{"id":8944,"date":"2020-04-06T12:13:33","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T12:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/conversionlogix.com\/?p=8944"},"modified":"2023-11-14T19:55:26","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T19:55:26","slug":"covid-19-email-marketing-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/conversionlogix.com\/blog\/covid-19-email-marketing-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 Email Marketing Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Email is an effective way to re-engage old prospects and nurture leads throughout the leasing journey. As communities face longer leasing cycles during COVID-19, email marketing has become a critical form of communication to keep warm leads interested and informed. In the month of March, we sent over 100 prospect email campaigns on behalf of apartment communities nationwide. The email campaigns we sent averaged a 31% open rate, a 15% click rate, and a 30% increase in website conversion rates. In this guide, we shared the trends we saw across top-performing email campaigns and email strategies your team can use to drive similar results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Part 1: Build the Best List<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Curating Your Prospect List<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The beauty of an email campaign is that your team has complete control over their audience and the message they see. Take full advantage of this by sending your campaign to a list of prospects who have engaged with your community over the year. We recommend communities pull lead lists from their CRM that go back as far as 12 months and at least 90 days. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do we recommend sourcing leads from that date range?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, the typical apartment seeker can take 90+ days from search to move in. If you only send a campaign to leads you\u2019ve gathered in the last month, you will miss out on in-market prospects who are still interested in moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why source your list as far back as a year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apartment seekers who came to you a year ago are either renewing rents soon or looking to move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Build Your Lead List<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What if I don\u2019t have a prospect list?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are marketing a new development that doesn\u2019t have a lead list to draw from, you might be tempted to purchase a list. Here\u2019s why we don\u2019t recommend this and what you can do instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you buy a list of apartment seekers to send your campaign to, you run the risk of thousands of people hitting the spam button on your campaign. If enough people mark your email as spam it could ruin your ability to send any correspondence from your email domain. You can also run into legal trouble by violating anti-spam laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lead Generation Strategies for Lease Ups<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If you’re pre-leasing a new development we recommend creating a marketing campaign to drive traffic to your website and setting your website up to capture lead information from prospects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new developments we’ve worked with typically use paid search, paid social and display banner ads to drive traffic to their website since new communities struggle to build an organic online presence in search engines and social networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve seen examples of new developments that tell prospects to sign up for a VIP list on their website so they stay up to date on the progress of the community and be the first to hear about pre-leasing specials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Live chat can be an effective way to capture contact information from prospects inquiring about your community on your website before it is available to lease. We\u2019ve seen lead conversion rates between 75-80% from the communities that use managed live chat to service prospects and build a lead list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the community offers tours and specials they can use promotion tools and self-scheduling tools to capture leads on their site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part 2: Win the Inbox<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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During self-quarantine, people are spending more of their day online as they look to stay informed and connected with the world. This means communities have a greater chance of reaching someone through email now than they did a couple of months ago. The big difference now is that you are competing against more businesses and individuals for attention there. So how can you cut through the clutter? We rounded up ten subject lines from the prospect email campaigns that had high open rates during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Top Performing Subject Lines & Open Rates During COVID-19
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