- The timed sequenced emailing of a series of marketing or information emails to a recipient list.
- Many services and software packages automate the process, and many of those also can recognize when a new recipient is added, sending them emails from the beginning of the series rather than from when they're entered.
- Timing is up to the sender, with some sending emails daily, at least in the beginning of a series, and then gradually decreasing frequency over time.
- Some real estate drip email campaigns are set up for multiple years, with emails drafted way in advance of the dates they'll be sent.
The long duration campaigns by necessity end up sending out canned pre-packaged emails that have no references to date or current events. With many being drafted a year or more before release, they are generally generic in nature, and in many cases stale before they're ever received.
That's not to say that real estate drip email campaigns can't be effective, but the best ones are much shorter in duration, with more current email content that is perceived to have some value to the recipient when received. Before blogging, and converting to a blog website, I used drip email effectively. However, I limited the series to about four or five emails sent to new prospects who opted in with a form or asked an email question on my site.
The short series of emails each pointed out and linked to a specific section of my website that previous visitors found of value, such as area information, videos of MLS areas, and of course the IDX search pages. I usually spaced them with the first going out immediately when the prospect hit the list, the second about three days later, and then a week or more between the remaining emails. This seemed to work well and not generate a high percentage of "remove" requests. The last email let the recipient know that they were being placed on a special list to receive quarterly market sold activity reports. These quarterly reports were each prepared from MLS sold statistics, and really couldn't be called true "real estate drip email" because I would manually generate each quarterly mailing to the list.
Once going to a blog platform for my entire site, I began to encourage RSS feed subscriptions, and I set up an automated weekly newsletter prepared and sent by Feedblitz to the list of subscribers. I still do the quarterly stats, but now they are posts on the site. This automated newsletter is prepared from my RSS feed by Feedblitz without any involvement on my part once set up. This system works very well, keeping my prospects and clients informed from my blog posts, which is where I prefer to expend my effort in writing original and timely content.
So, now to the question...is real estate drip email dead as an effective marketing tool? Unless it's done carefully, I believe that it is dying as an effective tool. Too many dull, canned emails are going out about things like making your kitchen smell good for showings, or making staircases safer, etc. The current Internet savvy real estate buyer or seller doesn't place much value in this type of email. They either unsubscribe, or worse, without your knowledge, click the spam button to never see it again.
