We’ve entered 2022 and email marketing for estate agents is an effective strategy for reaching an audience as ever. Explore the ins and outs of optimising email communication, to improve open and click-through rates within your agency.

Whether to present properties, engage in re-marketing, or simply offer great content, email marketing is an effective communication strategy within the property industry. 

With data gathered throughout 2021 - across their many platforms - Popular Email marketing service providers have been able to identify email performance rates for different industries. 

In 2021 the property industry experienced an open rate of 21.7%. In today's blog, we dive into the significance of this figure alongside click-through rates, and Mail Protection Privacy.

Understanding The Benchmarks:

As previously mentioned, popular Email marketing service providers analysed over 100-billion emails across their many digital platforms, revealing that the property industry experienced an average open rate of 21.7%. 

With the property industry experiencing a surge in 2021, the category of  ‘Real Estate, Design & Construction’ had a click-to-open rate of 17.2%, making it the highest when compared to other industries. 

To understand how your agency is performing, it’s imperative to treat both of these figures as competitive benchmarks. They reveal how your agency operated within the email marketing landscape, and where you may need future improvement.

How Mail Privacy Protection Impact’s Estate Agents:

‘Mail Privacy Protection’ (MPP) was a privacy feature designed and released by Apple in 2021. Essentially user’s can agree to this feature, which then pre-fetches an email and it’s images - including tracking pixels - in turn marking an email as opened and affecting open rates. 

Open rates effectively become “inflated” , as users utilising the MPP feature will have devices that are pre-downloading images. Email service providers take image download into their email rate calculations and this will paint the picture to your agency that your emails are being opened more than they actually are. 

Automations can be subsequently affected, as if you had follow-up automations triggered by email opens,  this is now a misguided step as the user may not have actually done this themselves. 

Segmentation alongside geographical tracking also experiences MPP effects. With misconstrued open rates, creating an engaged segmented audience becomes a lot tougher. Moreover, MPP masks IP addresses, making it harder to perform localised emailing. 

Here are some ways to overcome the obstacles of ‘Mail Protection Privacy’:

Redefine subscriber engagement: Shift from open rates to a focus on click-through rates and delivery rate, which are both clear indicators of engagement and the email hitting the inbox. 

Survey & CTA Heavy Campaigns: Upgrade your campaigns to host surveys and CTA’s that encourage engagement as opposed to simple scrolling. 

Analytic Tools: Utilise available analytic tools that identify more credible information, such as where users are specifically coming from and the actions they take on your agency’s website. 

Audit Your Audience: With MPP being active already for nearly 5 months, it is crucial you go over already segmented audiences which may have been affected by unreliable figures.

Just Ask: Never forget you can always just explicitly ask for first person data. For example, including a location field on sign-up forms.  

Overcoming The Benchmarks: 

At Starberry we take pride in supporting estate agents towards their email marketing goals. We believe with a digital push in the right direction, estate agents can surpass the figures presented by one of the popular email marketing service providers. 

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Open rates need to be consistently studied, better and tested subject lines, or pre-header texts optimised for preview - especially on mobile - are crucial moving forward.  Alongside the testing of different writing styles, delivery times and relevant content through segmentation,  it is clear a right mix is necessary. 

Moreover click-through rates can be altered by stronger segments, improved CTA’s and accurate subject lines. After optimising emails as much as possible, the automation is what allows for scaling.  

Our full range of email marketing services, from design, to copywriting, distribution and list management, all work in tandem to test & produce that perfect email.  We can then help estate agent’s with perfectly crafted email automation, offering targeted communication that nurtures leads over time! 

It’s clear that attentive management to email communication is key in optimising for improved metrics. 

Those looking to take that first step in improving their agency’s email marketing strategy’s, get in touch with us today!