust you’ve been building.
★ Want to learn more about email marketing and lead generation? Have a look at these posts:
- What to Do If You Have a Real Estate Lead Generation Problem
- Building a Lead Generation Strategy Through Education
- Creating a Returning Visitors Marketing Strategy
Automation Lets You Focus on Strategy
Building and managing your email marketing database manually is time-consuming, and as your database grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep everything organized and up to date.
Automation handles the operational side of list management, which frees you up to focus on the strategic side: what to send, when to send it, and how to make each email as valuable as possible to the people receiving it.
When set up properly, automated email marketing lists run in the background and continually update as your database evolves, making sure the right people are always in the right groups. That means every email campaign you send is more targeted, more relevant, and more likely to produce the kind of engagement that turns contacts into leads and leads into clients.
Want to get better, more qualified leads and build your authority? Our Inbound Marketing Guide is a walkthrough of the overall philosophy of inbound marketing, why it’s effective, and how you can build it into your own real estate marketing strategy to get better marketing results.
