Every agent I talk to wants to discuss social media. Almost none of them want to discuss email, which is unfortunate, because email is the channel that works.
Here is the asymmetry. Your Instagram following belongs to Instagram. Your email list belongs to you. If a platform changes its ranking tomorrow, your reach changes tomorrow. Your email list does not care.
And yet the typical agent email program is a monthly market report nobody opens, built from a template, with a subject line that says "October Market Update."
Why that email fails
Because it is addressed to nobody. "The market" is not a topic a specific person is waiting to hear about. The people on your list are not a market, they are a hundred and forty individuals with a hundred and forty different reasons for knowing you.
The fix is not better design. It is narrower content.
What actually gets opened
One thing, explained well, that the reader could not have gotten elsewhere.
"Two detached ADUs are allowed by right starting in January and here is what that does to a lot like yours" is an email. "October Market Update" is a filing. The first one gets forwarded. The second one gets archived unread by someone who likes you.
Specificity about a place beats generality about a city. If you can send a note about one street, one building, one pocket, do that instead. Twelve people on your list care enormously and the rest skim it and think you sound like you know what you are doing. That is a good trade.
A real subject line. Not clever. Specific. The test is whether the subject line alone tells the reader whether this is for them.
Segmentation, done at a level you will actually maintain
Most agents are sold on elaborate segmentation and then do none of it because the system is too much work. So do the version you will keep up with.
Three lists. Past clients. Active prospects. Everybody else. That is it. The past client list gets a different tone and a different cadence than the prospect list, and the "everybody else" list gets the good neighborhood content four or five times a year.
Three lists you maintain beats eleven segments you abandon in March.
Cadence
Monthly is fine. Weekly is better if you have something to say and worse if you do not. The failure mode is not sending too often, it is sending on a schedule when you have nothing, which trains people to ignore you.
Send when you have something. If that is twice in October and once in November, send twice in October and once in November.
The thing to actually start doing this week
After every showing, every open house, every listing appointment, send one person one email that references the specific thing you talked about. Not a template. Four sentences.
That is not email marketing. That is just email. But it is the practice that makes the list worth having, because a list of people who have had one real exchange with you opens at a completely different rate than a list of people who were scraped off a sign-in sheet.
And the legal footnote, since this is marketing
Commercial email has rules. Honor unsubscribes promptly, identify yourself, include a physical address, do not buy lists. California has its own layer on top of federal requirements. None of it is onerous if you are sending genuinely useful mail to people who know you, and all of it is a problem if you are blasting a purchased list.
Build the list the slow way. It is the only way it is worth anything.
General information, not legal advice. Confirm email marketing compliance requirements with your broker or counsel.
