Real Estate email marketing campaigns that target high-net-worth investors are one of your most valuable tools to reach new prospective investors and drive future business.
That may be hard to believe as our email inboxes consistently fill up with messages from businesses vying for our attention, how can any one message stand out as clickable?
Well, paradoxically, we know that email marketing works precisely because we get so much email – businesses are using it because it moves the needle.
As a real estate syndicator trying to grow your business, you should be using email marketing regularly (ideally, monthly) to target high-net-worth investors. In fact, 92% of online adults use email and 99% of email users check their messages up to 20 times a day.
When creating email marketing campaigns that target high-net-worth investors, keep in mind the following six tips:
- Craft a compelling subject line.
- Use an effective email template.
- Create an attractive design.
- Establish the right tone and content.
- Include a call to action.
- Develop a system for managing leads.
After 25-plus years conducting public relations and marketing campaigns that help real estate clients reach their business objectives, Brower Group knows how to use email marketing to capture attention and viable leads. We recommend the following email marketing strategies to help real estate syndicators attract accredited investors.
1 – Craft a compelling subject line
Because your email only has a moment to grab a busy investor’s attention, the subject line is crucial. It’s the first thing they’ll see, and it can make the difference between them opening your message or deleting it.
Subject lines should be short and to the point, yet intriguing.
Avoid sensationalistic language, unnecessary punctuation, hard-to-read fonts, and emojis in the subject line, as these may land your message in recipients’ spam or junk folder – or in the trash when they decide not to open them.
Compelling subject lines speak directly to what matters to that recipient and offer to solve their pain points.
For example, “Investments That’ll Elevate Your Portfolio” or “Alternative Categories Smart Investors Should Consider” will pique interest and encourage opens.
2 – Use an effective email template
There are various template formats you can use throughout your email marketing campaign, depending on the purpose of each email you’re sending. The goal of each template is to drive people to you and your website and encourage them to contact you for more information when they’re ready to invest, as well as to provide leads for your client pipeline.
Introductory email
For lead generation, you’ll want to send an introductory email to accredited investors. Although your goal is to let them know who you are and what your firm does, you will want to start your outreach with value to the reader.
Rather than simply advertising your services, offer a benefit to the reader in this introductory email by including a link to something educational on your website they can click on if interested in learning more.
As an example, your email template can open with “If you’ve considered investing in real estate to truly diversify your investments, please click here to read our article about ‘How real estate can add value to your portfolio.’”
Add a short contact form (name, email address, area of interest) they can fill out and submit in order to download a white paper, report, or article you’ve written. That way, you can capture their information as a warm lead for future emails or to follow up with in some other way.
Follow-up email
A second lead-gen email template you can use is a “follow-up” format to your introductory email. In this format, you can say, “We saw you liked our article about how real estate can add value to your portfolio. Here’s a link to another article you might like on the tax ramifications of real estate Opportunity Zones.”
You should have several articles on your website that can be read by site visitors. You can point to these in your follow-up emails as being helpful to investors who are new to real estate investing. The articles can discuss why and how this type of investment works, how to select a trusted sponsor, how to create product type and geographic diversity, etc.
Through posting these articles on your site and repurposing them to create multiple email items as needed, you are positioning yourself as a source of information and education as well as a trusted expert they can turn to when they are ready to invest.
New opportunity email
A third type of email template to attract accredited investors is a “new opportunity” format. Here, you are letting them know about an investment or fund available that’s now open to investors. If they’re interested, they can learn more about it on your website or contact you directly through the email. These templates should carry the most information about your firm so that the readers can be comfortable with your approach to real estate, your track record, etc.
3 – Create an attractive design
The design aesthetic of your email template is just as important as your subject line in attracting high-net-worth investors to open and read them.
No one wants to delve into an email that is too word-dense or looks dated. Go for a fresh, eye-catching template with visuals (pictures, charts, color, GIFs, and video clips) that make it pop and still look professional.
There are some great, easy-to-use content-creation platforms like Lumen5, which allow you to craft and customize your own videos, and Canva, on which you can create fun and engaging GIFs. Do keep videos short and informational and GIFs tasteful and on-brand if you go this route.
Speaking of on-brand, be sure your template accurately reflects your brand identity and that the design is consistent in each email.
Use the colors in your logo, as well as the logo itself, and match the design to your website’s aesthetic if possible. Keep the look simple and the font size large enough and easily readable. If design is not your expertise, an experienced marketing consultant can help you create the perfect email template. (See here an email template Brower created for a client. You can also gather some great design ideas from MailChimp.)
4 – Establish the right tone and content for your real estate marketing emails
The tone of your emails can either repel or attract investors.
Effective emails utilize relatable language in a conversational style that demonstrates a business’ expertise without being dry.
When crafting content, keep it engaging and interesting. Pretend you’re at a cocktail party and tell an interesting story that launches into a discussion about investing. You might even recount a personal anecdote about how investment in real estate has helped you to grow and preserve wealth.
Here’s a good example of this: “When I saw the Porsche Panamera, my eyes popped. It was then I realized I wanted to increase my wealth, but I didn’t know how.”
For these stories, consider other topics that might also resonate with high-net-worth individuals. For example, many affluent investors are also collectors and connoisseurs, so weaving in references to art, jewelry or wine could spike their interest level.
Ultimately, you want to be educational and informative rather than promotional, although a marketing professional can help you weave in subtle messages about your company that don’t feel promotional.
Because a major goal for your content is to drive traffic to your website, rather than running an entire blog post in your email, post a snippet and link back to the full article on your website.
5 – Include a call to action
A key function of any email marketing campaign is encouraging your audience to take action. Typically, the action you want them to take is to contact you or visit your website to learn more about you and your company. This is achieved by a call to action.
Calls to action in an email marketing campaign can take several forms. You can include all of the tactics below in each email you send out to high-net-worth investors, including:
- links to your website content, such as blog posts, e-books, white papers to download, and/or upcoming or recorded webinars
- links to your email address
- links to your social media pages
- your phone number
- a specific request somewhere within the email – typically at the bottom – for them to contact you for more information.
The easier you make it for people to connect with you, the more likely they are to do it. Each time you offer your audience an opportunity to reach out in your emails, you are increasing the effectiveness of this tool many times over.
6 – Develop a system for managing your leads
Email marketing campaigns can be extremely useful for generating leads for future business. You should be constantly replenishing your lead pipeline, and a targeted email campaign can help.
Programs like Constant Contact give you data you can analyze to learn who is receiving and opening each email and how that might change from month to month. You can also track the overall rate of the percentage of people who open the emails, as well as the number of clicks you obtain from those who did open it. This will show you if your content is attracting people and properly encouraging action.
If you’re looking for high-net-worth investors to add to your dissemination list, you can buy email lists from companies that identify affluent neighborhoods where these investors live or even partner with a magazine that targets your audience to have them send your email to their subscribers.
Equally important to everything above, be sure to have a system for handling any leads that are generated by your email campaign.
This means setting up a process for answering the phone, responding to emails in a timely manner, and sending out follow-up information about your services. It also means saving the leads you gain and having a process in place for nurturing those relationships on an ongoing basis.
Email marketing campaigns are a highly valuable tool for reaching and engaging with accredited investors. If you craft a compelling subject line, use an effective template, create an attractive design, establish the right tone and content, include a call to action, and develop a system for managing your leads, you can create email marketing campaigns that will drive business well into the future.
And now that you have your emails ideas in place, see here 4 Real Estate Marketing Strategies that you can start applying now!