Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.
Email marketing is becoming more powerful.
Companies are relying on email marketing more than ever to drive sales and communicate their brands.
And as content marketing grows more competitive, agents need a way to push prospects to what they’re offering. Email is that solution.
Social media remains supremely relevant, but it has not led to the demise of email, as many not long ago believed.
[Tweet “Social media remains supremely relevant, but it has not led to the demise of email.”]
Here’s a head-to-head comparison of MailChimp and Constant Contact, two of the most popular industry vendors.
COST/1,000 subscribers:
MailChimp: $0.00
Constant Contact: $35.00/month
SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION
MailChimp: View social profiles of subscribers; send to contacts in specific networks; share buttons dropped into messages with profiles connected via settings; Facebook sign-up form; share to networks before send.
Constant Contact: Post emails to networks before sending; share buttons inserted in messages; integrated Facebook promotions.
ANALYTICS
MailChimp: graph and overlay views (mouseover reveals stats of link, image, etc.) of opens, links clicked, unsubscribes, reason for bounce, and industry average; email domain metrics; subscriber level view of when opened, what was clicked and for how long; website usage can be tracked as well.
Constant Contact: graph views of opens, clicks, unsubscribes, industry average, sales reports (if promoting events or classes, etc.); per-subscriber activity.
LIST BUILDING
MailChimp: custom, branded form builder with embed code for websites and landing pages; Facebook sign-up.
Constant Contact: website, Facebook subscription forms; text and QR code subscribe options; tag contacts with segment/category.
Contacts in Constant Contact.
MESSAGE CREATION
MailChimp: templates for HTML, plain text; drag and drop text, images, buttons, image collages; integrated photo editing; team collaboration; testing for desktop and mobile viewing.
Constant Contact: templates and from-scratch options, drag and drop text and images; included stock library, purchase options or upload storage; Facebook and Instagram images can be uploaded, stored.
MailChimp templates.
DELIVERY
MailChimp: Schedule day and time; automate sending based on new subscribes; create, schedule a series of emails, set each launch time; proactive spam testing; deliver text and HTML versions; send A/B messages to test time/date, from, subject effectiveness.
Constant Contact: Schedule day and time; proactive spam testing; autoresponder emails to target new subscribes; create, schedule series of emails; use tags to segment lists.
Constant Contact’s unsubscribed report
There are a lot of email providers out there, and many of them work in conjunction with CRMs, while many CRMs have their own email marketing features.
However you choose to go about it, the important thing is to understand how effective email campaigns can be for your real estate business.
Do you use MailChimp or Constant Contact — and what do you think? Leave a comment and let us know!
Do you have a product for our tech expert to review? Email Craig Rowe.
Inman Connect San Francisco is right around the corner — register now and save $200!
