6 Types of Email Marketing Home Builders and Developers Should Send

Email marketing is one of the most powerful, yet understated, practices in any home builder or developer’s marketing toolkit. Real estate email marketing is important because it provides an easy opportunity to reach relevant prospects, reignite interest or move leads further down the sales funnel. This quick, easy, cost-effective strategy often offers a high ROI and provides a fantastic way to stay top-of-mind for important target audiences.

Whether you’re addressing prospects or Realtors, emails provide a seamless opportunity to offer value through relevant company news, promotions, home availability updates and more. Not only does this content keep audiences engaged, but it enables home builders and developers to strengthen relationships and form stronger trust.

Every email you send should be mobile-friendly, engaging and, most importantly, personalized based on the audience. Personalizing email content allows home builders and developers to send the right information to the right people at the right time to achieve intended outcomes. Distributing tailored content to each of your audiences heightens the likelihood of opened emails, click-throughs and conversions.

Below, we’ll share why it’s important to distribute distinct emails and the essential types of email home builders and developers should send to appeal to their key audiences.

Why Do You Need to Send Different Types of Emails?

For home builders and developers, several key target audiences are critical to address including prospective buyers, realtors, and current homeowners. Each of these segments will respond differently to various email content. Each buyer is at a different stage in the sales funnel, which means that each message you deliver should specifically target different stages and contain personalized messages that recognize their position in their homebuying journey. Ultimately, homebuyers will notice when you demonstrate understanding of their interests and appreciate being seen as a valued customer.

Providing the right content to prospective buyers at the right time helps them move further through the funnel and brings them even closer to purchasing a home. Your potential buyers will likely take many different small steps and decisions that lead them along their homebuying journey, and making note of their engagement with your company – whether by downloading a brochure, viewing a virtual tour, seeking out specific information, etc. – will allow you to deliver more relevant emails to each prospect and engage them more effectively. Sending emails that genuinely interest your prospects will help you build connections more easily and also keep your company top-of-mind for buyers.

Segmenting your email marketing based on your audience can lead to incredible results. Let’s discuss the five different email categories home builders and developers should incorporate into their marketing strategy for success!

Brand Awareness Emails & Newsletters

When emailing homebuyers, home builders and developers must deliver a memorable first impression that paves the way for more engagement. For top-of-the-funnel buyers, it’s crucial to start simple with basic introductions to your company, homes and communities. These emails should concisely tell buyers who you are, what you do, what brand promise your company or communities offer, and why they should buy from you. This is your first chance to make a great impression and begin building relationships with homebuyers. As well as introducing your brand, you should also invite buyers to continue engaging with your company by including links to your website, social media pages and any other relevant content.

For first-time appeals for engagement, it’s also crucial to provide attention-grabbing visuals such as high-quality images, videos and other multimedia showcasing your offerings. If you offer amazing locations, spectacular homes, high-end amenities or another distinguishing feature, this is the perfect opportunity to place that information at the forefront of your message. This makes your content more appealing, while also helping it stand out against the many other potential home builder or developer emails that buyers receive.

Another great way to share insights from your brand is by distributing a monthly newsletter to new prospects. These messages can provide homebuying tips, guide prospects through your homebuilding experience, shares community news, etc. Delivering content that isn’t sales-related allows home builders and developers to showcase their expertise and provide another engagement touchpoint for their buyers.

Personalized/Relationship-Building Emails

After reeling in interested buyers, home builders and developers must find ways to keep them engaged. This stage offers a great time to learn more about your prospective buyers and discover how you can personalize messages to market to them better. It’s also important to distribute emails that allow you to form relationships with buyers and develop trust.

To start learning more about buyer interests, home builders and developers can send out preference or survey emails that prompt buyers to indicate their preferences and the content that appeals to them. Applicable questions to ask your leads include communities of interest, price range, time frame, budget and if they’re interested in taking a tour of your homes. These data collection emails enable home builders and developers to set up personalized messages triggered by buyer action of indicating their preferences. The more closely emails align with a buyer’s particular interests, the more likely they are to actively engage with the messages you send.

Along with sending personalized messages, builders and developers should explore additional email tactics that can help them build connections, effectively form greater trust and gain credibility with buyers. This can include educational or informative emails on homebuying tips, design trends and more that are relevant to their homes and communities. These emails should not only impact buyer perceptions of the brand but also provide the reassurance they need to move down the funnel and ultimately buy a home.

Lead Follow-Up Emails

After a lead takes action to learn more about your offering by exploring your website or reaching out to your team to ask questions or set up a tour, it’s essential to be prepared. Take advantage of this opportunity by putting follow-up emails in place to engage them.

It’s easy for your sales team to become overwhelmed with leads, but that’s no excuse for letting any prospective buyers slip through the cracks. That’s where automated messages come in to guarantee every interested lead receives some form of response. These emails can include more important details and further actions you want buyers to take, as well as promotional offers. Home builders and developers can also personalize these automated emails by creating auto-replies that deliver relevant content to the actions the buyer performed. If they downloaded a community brochure, sending an automated email that provides additional information about that development and invite them to visit by touring a model home is the perfect push to lead them further down the funnel.

These messages should be both relevant to each buyer and sent in a timely fashion. Setting up automated emails allows sales representatives to follow up with buyers within the critical 5 to 10-minute window after they take action.

Lead Re-Engagement Emails

Every home builder and developer knows that not every lead turns into a quick, easy sale. Sometimes the warm leads turn cold, but that shouldn’t mean you stop attempting to engage them. Instead, home builders and developers should use emails with fresh content to re-engage those cold leads who stop indicating interest in their homes or communities.

To determine which leads to target, take a look through your email recipients and make note of those who have stopped opening or engaging with your emails. Then, take a look at the previous email topics they did open and the content that effectively engaged them. Maybe they showed interest in new homes, specific communities, the design center, etc. This information can be used to your advantage to deliver enticing content to each cold lead and provide them with a new opportunity to continue their homebuying journey with your company.

In a new re-engagement email, include a message that indicates that you haven’t heard from them, asks if they need any assistance and provides content that previously sparked their interest (based on your investigative look at their engagement history). By demonstrating awareness of their interests, you can potentially bolster engagement, remind buyers of their interest in your company and convert a lead from cold to warm.

Realtor Engagement Emails

Building strong Realtor relations is a two-way street – the easier you make their job the easier they’ll make selling your homes to qualified buyers. Sending informational, in-depth emails to Realtors can significantly set you apart from other builders and developers.

One of the easiest ways to provide information to Realtors is by sending detailed inventory emails that list all of your available homes, as well as property selling points. If these lists are printable or downloadable, it’s even easier for Realtors to access this list and share your offerings with their potential buyers. Home builders and developers can also send Realtor emails that announce new and upcoming communities, provide details on buyer incentives, discuss new design options, share new floor plans, invite Realtors to exclusive events and more.

Reach out to Realtors and invite them to follow your brand on social media. Once they follow you, this offers a great opportunity to connect more easily with Realtors. The more Realtor connections you form, the more likely they will be to engage with your content and even share relevant posts to their feed and increase your reach.

Referral Emails

Even after home builders and developers successfully make sales, it’s important not to forget about your homeowners. Instead, it can be valuable to show them you care by keeping in contact. Remain a valuable resource for your previous buyers by sending out emails with relevant information and news. Content for happy homeowner emails can include home maintenance tips, upcoming community events and more.

By maintaining these homeowner connections, you can retain strong brand relationships and increase the likelihood of positive word-of-mouth occurrences, as well as achieve a greater brand reach. Along with providing helpful information, you can also actively request homeowner recommendations for new prospects through email marketing to help facilitate referrals. These messages can promote your homeowner referral program that offers some form of incentive for those who refer new buyers.

Get Started Sending Emails that Set You Up for Success

Home builder and developer emails should never be one size fits all! From prospective buyers, to engaged leads, cold leads, current homeowners, Realtors and more, there are several audiences that must receive distinctly engaging content depending on their needs, preferences and expectations. To achieve a successful email marketing ROI, home builders and developers must deliver a variety of emails that effectively target each type of buyer at different phase and benefit their Realtor relations.

We’ll help you each the right audiences at the right time with the right message. Get started implementing email marketing practices that will set you up for new home sales success by contacting our team today!