Understanding Email Marketing’s Potential For Real Estate Professionals Part 1

January 15, 2010

“The beginning is the most important part of any work … for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken” – Plato

Email marketing is one of the least used yet most effective and inexpensive ways of marketing to your target real estate market.  Yet many real estate professionals don’t understand it, so they don’t use it.  This article series will dispel the myths and prejudices surrounding email marketing and vividly demonstrate how it can deliver results for you and your real estate business.

Email has existed in some form or another long before the internet as we know it even began.  In fact, email helped give birth to the internet.  Email started thanks to two titans of America’s computing and technology world: America’s oldest computer technology company, IBM and the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT), America’s premier technology university.  MIT first demonstrated their Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) in 1961.  It allowed multiple users to log into the IBM 7094 mainframe computer from remote dial-up terminals, and to store files online on disk. This new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-mail formally started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of this mainframe computer to communicate.

Since then, we all know email has evolved greatly and it can massively help your real estate business.  I truly feel it has the potential for being the most sophisticated form of marketing in the world if done properly.

Yet email is the most misunderstood and abused aspect of the internet. The most pervasive myth about the internet is that email marketing to lots of people is inherently bad.  ‘Lots’ is a relative term: it could mean contacting hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people via email.  The people with this prejudice against mass email are what I call the church of email marketing.  The internet’s greatest irony is the vast majority of the internet powers that be have their collective heads stuck in the sand.  They’re very ignorant about email marketing’s potential, the very thing that helped create the internet!  Just imagine thousands of ostriches in a hot, dry desert with their heads stuck in the sand and you can grasp the absurdity of the situation.  It would look like an ostrich cult, and that’s why I call these people and businesses the church of email marketing.  Salvador Dali and other surrealist painters would love to paint this scene.

Filed under: Using Email For Attracting Buyers/Sellers

Tags: branding, email inquiries, email newsletter, email prospects, email subject line, email training tips, marketing, prospect, prospecting, real estate email newsletter, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing tips, real estate internet training, real estate training, realtor education, realtor email newlsetter