Email marketing is a crucial tool for real estate success because you can keep your clients engaged, establish trust, and generate valuable leads.
However, your perfect listing means nothing if your email goes unopened. So, how do you make sure your audience doesn’t ignore your messages? By writing stand-out email subject lines for real estate.
Whether you’re trying to connect with buyers, sellers, investors, or past clients, your subject line is the key factor that determines whether they even open your message. A strong subject line helps ensure your message isn’t lost in the sea of other promotional emails cluttering each recipient’s inbox.
In this guide, learn how to write compelling subject lines for real estate that will take your marketing campaigns to the next level.
Why subject lines matter in real estate
The subject line is your chance to catch your recipients’ attention, so don’t waste it.
The modern real estate inbox
Your clients probably direct promotional emails, like property emails, to a dedicated folder in their inbox. There, your messages are competing with emails from major listing sites and other companies sending marketing emails. You need to make your message stand out with a unique or interesting subject line.
Also, keep in mind that many of your clients are probably browsing their inboxes on mobile devices. You only get minimal space on the screen for your message’s subject line and preview text on mobile devices, so you have to use it wisely.
The real impact on your business
The average open rate for real estate marketing emails is 36.22%, which is just below the average across all industries, 37.27%. Higher open rates mean more chances for conversions.
Every email that clients ignore because the subject line isn’t compelling enough is a missed opportunity. And in real estate, those missed opportunities can be costly. Focus on crafting subject lines tailored to your specific audiences to increase the chances they open your message.
Know your real estate audience
To create effective email marketing campaigns, you need to understand what drives your target audience. The more relevant and targeted your subject lines are, the better your emails will perform.
Different client groups
You can segment your email list into several distinct groups of clients. Real estate businesses typically have clients that fit into the following groups:
- Active buyers: These clients are actively shopping for homes from your business.
- Active sellers: These are people who are actively trying to sell their home through your business.
- First-time homebuyers: A subset of active buyers, these clients have never bought a home before and may have unique needs or requirements.
- Investors: These are the clients interested in buying or selling investment properties.
- Past clients: These clients may not be actively buying or selling a home, but they’re still part of your subscriber base.
- Referral network: People in this category aren’t clients themselves but may refer clients to your real estate business.
What motivates each group
Each of these groups has different needs, preferences, and motivations for working with your real estate business. A message that is relevant and persuasive to one group may be totally beside the point to people in another group. As you’re writing your marketing emails and subject lines, keep in mind each group’s different motivations regarding factors like:
- Market timing concerns
- Investment opportunities
- Neighborhood insights
- Property value updates
For example, investors would probably be more interested in getting property value updates than first-time homebuyers. Using email marketing tools like Constant Contact, you can easily segment your list into different client groups and create targeted campaigns tailored to their specific goals and interests.
Writing subject lines that work
Writing one little line of text should be easy, right? Even though email subject lines are short, getting them right can still be tricky. Don’t worry if you’re struggling a bit to write subject lines that work. Try these guidelines and tricks for creating successful subject lines for real estate.
Your subject line can determine whether your message even gets delivered to your recipients. If you include spam words or deceptive tactics, your email may be caught in spam folders and never reach the inboxes. Avoid spam trigger words like:
- Best rates
- Save big money
- Incredible deal
- For just $X,
- Miracle
- No catch
- No strings attached
Then, if you avoid spam filters, your subject line is what can make your email stand out and get readers to open the message. Inboxes are crowded, so subject lines should speak to the audience’s needs or interests. Remember, a clever or intriguing subject line can be just what you need to make sure your message gets noticed by a buyer.
Basic formula for success
There are a few basic guidelines that will help you craft successful email subject lines for real estate. Keep these elements in mind.
- Stick to length guidelines: Less is more when it comes to subject lines. Stay below 40 characters to ensure your text doesn’t get cut off in recipients’ inboxes. Plenty of people will just skim the first few words, so make them count.
- Add a sense of urgency: Infusing some urgency into your subject line can give recipients the extra push they need to open your emails. Just don’t overdo it, or your messages can start to look like spam. Try phrases like “Limited time offer,” “Last chance,” and “Expires soon!”
- Include personal touches: Personalized subject lines that include the recipient’s name or other details can help your email stand out. They make the recipients feel like you value them, increasing the odds they’ll engage with your messages.
- Keep subject lines relevant: Even when you’re using humor or other techniques to level up your subject lines, they should still be relevant to the audience and the email content. Don’t get so carried away with the style of your subject lines that you lose the substance.
- Ask questions: Some of the best subject lines are questions because they leave the reader wanting to know the answer. Intrigue them with a question, then answer it with your email content.
- Use emojis: More and more brands are using emojis to add a pop of color and interest to their subject lines. Since most inboxes are mostly full of plain text, emojis can help grab your recipients’ attention. Just stick to one or two, though, and stay professional.
- Front-load key information: The most important information should be at the beginning of your subject line to make sure the recipients see it. For example, if your email is talking about a limited-time offer, state that time limit first.
Also, incorporate action words that resonate in real estate whenever you can in your subject lines. Try words and phrases like “explore properties,” “view availability,” and “talk to an agent.”
Practical templates
When you are crafting emails, you can use templates to save time and maintain consistent branding for messages you send regularly, such as:
- New listing announcements
- Price change alerts
- Market updates
- Open house invitations
- Client success stories
- Investment opportunities
When you craft templated messages, remember to edit the subject lines appropriately. For example, when sending invitations to an open house, make sure to change the address if you are using a subject line like, “You’re Invited: Open House at X Address.”
You can find hundreds of pre-designed email templates you and your customers will love in Constant Contact. Once you find a template you want to use, just drag and drop elements to fully customize it to your real estate business.
Common mistakes to avoid
There are a few ways real estate brands often go wrong when writing their subject lines. Try to avoid these common mistakes.
Over-promising
As much as you might be tempted to write something grand and incredible as a subject line, only do so if your email content can actually meet that high bar. Avoid overpromising in your subject line and underdelivering in your content. Sure, you’ll probably get lots of recipients to open your message, but when the content doesn’t live up to the subject line, you’ll damage your customers’ trust.
Vague property descriptions
Sometimes, real estate brands try to appeal to as many customers as possible by using vague property descriptions in their subject lines. The problem is that these vague descriptions are too general to catch people’s interest in their inboxes.
Poor timing
If location is everything in real estate, timing is everything in marketing. Even with the perfect subject line and body content, your message will only drive great results if you send it at the right time.
Do some research to figure out when your target audience is most active in their inboxes. For example, if you’re trying to connect with professional investors, that might be in the morning on weekdays. By contrast, first-time homebuyers may be more likely to open your messages in the evenings after work. Then, send your messages during those peak times to maximize engagement.
Test and improve your results
As much as it would be great to write perfect subject lines on the first try, that’s probably not realistic. You’ll need to do some trial and error to see what types of subject lines work best with your target audience.
Run some tests, analyze the results of your campaigns, and gather insights so you can improve your marketing emails over time.
Simple testing methods
A/B testing is one of the best ways to quickly determine which subject lines work best for your brand. In A/B testing, you change one element of an email and send the two versions to two sample audiences. Then, you compare the results from those two emails and proceed with the one that performed better.
When you’re evaluating subject lines, keep an eye on metrics like:
- Open rates: The percentage of people who opened the message
- Bounce rates: The percentage of messages that “bounced” and did not arrive in the recipient’s inbox
- Click-through rates: The percentage of people who opened the message and clicked on at least one link
- Spam complaints: The number of complaints you received about your message being spam
Messages with stronger subject lines will have higher open and click-through rates and lower bounce rates and spam complaints.
Learning from results
Beyond A/B testing, you should also learn from the results of your previous campaigns. Open rates are the best gauge of how strong your subject lines are. When the open rate on a message is high, that tells you the subject line stood out to your recipients and intrigued them enough to get them to open the email.
Compare the open rates on your campaigns to the industry average and your previous performance. Ideally, your open and click-through rates will improve over time as you learn what works best with your audience. Some subject lines probably just won’t click with them, though, and that’s okay.
Make a note of the subject lines from both high and low-performing messages. Try to find patterns that explain why some messages had higher open and engagement rates than others, and adjust your approach accordingly. Every message you send can offer valuable insights for future campaigns if you analyze your results. Constant Contact’s email tracking software makes it easy to track these valuable metrics so you can build on your successes and learn from subject line mishaps.
Putting it all together
Effective email marketing campaigns start with compelling subject lines. Tailor your email content to each of your different client groups so they’re more relevant and engaging. Resources like 6 Ways to Personalize Subject Lines in Your Emails and Email Marketing Guide for Real Estate Agents can help.
And for a head start on your next campaign, try Constant Contact’s email marketing software to help you with email templates, segmentation, personalization, and reporting.
