MLSs and Brokerages struggle constantly with how to build communications that break-through to their agents. Sometimes, it’s hard to know how your marketing efforts stack up against others, so I thought I would share this study to give all of us some perspective.
As all online marketers know, open rate and click through rate are two key metrics that need to be closely monitored to ensure that you getting the bang for your marketing buck!
According to a recent study called the 2016 Email Marketing Benchmarks Study th published by IBM, the average click through of emails sent in the United States in 18.3%. The strongest performers on average enjoyed an unprecedented 41.6% click through rate. So how does your email blast compare?
What are the key drivers of Open Rates? Headlines, timing and targeted relevance are key according to the experts. At our sister company, RE Technology, we have found that click through rates are strongest when there’s a compelling message tied to real estate success. REALTORS are sales people and they love to be sold to. Don’t be too cerebral or technical with your message. Don’t be too verbose either. REALTORS want the quick answer – give them the reason why they should spend the time to click on your message.
Click through rates are another key driver of successful email campaigns. If your offer isn’t compelling enough for them to click through it’s going to make achieving a solid ROI a lot tougher. According to the IBM study, the average click through rate in the United States is 1.6%.
The study goes on to say that the average open rate for residential, commercial and multi-family emails is 2.5%, probably because the topic is highly interesting to those that have subscribed for prospecting campaigns.
Third, the study helps us understand WHERE people are reading and clicking on email campaigns. In the U.S. today, nearly half of all views for emails are coming from mobile. Today, you must absolutely design email blasts to be optimized and easy to digest on mobile first, and then secondarily for the desktop.
Since we’re marketers ourselves (I was formerly SVP Marketing at Fisher-Price) we always want to work with our clients to find the most effective ways to break through to consumers and agents. In the communications campaigns that we run for our PR clients, we find that a good mixture of press releases, third party content combined with your own well-tested email campaigns are a great recipe for success.
If you’re interested in learning more about WAV Group’s Communications capabilities feel free to reach out to me at Marilyn@wavgroup.com and we’ll be happy to schedule a time to get together!
