I am researching automated e-mail/e-newsletter campaign options that send prospects/clients an series of e-mails about specific topics of interest depending on the type of prospect/client. I would love to hear about which services you are using, how you use them and your experiences.

I Am not a Realtor ,, I'm a Real Estate Investor
but I use a Tool that works very well for any business. It does what you say but instead of sending emails it sends Physical Greeting Cards.

My wife used it this year to send the Christmas cards and sent the whole list in a few minutes instead of a few days.

The URL is
http://SendCardsFast.com and they offer a Free Trial where you can send an actual Greeting Card (including postage) for Free

Hope this Helps

Jack

Check out GoldMine. It is a contact management program like Outlook or Act. The biggest difference is you can set up auto drip e-mail. With a little bit of skill you can set up “triggers” that will do all sorts of cool stuff like print letters, send e-mail, change a contacts status, etc... The best thing is once you buy it their are no monthly fees. Their is also a real estate add-on if you are not a “ do it your selfer”.

I know this is an old post, but I was wanting to get feedback from everyone in regards to email drip campaigns. Are they worth the money?

Are they only specific to America (I live in Australia)?

Are there any downfalls associated with email drip campaigns?

You can do a drip campaign for free or spend thousands of dollars, it depends on how many people you are sending emails to. Email is email so it doesn't matter where you live.

The success of a campaign will depend largely on the quality of the information you send and the perceived value by the people you send it to.

So do you find it makes a lot of prospecting easier? (as constant contact is made automatically by the drip campaign)

If you have a web site and you're not doing effective drip emailing, you're wasting your web marketing money.

Multiple studies show that 75+% of real estate shoppers use the internet. These same studies show that they start their property search much earlier, thus lengthening the time from first web visit to an actual transaction.

It is imperative that you maintain contact during this period, which in my area's case, averages eight months or more. A well-executed drip email campaign does this. It must provide useful information and tools to help them in their search, NOT some canned pap that you purchase from some third party that tells them how to pack their stuff so it doesn't get broken in the move.

Be careful when you're shopping for drip email services, as there are two types, and one isn't of value in my opinion.

The first type, and the most common, allows you to build a series of emails to be released at timed intervals to your list. BUT, that list is static, in that you cannot add a new prospect to it in mid-campaign and have them get early-series emails that have already gone out. This is not of value.

The type you want takes each new prospect individually and begins the selected email drip campaign from email #1 for them. Be very careful to determine that this is a capability of the service you're considering.

I have more information and compare some of the services at this link.

iREagent.com offers a nice email drip system for $19.95 or $29.95 per month, no set-up fees.

They provide a canned set of about 12 or 13 campaigns, each with a dozen emails or so. You can add as many different campaigns as you wish, and add as many emails per campaign as you wish, and control the timing of each email within each campaign. It sounds complicated, but it's pretty easy.

Then when you get a new lead (which your website can automatically feed to your stay-in-touch system), it gets assigned a campaign, then the drip system starts from email #1 for that campaign at the designated timing. (i.e. email #1 in 1/2 hour, email #2 1 day later, email #3 2 days later...)

You really need multiple email campaigns so the emails are more targeted. You can have a campaign for sellers, one for buyers, one for someone that searched the MLS on your website, one for FSBO's, one for people that requested FREE reports from your website.

As someone said above... if you're not using a drip email system, you're fooling yourself thinking you can do it manually, and wasting your money on your website.

Website shoppers take longer due to the added phases... The "normal" real estate buyer usually knows the area, so they go quickly into the shopping phase, then into the escrow phase. With Internet buyers, they usually start out in a research phase ( maybe because of a relocation offer), which can take months... then they usually move into an education phase, where they now have to be educated on the areas within your town, then into the shopping and buying phase.

We've had clients that took more then 2 years from the "first contact" to the buying phase, and without a good email drip system that takes care of things automatically, they would have surely been long forgotten.

So what sort of emails/letter should the drip campaign contain?
I dont want to sign up or develop a system that would contain emails/letters that could be more negative than positive.

"what sort of emails/letter should the drip campaign contain?"

It should contain information the receiver would find useful.

What do you send now to potential leads? I would assume you have already had a couple Internet leads that you try to stay in touch with. Just take those emails and automate them.

There's no right answer... since everyone's target audience is different, and each person has a different reason for coming to your website. That's why you need multiple campaigns... so the emails they recieve are of interest to them. You wouldn't send financial related emails to someone that wanted to search your MLS. You wouldn't send sellers or FSBO emails to someone wanting infomration on buying...

People who are on the Internet already have access to any generic information you might send them. They can google on "mortgages", "moving companies", "fsbo", "staging", etc. and get gobs of information. Also, they have plenty of sites to search MLS.

What they can't get is:

"Hello Buyer, I just previewed two houses with 4 bed rooms in YourTown. The first one has neutral decor and plenty of closet space, but is on a busy road. The seller wants a quick closing. The second one is on a great cul-de-sac, but has bright purple wallpaper. They are both priced right for the market. Let me know if you'd like for me to arrange a showing for you."

Show people that you offer more than the Internet, and they will start working with you.

I think you have to be careful with drip email campaigns:

1) Generic real estate information is easy to find in seconds on the internet. Most websites are chockful of generic articles. For many people, receiving emails with generic real estate articles starts bordering on spam.
2) If you send out info on new listings, they are not QUALIFIED listings... just YOUR listings. If I'm in the market for a $200K condo in town A, and you're sending me your new $400K single family in town C, I constitute that as SPAM. You're doing more harm than good.
3) Most people are getting wise to automated emails, responders, drip campaigns, etc.... and I think are tiring of the endless flow of worthless email.

You need to be careful to keep your name 'out there', without crossing the line into spam.

I think that an email newsletter type of thing going to your customers ONCE per month is enough to keep your name 'out there', and still not be obnoxious and considered spam. If your newsletter is original, has LOCAL information, ORIGINAL information, TIMELY information, it will be received well not only by current buyers and sellers, but I find the majority of people KEEP receiving this even after they buy, because it's a good source of INFORMATION without being 'hard sell'. That keeps your name in front of many people for many years... and hopefully they will remember you when then buy/ sell again, or when someone asks them for referrals.

I think it's also important to keep it brief, and only 'tease' articles which are on your WEBSITE, which, additionally, is training customers that you HAVE a website, is sending them BACK to your site (sometimes several times in one newsletter), and you're subtly making them aware that your website is changing and has new, relevant content.

I think podcasts/ RSS feeds and the like are the future of internet marketing. It's almost the opposite of spam... and is a directly, targeted way of delivering information.

Once Mr. Gates gets on the ball and upgrades Internet Explorer so the masses have easy access to RSS feeds through their browser (like Mac users have had for several years), it will become mainstream like all other new technology.

We use EmailMover (emailmover.com). This is a form based campaign program that runs on your server. Prospect fills out a form for what ever reason and they are added to a campaign that will send them a series of emails.

The important thing here is that you let people know that they will be recieving them and that it wont be endless. We send out 4 to 5 articles, 1 article every 3 days so the campaign only lasts 2 weeks. It should also be noted that when doing these types of campaigns you must include an opt out link.

So far we average less than 10% who opt out.