Like it or not, email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. It remains a great marketing tool and an essential channel for cost-effective communication, especially in the home building industry. Home building services enjoy an open rate of 34.15% for emails, much higher than the 29.87% average across industries.
With an engaged and receptive email audience, it would be crazy for home builders not to use email marketing. If you are a home builder and haven’t started email marketing, don’t worry and follow these three easy, simple steps.
Step 1: Develop Your Email Marketing Strategy
Sending emails with a plan is effective and helps your credibility with buyers. Take the time to develop a strategic plan to guide your campaigns’ design, content, and measurement. Think about the following things when creating your email marketing strategy:
Your Target Audiences
A more than one-size approach for email marketing is needed. It’s vital to create tailored information based on your audience’s needs. Most builder audiences include several groups like prospective buyers, realtors, and current homeowners.
Your Goals
Define what your goals will be for measuring performance. Look at your industry’s email averages and use them as starting benchmarks.
Your Email Marketing Campaign
There are plenty of emails you can send. Will you be sending a monthly newsletter? Will you send a promotional email about your services? Think about your target audiences and decide what’s best for them.
Your Schedule
Decide how often you plan to send an email to your mailing list, whether weekly, monthly or somewhere between. Whatever schedule you choose, make sure to stay consistent.
Step 2: Build Your Email List
Building and maintaining an active subscriber list will give you the highest ROI when it’s full of people who opted-in to receive your messages. There are lots of ways to build your email lists, but here are a few that work best:
Create a Signup Form on Your Website
When people come to your website for the first time and are interested in the homes you are building or your services, they’ll want a way to stay in the know about your brand. Create a signup form on your website to collect customer data from your visitors.
Use a Signup Sheet
Whether at your show house, design center, or event. When surrounded by people interested in what you do, provide the opportunity for them to sign up and learn more.
Use Social Media
If you have an engaged social media following, tap into that resource to see your email list grow. Share your signup form on your social media.
Source: Constant Contact
If you’re thinking, “why in the world would anyone sign up for my email list?” that’s some good insight. No one wants your newsletter only.
What they do want is content that’s meaningful or helpful to them in some way. So put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What might entice them to hand over their email address? Here are some ways to get people to sign up for your emails:
Offer a discount to a first-time customer
Offer a free resource, like an ebook or a guide
Run a promotional contest
Run surveys or quizzes
Offer a free course
Step 3: Design Your First Email Campaign
The next step is to design your first email campaign, which should be a welcome series. Why? So you can introduce the new subscriber to your brand, build trust, and foster a relationship.
Here are two emails to include in your automated welcome series.
Welcome/Delivery Email
Send this Welcome email immediately after someone signs up for your email. Deliver the discount or other incentive you promised your new subscriber, welcome them, and reiterate what they should expect in the future.
Source: Constant Contact
Invitation to Connect
Send this email a few days after your Welcome email. Let your new contacts know of the other ways in which they can engage with you, such as your social channels, and invite them to connect.
This email is important because once your subscribers connect with you in other locations, you have multiple ways to engage and stay top of mind.
Source: Constant Contact
Conclusion
These three simple steps will help you get on the right path to email marketing for your home-building business. Continue to follow your email marketing strategy, be consistent, and always look to optimize your emails. If you need more help getting started, contact MMortal Marketing today.