In part 1 of this article I discussed ways you can get prospects who visit your website to sign up for your email mailing list and what information to send them.  This is very important as building your email database should be the main reason you have a website.  So here are some further tips about how to get people signing up for your mailing list.

Tell What They’ll Get And When

The value add of your updates to your mailing list should be your real estate expertise and your daily immersion in your areas’s real estate market.  People simply don’t have the time to scour the internet for the properties they want on a daily basis for the week or months they’re researching or actively seeking a home, so this should be the primary service you offer your mailing list.  The same applies to real estate information on the areas your prospects are looking at.  Your daily involvement in the local real estate market allows you to look for and ferret out the most interesting information and articles that your prospects would probably otherwise not hear about.  It’s no good just emailing them generic information about the region’s real estate market found on many websites because they could do this themselves.   If that’s what you’re sending them, you’ll probably have very low open rates on your emails and eventually spam complaints.

So in the area of your website where you ask for visitors to sign up for your mailing list, be very specific about exactly what information you’ll send them.  It’s even better if you can offer them the option of receiving listing updates or local real estate info or both.

It’s also important to state the frequency of how often you’ll send them information.  It’s a good idea to send listing updates more regularly (eg. 1-2 times per week) than newsletter type information on the local area (eg.  1-2 times per month).  Less is definitely more when it comes to newsletters.  If you send your recipients newsletters once per week, you’ll be overloading your recipients with information and risk not being read at all.  I’ve noticed the mailing lists who send me updates only once every month or two tend to get read, whereas the ones who are constantly sending me special offers and discounts two to three times per week never get read by me.

Have A Privacy Policy

With so much spam these days, people know they’re getting it in part because their contact info traded amongst companies.  They know giving out their email address to the wrong company can turn a neat and tidy email inbox into a spam clogged nuisance.  So promise anyone interested in signing up for your email list you won’t give out their contact info under any circumstances to any other person or business.

Learn more about converting prospects in your email database into clients by taking my course The Awesome Power Of Email.  This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 4 credits.