Let's Talk Real Estate Marketing Automation for Agents Like You!

Marketing Automation for Real Estate Agents Made Easy! Discover New Ways Win at Digital Marketing

What exactly is marketing automation, and why is it so critical for the real estate industry, specifically?

Simply put, it's the process of using software and technologies to help savvy marketing teams automate repetitive tasks.

That's the super basic answer, of course - and we both know you're here for more than that! Yes, real estate marketing automation can quickly streamline your to-do list, but the benefits of real estate marketing automation go above and beyond. 

For starters - just think of the time back in your diary that you can now spend on the human-to-human work that creates an incredible house-hunting experience, delights your buyers, and could never be replicated by a machine!

Because real estate property management is complex in and of itself, automated marketing solutions can make all the difference in being bogged down in the minutiae, and using specific real estate marketing software to help you build great relationships, show off beautiful properties, and stay a step ahead of your competitors.

From automated follow-ups for your sales funnel, to what to look for in great real estate CRM software, to social media platforms, we’re diving into tips, tricks, and strategies that will help you grow your real estate business, and dominate the real estate industry. 

We'll cover:

1. Jargon Buster! A Vocab Cheat Sheet
   
2. The Benefits of Automation & The Tools You Need
   
3. Getting Started with Smart Systems and CRMs for Your Real Estate Business
   
4. Example Workflows: Where Automation and Customer Data Platforms Combine
   
5. Common Marketing and Sales Automation Mistakes
   
6. Quality Assets to Nurture Buyers: Why They're So Important
   
7. HubSpot: Great Marketing Automation Software for Realtors
   
   
   

Jargon Buster! A Vocab Cheat Sheet

Before we jump in, let's look at some key terms that lots of marketers take for granted, that could be confusing for those who haven't met these phrases yet.

Marketing Automation

This could be any marketing task at all - from sending emails and text messages to creating leads in a CRM, to nurturing prospects with content over time - that you set up to run automatically. Once someone pulls a trigger on the activity, your data-gathering tools kick in, and do the work of sending things out for you. More on that later.

Email Marketing

Don't look at us like that! Yes, you might think this is a basic term, but we see lots of folks misinterpreting what this vital real estate marketing tool is all about. 

In our context, this term broadly refers to any deliberate emails that you send out to tell people about your listings, nurture prospective buyers, and forge relationships. 

With great email marketing for real estate campaigns, every message you send takes on the role of a 24/7 customer rep, when you use the right tools like HubSpot workflows and sequences.

Watch Short H

Omnichannel Marketing

If "omni" means all, and channel refers to all the ways that your potential buyers could engage with you (think email, website, telephone call, SMS, chatbot, Facebook, you name it...), then this term means providing a consistent experience across every marketing and sales platform you use. 

As any successful real estate agent knows, your marketing activities have to offer your clients a positive, consistent experience that helps them to build essential trust in you. 

No matter which channel someone uses, to make sure you come across as trustworthy, every touchpoint has to feel and work just like the others. In omnichannel marketing, consistency is king. 

Customer Lifecycle

In a nutshell, "customer lifecycle" - sometimes known as the "buyer's journey" means all the steps that someone goes through when they become a buyer, which are: reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty.

For a proper look at this term, check out this HubSpot article for a thorough explanation - and some great tips on how to manage that lifecycle to help you help more people find properties they love. 

Customer Data

Emails, names, numbers, addresses - pretty much any info that your business collects about your prospective buyer is considered customer data. For what we hope are obvious reasons, it's darned important intel to have. 

How could you put together a comprehensive marketing strategy or create a personalised sequence for a specific target audience within the real estate space if you didn't have any valuable, detailed intel?

And we promise we're not just sharing other articles, but that cracking read above that's all about Lead Generation Tactics and Tips for Increased Sales? Yep, it's got some vital info in there about the importance of first-party data and why it's so essential if you want to sell more effectively.

Conversational Marketing

Our last jargon-busting section here is all about having authentic conversations. The very best real estate agents know that one-to-one interactions help your potential buyers feel like you really know and care about them. It takes time and hard work to earn their trust so you can help them find a forever home.

At its core, this approach to automated marketing is about making every possible engagement feel like a conversation with a real person - agents can use any number of social media automation tools to do this, as long as your content is solid. 

The majority of real estate agents might cut corners with copy and paste, but putting the work in here can make all the difference.

Yes, automation is about saving time, but because of the importance of building buyer relationships, only strategic, creative realtors will reap the rewards of automated real estate marketing. 

And when you are thinking about social media automation, workflow automation, personalised content marketing, or any of the other tactics and tools available, making each interaction more human is crucial, especially in the case of real estate. 

The Benefits of Automation & The Tools You Need

Let's talk for a moment about why having the right marketing processes in place is so important for real estate agencies.

Manual marketing alone often can't keep up with the demands of efficiently acquiring the sheer volume of customers needed to increase revenue month on month... But with the right tactics, real estate automation software can automate fairly repetitive activities like buyer interest, first-party data, and more. 

This empowers agencies to dedicate more time to high-level creative planning and customer care efforts, mapping a home buyer journey that ultimately delights your client pool, and minimises churn.

In particular, the best real estate marketing strategies leverage automated workflows to:

1. Educate and nurture your buyers by delivering targeted, relevant content over time that moves leads down the funnel with things like email automation
   
   
2. Avoid overwhelming potential buyers with irrelevant messages or offers that don't address their current stage or interests
   
   
3. More efficiently and accurately qualify buyers based on their engagement data and automatically progress them through automation programs or workflows that are tailored to their needs
   
   
4. Increase in-house overall productivity and lead generation by removing repetitive administrative tasks, enabling staff to focus on people, not their to-do list
   
   

Your overarching objectives should be:

• Empowering teams to efficiently create and manage more potential than with manual processing or marketing efforts alone
  
  
• Nurturing those prospects with personalisation in emails or other marketing and social media content to encourage conversion
  
  
• Ultimately driving business growth, happy homeowners, smooth sales, and the right real estate company reputation
  
  

We appreciate that to build authentic relationships, the best real estate agents prefer to communicate in person with buyers. 

In a nutshell: automation is the key to streamlining your sales and marketing efforts, so your team can focus on nurturing their own competitive advantage.

Getting Started with Smart Systems and CRMs for Your Real Estate Business

When you first start exploring how to leverage automation for your agency, begin by mapping out your ideal home buyer's journey. When it comes to implementing real estate automation, this is one of the best tools you can use to take your efforts to the next level.

We recommend you carefully analyse your current content and touchpoints, whether that's emails, real estate apps, web pages, or chatbot conversations, everything you're putting out there is an opportunity to convert your prospects, and make them long-term customers.

You should also review past moments and interactions that led to you closing deals...and, while it feels icky, you should also examine where your buyer decided not to progress with a purchase.  Why was the sale lost? What needed to be done differently?

While lots of marketing agencies out there would offer to help with this (for a pretty price tag, too!), it’s an exercise that real estate firms need to do for themselves. Really consider your client, your marketing channels, your social media marketing - literally every experience a first-time buyer or property mogul could have with you.

It's a bit like going on a treasure hunt: this work reveals the key triggers and stages that you want to think about automating with specific, nuanced sequences or workflows.

Common automation triggers include:

• Clicking on links within nurture emails multiple times, indicating interest
  
  
• Downloading gated premium assets like ebooks, tip sheets, or templates
  
  
• Initiating conversations via live chat or site messaging
  
  

Still a bit confused? Let's look at some examples of real estate related triggers

• Your trigger is set as 'multiple clicks on a nurture email'
  
  
• A prospective buyer clicks on a nurture email several times
  
  
• Once that trigger kicks in (hello, email marketing automation!) any number of tools can take over:
  • Set a reminder to make a call the next day about their area of interest
  • Email a personal “sneak peek” at properties about to go on the market, to give them a VIP feeling
  • - or anything else you feel is relevant!
  
  
  

Example Workflows: Where Automation and Customer Data Platforms Combine

Feel like you're getting it now? Awesome! Let's look at some more of the best marketing automation features from a workflow perspective:

• A potential buyer signs up for a webinar all about the hidden costs of a home purchase:
  
  
  • Automate and send a personalised WhatsApp or SMS confirming their spot immediately (remember - conversational marketing and sales go hand in hand!)
    
    
  • Then use an email marketing automation tool to say thanks for attending, and circulate the replay link!
    
    
• Re-engage buyers who have been inactive after a certain time period:
  
  
  • Re-enter them into a nurturing email campaign that matches their interests, using the right marketing automation systems
    
    
  • Maybe they've found a forever home, but they're now considering a second purchase as a future investment! Keep clients intrigued with relevant scenarios, and offer your expert advice
    
    
• Prospective buyers downloading your premium assets?
  
  
  • Create workflows to nurture these leads, and think about automating emails that share additional guides, insights, or any other gated content that could be valuable, over a series of 4-6 messages
    
    

Common Marketing and Sales Automation Mistakes

While marketing automation tools for real estate businesses unlock huge opportunities, they can also negatively impact marketing campaigns, customer experience, and otherwise sabotage your buyer’s journey. 

What are the key things to watch out for and avoid? Glad you asked!

Sending the same content to everyone

Don't you just hate it when you get the same vanilla, spammy content as everyone else out there? You know what we mean - the emails that have nothing to do with your interests, the ones that show up with bland messages and truly terrible stock photos. 

While automation is a powerful tool, you have to make sure you put effort into thinking about your prospects - their needs and interests, not what's easiest for you. 

Not having enough quality content

You've probably gathered that when it comes to content, quality trumps quantity every time - but one of the risks that you could run is not having a decent quantity of quality content. Take the time to develop and create a suite of helpful infographics, content pillars, home-purchase help guides, videos; you name it. 

By putting in processes to capture content throughout each month or quarter, you alleviate the burden of having to generate new assets when there's a sudden sales dip. If you're using AI as a single-step process to generate that content, well, the market is going to give you what you deserve.

Not understanding your buyer's persona and their needs/interests

This mistake is going to cost you, big time! Understanding your customers is the number one priority when it comes to successful selling. If you don't understand your customer, it doesn't matter how great your email marketing and marketing automation is, those thoughtfully written, intelligent messages could go to the inbox of someone who rejects the idea of home ownership entirely!

Don't fall into the trap of wasting valuable time chasing buyers who aren't ready, don't have the money, or just aren't a good fit when you could be fostering great relationships with people who do need what you offer.

Focusing on your potential buyer's needs should be your number one priority. If it isn't, change that. 

Sending content at the wrong time

Beyond sending out bland, porridge-flavoured content to people who aren't interested, you could be committing another sin - sending content at the wrong time! 

You know what people probably don't need on a hectic Monday morning when they're only halfway through their coffee and their eyes aren't open yet? Another dull, irrelevant, ‘blah’ email that clogs up their inbox and irritates them. 

Look at the data you do have, instead. When are your prospects opening your emails? For some folks that could be 4pm on a Friday, for others it might be 2pm Tuesday. Gather some insights, do some testing, and go from there.

Not writing in a way that’s engaging, accessible, or readable

We've established just how much content is a crucial part of every real estate engagement strategy, right? While your content might look sharp and jazzy from a visual perspective, we've got another angle to consider - can people actually read and engage with what you've written? 

There are some instances when a photo will do more than five paragraphs of content ever will - but often the legalese, jargon, and inside terms that are second nature for professionals in the real estate industry mean nothing to your buyer. 

Could someone who wasn't an estate agent easily understand this? If the answer's no, do some editing. 

Quality Assets to Nurture Leads: Why They're So Important

High-quality, differentiated content assets are essential. So why do they seem like they're a low priority when it comes to real estate marketing programs?

Tailored to each stage of the buyer's journey, incredible content is the number one solution for real estate marketing automation success.

The best real estate marketing automation strategies segment their content for each stage of the buyer's journey - particularly if you're looking to nail inbound marketing and make your content magnetic. 

Whatever your approach to marketing automation, when it comes to that magnetic content, focus on clarity, accuracy, relevance, and depth, so you earn an expert reputation and build trust. 

Awareness Stage

Your goal with this content? Attract and educate new contacts. Consider creating:

• Blog posts and helpful guides
  
  
• Infographics - what to look for in a first home, for example
  
  
• Tip sheets or FAQ sheets - what’s Stamp Duty? What do we mean by a chain? Where can I go for mortgage advice?
  
  

Consideration Stage

This quality content should be carefully crafted to actively qualify and nurture leads. Think about:

• Walkthrough videos of a home
  
  
• A well-timed staff video sharing their tips when thinking about making a purchase
  
  
• Calculators that show energy efficiency, mortgage costs, potential bills, and more
  
  
• Interactive quizzes
  
  

Decision Stage

This content should address final questions and objections for key decision-makers. Don't leave your sale to chance!

• Home reports
  
  
• Analyst reports
  
  
• Customer testimonials from other happy buyers
  
  

Taking the time upfront to create well-written, visually engaging assets that cover relevant topics is vital.

Not only will your conversion rates soar, but you'll also avoid lots of common content mistakes, like irrelevance, information overload, and disengagement.

HubSpot: A Great Real Estate Marketing Automation Tool 

With everything we've talked about so far, hopefully it's evident that finding the right automation software for your industry is crucial to your success. With 4-6 million real estate agents out there, the right marketing platform can take your efforts to a whole new level and help you stand out. 

Now, we're maybe a little bit biased, but we do think that HubSpot is the most effective marketing automation platform out there. Yes, lots of other tools can help, but a platform like HubSpot really does give you a headstart when it comes to robust automation technology. 

And despite what some software companies or real estate marketing agencies say, you don't need 20 automated tools when you can use just one!

Not only does HubSpot help you to build sequences and workflows triggered by those all-important prospect actions, but it also enables you to automate targeted follow-ups, such as emails, SMS messages, notifications, chatbot nudges, and more.

And, remembering the importance of quality content, HubSpot has a suite of tools to help take your marketing from good to great. As an all-in-one marketing automation platform, HubSpot also leverages its Smart CRM data, so you can send tailored content experiences, based on factors like location and lead lifecycle stage.

For example, if you want to kickstart success, new HubSpot users can leverage pre-built workflow templates for common lead nurturing scenarios. (See also Lead generation for real estate agents)

In HubSpot, real estate marketers can use existing templates that are tailored to their prospects, depending on which stage of the buyer's journey they're in - whether that's the awareness, consideration, or decision stage.

Once you've laid a solid foundation, you can then iteratively test how your contacts interact with messages, using automation and data to continually optimise every touchpoint - delighting your customers - or, as we like to call it, doing business the human-to-human (H2H) way!

In Summary

As we've seen - marketing automation tools are critical for real estate professionals to efficiently generate and build relationships with prospective buyers at scale. 

By automating repetitive tasks like lead scoring and email sequencing, real estate companies get more time back in their diaries to build and nurture those all-important real-life relationships.

Your goal with automation is to empower teams to manage more new leads than manual efforts alone, nurture prospects to encourage conversion, and ultimately drive growth and retention.

To leverage automation, start by first mapping the ideal buyer's journey, then analyse your current content and touchpoints that have either resulted in closed deals or a lost sale. This reveals key triggers and stages to automate, like multiple clicks on emails or downloading premium assets. Workflows, sequences and more can then provide targeted follow-ups via email, SMS, chatbots, and so on. 

Remember, your high-quality, stage-specific content assets are essential for automation success! Content should aim to attract and educate potential buyers, actively build positive relations, and address final concerns - so continually test and optimise your content based on engagement data to boost conversion.

Above all, if all of this sounds overwhelming, don't worry. While marketing automation tools can help, getting used to them can take some time - and having someone in your corner to help you discover the best marketing automation solution can make all the difference.

You can book a demo with us here - and in the meantime - happy automating!