How Email Can Improve Your Real Estate Blog
Whether you’re looking to build a community or generate leads online then you’re probably using a blog as your marketing hub.
The unfortunate side-affect of blogs is that they can lull someone into a false sense of productivity and engagement when it comes to marketing… especially if you’re not using the following tool.
In the past, many bloggers ignored the benefits of email and relied solely on RSS to connect with visitors offsite. This is mostly because blog platforms publish RSS feeds out of the box.
However, even the savviest of bloggers have begun incorporating email marketing for a number of very valid reasons:
- Increase Readership – when a visitor signs up for your email newsletter they’ve effectively given you permission to market to them. This doesn’t mean you should be self-serving; I advocate leading with content over promotion. But, when you send out your blog newsletter you’ll find your visitors returning to consume more of your site.
- Build Community – email allows you to give your loyal readers a little extra love that your regular readers just don’t get. When you give them that extra bit of information they’ll feel more included for the insight. I often send out extra marketing tips, videos, I even gave away a free pass to Real Estate Blog World to my email readers.
- Improve Market Reach – you’re probably using some widget on your blog so your readers can “Share This.” Through your email newsletter you can do the same thing… encourage your readers to forward the newsletter to a friend. You’ll reach new readers that you never would have if you solely relied on a blog widget.
- Email is Familiar – relying on RSS to connect with your readers assumes (that they even know what RSS is!) they’re going to take the extra steps of logging into their RSS readers, find your feed among all the other feeds they’ve packed into their reader, and read it. Don’t know about you but I oftentimes just hit “Mark All As Read.” Because email is such a part of our online experience, it’s far easier and more reliable to conenct with someone through email
Setting up your blog for an email newsletter is pretty monkey-jenius simple….
You can use tools like: Aweber, MailChimp, and Madmimi. If you’re a Diverse Solutions client, you can use a system like dsAgentReach (part contact management, part email newsletter).
Once you’ve picked an email program, you can broadcast your posts as your blog email newsletter. You can have it sent whenever you wish: instantly, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. Nifty, eh?
It’s obvious, when you use an email newsletter for your blog you engage your readers more and increase your blog marketing results.
Are you using email for your blog? How’s it working for you? If not, what’s holding you back?