Real estate agents need to make email marketing a priority. In a survey of agents, email campaigns were named one of the top three effective marketing strategies, right behind referrals and featured listings.

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Here are eight reasons why email marketing needs to be up high on your list.

Email Is Widespread

Eighty-five percent of Americans use email and the internet. Of people between the ages of 18 and 29, that figure is a whopping 98 percent. Of the 15 percent of the U.S. population who do not use email and the internet, a large percentage are over the age of 65. You want to send your messages where they will be received, and an extraordinarily high percentage receive email.

Email Can Sell Your Listings for You

A lot of real estate marketing is done through bringing prospective buyers to your listings. Email, though, can bring them in virtually. A beautiful home — or one with the amenities a buyer is looking for — can sell itself through pictures. Show the bay window, the backyard, and the kitchen. Sending the pictures via email is a great way to interest a prospective buyer into physically looking.

Email Gives Prospective Clients Usable Information

When you have a listing that is right up a prospective client’s alley, you want to give them background as well as pictures. What’s the square footage? Is it gas or electric heat? What’s the school district? You can give this information by phone, of course. Give it by email, though, and the clients have plenty of time to look at their leisure.

Related: 5 Steps to Structuring the Perfect Professional Email

Email Is Convenient for Clients

Clients like to be treated well. Many do not like a hard sell, but are comfortable with real estate agents who make them comfortable. Email is convenient for your clients. They can look at the listings you’ve included in an email at any time that works for them — and not necessarily the time you call them.

Email Is Customizable to a Client Base

If you have specific niches of clients — first-time home buyers, move-up home buyers, or downsizing buyers who are looking for a smaller place — email marketing lets you create information and listings specific to each niche. You can market to both buyers and sellers. In addition, of course, you can literally customize an email to a specific client.

Email Contributes to Your Brand

For maximum effectiveness, all your marketing should contribute to your brand. Are you the information source for first-time home buyers in your area? Do you provide information on mortgage rates? Inspections? Has your organization been named agent of the year? All this information can go in your email. You can run a series on how to find the right mortgage, for example.

Email Drives Your Other Marketing

A good real estate agent site will have a web page with listings, of course, as well as Facebook and Twitter accounts. A good email campaign will link in to all your media and drive customers to your web site and Facebook accounts, with updates on Twitter.

Related: 6 Keys to Writing Effective Real Estate Emails (That People Will Actually Read!)

Email Contributes to Repeat and Referral Business

One of the most important functions of email is the way it allows you to keep in touch with past clients. You can easily craft an email customized to them. Recent real estate news combined with news in your community and even news about mortgage rates can be genuinely helpful and appreciated.

In addition, if the recipients are asked about real estate agents, your name will be in front of them for a referral. Of course, each client has a real estate life cycle. When the time comes for the move-up buyer to downsize, or the first timer to move up, your name will be familiar and at their fingertips.

Email is an accessible and customizable way to letting your properties sell themselves and of keeping your brand before your client base. Marketing with email should be a top priority for real estate agents.

Investors: Do you use email marketing? What kind of results are you seeing?

Let me know with a comment!