56%* of Email is Opened on Mobile Devices

Working with thousands of real estate professionals, we often see a common email mistake that is causing agents to lose real estate business.

Today, over 80% of the US population has 24/7 internet access via a smartphone. The mobile trend has dramatically changed how and where consumers open and read their email.

???? Studies show between 54% – 56% of all email opens occur on mobile or tablets.

Mobile email open rates are growing at a rapid pace while desktop access is decreasing.

Email drip campaigns are one of the most popular ways for real estate professionals to stay top of mind with lead. Now it is critical for these emails to open on mobile.

“51% of consumers have unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because their emails or website didn’t display or work well on their smartphone. – Litmus 2017 State of Email“

You work hard to build your email list so make sure you are not losing subscribers because your emails don’t open display correctly. So what are the 3 email mistake agents are making?

So what are the 3 email mistakes real estate agents are making?

Email Mistake Number One

If you notice that you are having customers unsubscribe from your real estate email drip campaigns be sure that your emails are displaying correctly.

Top real estate CRM systems like FollowUp Boss, CINC and BoomTown allow you to build custom drip campaigns but you may want to send plain text or limited HTML formatted emails to guarantee that your emails display correctly.

Email Mistake Number Two

This is so common in real estate agent email signatures.

Email signatures using images.

We see thousands of email signatures that contain an image with the agents’ contact phone number included in the image instead of plain text in the email body.

Why is this an issue?

Since most email access is on mobile and most consumers will call you from their mobile phone, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to call you. If your phone number is in an image there are a few things that happen:

• The image may not display correctly on mobile and be too small for the consumer to read.
• The phone number cannot be “clicked to call” forcing the consumer to try and remember your phone number so they can dial it to call you.

Friction causes frustration and images will make you seem non-tech savvy in the eyes of millennial consumers

You can have an image in your email signature but do not include your phone number, website or any other link that a user can just click on mobile.

Make sure your phone numbers are in the body of the email and are can be clicked to dial your phone number.

This is critical because the growth in consumers are using “Click to call” on the web is exploding (think of Google searches, when is the last time you actually dialed a phone number?)

So please stop including all of your contact information in an email using an image.

Mistake Number Three

Not using a call tracking/call capture phone number in your email drip campaigns to track lead conversion. You may already be measuring your email open rates and response rates but are you measuring if people are responding to your email by calling you directly?

Inbound calls are you most valuable leads, yet most agents are not tracking what marketing campaign is actually generating those calls.

Bonus Email Lead Conversion Tip

We addressed some easily correctable email mistakes and now we’ll share an idea to help you generate more leads from email.

The data above shows you that people access their email on mobile and they click to call. You want to make it simple as possible for them to read your email and respond instantly, so how do you do that?

In the first paragraph of your email should be your offer that reinforces your email subject headline.

As an example, subject line: “Home values up 18%”, your first paragraph should have a strong call to action like:

“Call me now (555) 555-5555 to learn the value of your home today”

The phone number will automatically be clickable giving your consumer a clear simple manner to respond to your offer.

Look at the sample email on a mobile device, see how easily it is for a consumer to respond.

Look at the sample email on a mobile device, see how easily it is for a consumer to call you directly to take you up on your offer.

One call to action which is a hyperlinked phone number that appears when the email is opened without scrolling will increase your lead conversion.

Fix the most common mistakes, use call tracking and remove contact friction to increase your response rate today.

*Sources:
Experian Q3 2016 Email Report
Litmus 2017 State of Email Report