Email is DEAD!!  Or is it???

This is a BIGGIE.

I have heard it a LOT in the last 12-18 months, catapulting into nearly daily event in the last couple of months.

Email marketing is dying.

~ Big Team Leader Real Estate Agent

Drip emails are marked as spam

~ Another Real Estate Agent

 

Email is DEAD!  Don’t use email anymore.  It never worked anyway.

Hmmm.

Maybe email is dead for real estate agents because real estate agents suck at email.

Yup.  I said it.  Real Estate Agents SUCK at email.  Totally and completely.

They don’t know how to use it.  They never have.

Tell me this… if “email is dead” why on earth are businesses finding that email is THE backbone of their business?

Businesses that are starting to ride the wave of the new “social web”.  Businesses that rely nearly 100% on email to sell their products and services.

Take a look around you . . . Business in the online space today are focusing HARD on building an email list.  That is their #1 goal. And, they are succeeding!  They are building phenomenal businesses!  They are growing… using EMAIL LISTS!

In real estate we say “lead generate, lead generate, lead generate”.  We are supposed to be focusing on adding people to our database.  Guess what.  An email list and a database are similar.  Very similar.  In fact, I’d venture to say that as Real Estate Agents, instead of focusing on putting people in our “database”, we need to be focusing on adding people to our email list.

As Real Estate Agents we need to seriously step OUTSIDE of our industry.  The Real Estate Industry has notoriously been years and years behind the “real world” and decades behind the “new online world” (is it even possible to be decades behind something that is just coming up on 2 decades old?  Why yes!  Yes it is!!)

As Real Estate Agents we need to be modeling the new wave of businesses.  Studying them.  Focusing on their successes.  Modeling them.  Instead, we are still back at discussing how email is dead and looking around for the next “shiny object”.  Finding any “squirrel” opportunity to not learn, deeply learn, about what is actually working in online inbound marketing today.

When you study businesses today, specifically their inbound marketing methods, you quickly realize that email marketing is the key.  Without an email list, your business will die.  Heck, your business will never make it off the runway.  Some won’t even get their engines started.

Are you ready to build a phenomenal real estate business?  Are you ready to jump on the new wave of business bandwagon?

Then start focusing on building your email list.  It’s that simple.

My question now is….  What are you doing to build your email list?  Are you more focused on getting full names, phone numbers and mailing addresses that when you can’t get it all, you get nothing?

Change your focus.  Stop focusing on “selling” and start focusing on “giving”.  How many books have been written about this very concept?  Dozens?  Hundreds?  Thousands?  I know I’ve seen several running around the real estate industry:  “The Go Giver” and “The Thank You Economy” are two that immediately come to mind.

Make an offer to give someone something that they are willing to exchange their email address for it.  Make it something good.  Make it something juicy.  Make it something meaty.

Do it in person.  Do it via snail mail.  Do it on your website.  Do it on your Facebook.  Do it everywhere.  Do it all the time.

Don’t ever stop.  Don’t ever think you’ve got enough emails.  Don’t change your tactic for a shiny object.  Focus on getting email addresses.  Focus on making your email list massive.  Make it monstrous.

Whether your email list has 10 people on it or 10,000 people on it – treat it like gold.  Give it things.  Nurture it.  Take care of it.  Treat it like it’s the foundation to your business that it truly is.  Give it things all the time.  People are fickle.  They have “squirrel” issues too.  They’ll make sure they are getting all they can get, until they get the right thing, from the right person, at the right time.

Be that thing.  Be that person.  Be the right time.

Christina Ethridge is the founder of LeadsAndLeverage.com, helping real estate agents capture, convert and close Facebook leads.