10 Great Email Content Tips for Homebuilders and Remodelers

Are you struggling to engage and convert your homebuyer and homeowner customers with the email copy your team is currently writing?

Don’t worry, crafting high-conversion copy takes some time and practice to get right. It is a profession after all! But that doesn’t mean you can’t start using techniques to drive qualified leads and sales right now.

We’ve created a list of helpful tips to make your email content more exciting and readworthy.

Tips for writing customer emails that convert

With these 10 tips, you’ll be writing more effective emails to your homebuyer and homeowner leads in no time:

1. Define your email audience

Before you start crafting your email you need to define exactly who you’re writing for, whether it’s a single email or a full drip campaign. For an email to effectively engage a reader it needs to relate to them using the language, tone of voice, and content that matters to them.

To achieve a high level of engagement you’ll want to segment your emails based on your buyer personas. Segmented campaigns can bring in a 760% increase in revenue because they’re more relevant to readers. A buyer persona is a fictional character that represents a specific group of customers including their personal characteristics, needs, motivations, and objections.

You likely have your buyer personas separated already, but if you haven’t identified them yet you’ll need to do this first. You can segment your buyer personas in four ways:

1. Demographics: Age, gender, income level, education
2. Geographics: City, state, urban or rural
3. Behavioral: Buying patterns, where customers are in the buying journey, interactions with your business
4. Psychographic: Lifestyles, values, personality traits, personal beliefs, attitudes, interests, objections

All of these categories can play a role in what kind of content your audience segments value, what objections they face, and how they engage with you.

Read More: Database Marketing Helps Drive Homebuilder Customer Acquisition

2. Identify the level of awareness

In addition to identifying your buyer personas, you also want to define the stage of awareness you’re targeting in your email if it’s purpose is to sell. There are five stages of awareness:

1. Unaware: This is someone who is unaware of the pain or problem they are experiencing.  
2. Pain aware: This is someone who is aware of the problem they have and the pain it causes.
3. Solution aware: This is someone who is aware of the solution to fix their problem, but is not aware of your service as a solution.
4. Product aware: This is someone who is aware of your solution, but has not decided to work with you yet.
5. Most aware: This is someone who is convinced you’re the right solution and just needs to take action.

Levels of awareness can be used for single emails, as long as you know exactly who you’re writing to, but are most effective when used in an email campaign drip. A drip is a series of emails that build upon one another to reach a larger common goal, each with their own call to action that’s based on the level of awareness the targeted audience is in.

3. Identify the singular goal of your email

Once you have your audience identified, you want to approach the content of each email with a single purpose in mind. An effective email pushes your readers towards an action (a call to action). It’s important to have a clear objective for every email, so your copy is focused and organized. A reader should easily understand what the email is about and what the next step to take is.

Ask yourself: What value do I want my readers to get out of this email? Are we trying to sell them? Are we providing them with valuable homebuying or renovation tips? What action do you want them to take after reading? Do you want them to sign up for a consultation? Contact you about a special sale? Click through to your blog? 

Once you’ve hashed out your goal you can define your call to action.

4. Include a compelling call to action

Almost 1/4 of email readers skim content, so you need a very clear call to action (CTA) in each email to catch their attention, and only one. Too many calls to action will confuse people about what they should do next and decrease your campaign’s effectiveness. Your CTA needs to be persuasive and powerful to help motivate your readers to perform the action you desire.

Tips to write an effective CTA:

• Keep it short and to the point: “download our ebook now”
• Use strong action words: click, read, order, buy, download, sign up, learn, discover, etc.
• Use the word “free” to make them more enticing (only if the offer is free!)
• Create a sense of urgency: “Sign up today and get a free estimate.”
• Tailor your language to your audience (more formal vs. relaxed): “Schedule a tour today” vs. “Explore your dream home today!”
• Place the button prominently and use contrasting colors

Your CTA is the most important part of your email, aside from the subject line, so pay special attention to it.

5. Craft a click-worthy subject line

The subject line of your email deserves special attention. It is, after all, the single access point for people to open your email… or not. It also makes the difference between people simply not opening the email and reporting it to spam. Think about your subject line as a means to an end: moving your readers through the funnel – from clicking on your email to reading it, to ultimately clicking on the call to action.

Effective subject lines don’t just make people want to open an email, they make people want to actually read it. There are a number of ways to craft a subject line that converts. Here are a couple of examples:

• Create urgency: “Only 3 days left to sign up for a tour of our top-selling model!”
• Make a personal connection: “Renovating your home is stressful
• Ask a question: “Not sure if you should build or buy?”
• Answer a question: Here’s why you shouldn’t tackle that home reno project yourself” 
• Use a list: “12 tips for DIY painting from a professional remodeler”
• Use social proof: “94% of our homebuyers said this about their new homes”
• Include a freebie: “Ultimate guide to finding the right homebuilder for you (free worksheet included!)”

When you test your emails make sure your subject line doesn’t cut off the most important words.

6. Map out the story you want to tell

Once you get to the email body copy you’ll want to map out a compelling story to tell that will engage the reader at the beginning and keep them interested all the way to the CTA. Some emails will be short and to the point. Others may be longer and require more storytelling. Here are a couple of copywriting formulas to help you write effective high-converting copy:

Pain, Agitation, Solution (PAS): This formula focuses on your audience’s pain points, sympathizing with them, and giving them a solution to eliminating their problem. Here’s how to write a PAS email:

1. Identify your customer’s pain point
2. Acknowledge why they care and how it affects them
3. Give them a solution to solve it

Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA): This formula focuses on catching your reader’s attention and giving them an offer they simply can’t refuse. Here’s how to write an AIDA email:

1. Grab the reader’s attention
2. Tell them something interesting they may not know, or something that goes against what they might think
3. Engage the reader further, making your offer as desirable as possible
4. Ask them to perform an action

The only way for these formulas to work is if you understand who you’re writing to, which is why buyer segmentation is so necessary. Keep in mind there are many other formulas for creating effective copy, so you should do a little more research and testing to find what approaches work best for your homebuyer and homeowner audiences.

Related: Tips for Using Homebuyer Testimonials in Your Content

7. Personalize and be personal

Personalizing an email can be as simple as using subscriber names in your greeting. You can also offer more personalization with your segmentation because readers feel like you’re talking to them. 

Being personal is more about being real. Again, consider who you’re writing to. More than likely potential customers will respond better to a more conversational tone without all the industry jargon.

8. Optimize your emails for mobile users

Over 50% of emails are read on mobile devices and 50% of mobile searches are looking for a local business. So having mobile-friendly emails and a mobile-friendly website to link out to is imperative if you want your email campaigns to be effective. If you’re using an updated email marketing platform chances are your emails are responsive, meaning they “respond” to the screen-type your reader is using (mobile, tablet, or desktop). If you aren’t using a platform you should definitely consider it. You can learn about the top email services here.

Read More: Housing Professional’s Guide to Making a Website Mobile-Friendly

9. Test different versions of the same email

Hopefully, you’re testing your emails already, but if not start now! A/B testing, also called “split testing,” is an easy way to measure the effectiveness of your subject line, body copy, and call to action. By creating two versions of the same email you can get a better idea of which copy is more engaging. Here are some of the top questions to answer when results come back:

• What email has the highest open rate? 
• What email had the better click-through-rate?
• Which call to action had a better response rate?

If you don’t have time to test two completely different versions of the same email, A/B testing your subject lines and calls to action is a great place to start.

Related: Digital Marketing Metrics Homebuilders and Remodelers Should Measure

Quality over quantity

The main key to great email deliverability and response rates is quality. Quantity will never surpass caliber when it comes to content of any kind. Focus on your delivery and messaging first, ensuring your campaigns are providing value to your audience. They’ll surely appreciate it.

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