Yearly Email Marketing Trends Recap (For Home Builders)

Email Marketing Trends for home builders

3-min read

Learn important email marketing trends data from this year and strategies to help you with your marketing.

I am still learning new tactics even with over 25 years of experience. In this article, you’ll learn many email-related benchmark reports and what they mean for you as a home builder. Continue reading to learn the email marketing trends for your industry.

Table of Contents

Email & Messaging Data

Let’s start this discussion by touching base on the email and digital messaging data from over the years. From 2014 to 2018, the open rates and click-through rates (CTRs) have been increasing each year in all industries. In fact, the open rates climbed 14% and the CTRs increased by 19% in just those short four years.

So, what does that mean for you? Well, as a home builder you need to be aware that many brands are gaining higher quality subscribers rapidly. Ensure you are keeping up with the trend by cleaning up your mailing lists regularly, providing relevant messages, and to dig deeper into the behavior of your target audience.

Many home builder companies are going beyond demographics when conducting audience research and analysis. For example, knowing data such as interests, challenges and what type of content your audience clicks on can propel your digital marketing strategies forward.

You can learn this much needed information from the following tactics:

Conduct a research focus group to ask the harder questions in person of your audience.
Dive into your own analytics, such as determining the most successful calls to action (CTAs), most views on a blog post, and which social media posts gain the most traction.
Track keywords to find out what your audience is typing to find your business online.
Listen and engage all of your prospects to learn more about the home buyer’s journey down the marketing funnel.

CTR & Open Rate Insights

Another interesting trend about CTR insights is that the automotive industry is the highest-performing industry. How does this relate to home building? Many people are invested in both industries meaning after they purchase a home, cars are more than likely their second biggest purchase of their lifetime.

An email marketing tip is to include your new model homes in your newsletters and eblasts just like the automotive industry includes new models of their cars.

Here are some ideas to increase your open rates:

Send out messaging during your business hours. For instance, you want to be able to quickly reply with any questions or concerns from your audience.
Include the sender name to enhance the personalization of your email strategy. In fact, 69% of subscribers say they’re more likely to read your email because it included their name.
Create an enticing subject line. According to Retention Science, subject lines with 6 to 10 words deliver the highest open rate.
Include images and multimedia in your eblasts to stand out from the competition.

Home Builder Specific Findings

Other messaging facts specific to the real estate and construction industry is that there is a 0.48% average on bounce rates, 0.20% average unsubscribes, and a 64.3% engagement rate on readability. I suggest comparing this new research to your current email marketing data to determine how well your firm is performing. Use these averages as a benchmark for gauging a successful program.

Lastly, and probably the most important messaging data, is that consumers in the real estate industry read emails on their phones (43.8%) more than on their desktops, (37.4%). In addition, the average engagement rates for your industry sits right at 64.3% read, 20.6% skimmed and 14.9% glanced.

Utilize the following strategies for a successful email marketing campaign:

Ensure the email marketing content is mobile and tablet compliant.
Make all of your messaging strategies easy to read and navigate on all platforms.
Always test each message you send to your consumers to ensure everything looks and reads exactly the way you want it to.
Don’t overwhelm your audience by constantly sending out eblasts. Instead, create a cohesive strategy with your team to determine when is the best time and date to send out your emails.
Work with a third party marketing or advertising firm if you need extra assistance in any of the above recommendations.

I hope this email marketing trends recap gave you a good idea of what to implement into your campaigns. Which of the strategies do you find most beneficial to the home building industry?