Okay grammarians, we have some groundbreaking news for you. Take a deep breath. This might shake the foundations upon which you so eloquently express your insight and ideas:
In your email marketing for new real estate leads, write like an 8th grader.
Seriously. We aren’t trying to steer anyone into language degradation — there are many reasons for this, the most important of which is getting results for you.
It turns out, most people talk and communicate on what would be labeled as the writing level of an 8th grader—having a firm grasp of the language while paying no heed to formalities—until they decide to publish something. It’s not that we don’t know how to talk more eloquently or communicate in a formal manner; it’s just that we don’t do it unless we have to.
When you’re trying to convince someone to use your services, your best bet is to start off talking to them the way they want to communicate — not the way Strunk and White tells them they should.
What’s that look like in the day-to-day of your email marketing?
It’s okay to use words like “things” “stuff” and “got”. As Entrepreneur Magazine so aptly pointed out in its July Issue, look at the copy on Dropbox’s homepage.
Here’s another mover and shaker — end a sentence with a preposition. Just do it. Coming from a stringent grammarian, it definitely gave me a rush. You can even start using dashes — and ellipses…
Granted, this is a blog post, not an email drip, but I think you get the point of how engaging it is to step outside of the box when it comes to punctuation and word choice.
Here’s another pro-tip: When we prepare our email marketing, the 2nd person voice is the most important perspective we can employ.
It’s the fastest way to start a conversation and engage readers. Most of us don’t identify ourselves as “home buyers” or “home sellers” right away — we only fit into those categories for a few months relative to our entire lifespan. Even though it doesn’t take a long time to figure out whether or not we’re homebuyers or homesellers, you don’t want to add a single mental blockade between your audience and your services.
For example, take the phrase: “Helping homebuyers become homeowners.” Your services are conditional to homebuyers, and your recipients have to determine “At this moment, am I a homebuyer?” “Am I the right kind of homebuyer for this service?” and “Am I at the right point in the homebuying process to be the homebuyer this refers to?”
But using the 2nd person “you” — that’s someone your recipients have always been and always will be. No matter where they are in the process of buying a home — “you” still applies to them, and they know you will help them whenever they’re ready.
See how engaging that is?
If we want to compel an audience to use our products or services, we need to get on their level — which is casual, approachable, and leaves no room for mis-translation.
Third and final point: Shorten it. (That’s our email marketing version of Thoreau’s “Simplify. Simplify.”)
Look at your business and services. Think everything over and ask yourself — how do my clients’ lives improve when they work with me?
The response to this question should be the foundation of every communication you share with your prospects. Paint the image directly in front of them of how their lives will get better when they work with you. It takes all of the thinking and analysis off their plate and starts the conversation where they say, “That improvement to my life is what I want. How will you do it for me?”
Email marketing isn’t a collegiate thesis paper where you have to explain what you do, how you do it, and why it’s important point by point — just show the benefits you offer. This approach places the ball in your recipients’ court for them to ask, “How?”
At that point, you get to display all of your tools and strategies that will convince them you’re the #1 Real Estate Agent who will serve exactly what they need.
Email marketing for real estate isn’t rocket science — it’s communicating in a human way through a human platform (which is EXACTLY what we help our clients do).