“What’s the best way to find the owner of a local business?”

“How do most business owners today like to be contacted?"

For those in the Commercial Real Estate industry, we have found a powerful combination of outreach for reaching new prospective tenants and it’s so good we just couldn’t keep it to ourselves! A few weeks ago, we published our best practice guide for Facebook Messenger and now we’re pleased to bring you part two of the series for email!

Email is the most underrated tool in CRE for getting leads

If you work in retail leasing, you’re probably familiar with the fact that email blasts in commercial real estate are known to get nearly a 0% reply rate. Whomp whomp.

Our solution: Instead of sending low quality emails or abandoning this channel altogether, try sending plain-text, personalized emails using this guide to get your reply rate up.

Emails are all about metrics. When sending email campaigns, think in terms of delivery rate, open rate, number of opens, and reply rate.

Delivery Rate

The delivery rate of emails is based on 3 things, the quality of the email addresses, the content of the email itself, and the reputation of the email domain you're sending from.

Email List Quality

If you’re using Resqaured’s prospecting platform, you’ll notice that many businesses have both a primary and secondary email address listed. Primary email addresses are up-to-date and accurate ~95% of the time. Secondary emails are up-to-date and accurate ~82% of the time. When possible, prioritize adding businesses to email campaigns when they have primary email addresses.

Should I even bother with the info@ email addresses? Yes. One of the most common misconceptions we run into is that the info@[name of business].com addresses are not useful. Although the owner’s gmail account may get higher reply rates, our research has found that info@ addresses can consistently turn into leads.

Content of the Message

Spam filters are trained to block messages that may be harmful. The easiest way to avoid spam filters is to send plain-text emails. These are emails that contain no special formatting, no images, no links, and no attachments.

Plain-Text Email

Avoid this Format

Domain Reputation

The domain you are sending from can also lead you into the spam folder. If recipients mark messages from your domain as "spam", this will harm your domain’s reputation.

Resquared's email feature is built on the MailJet domain. This means as you send messages from Resquared, you are not risking your company's domain reputation.

Open Rate

If your message gets to the prospect's inbox, the next goal is to get them to open the message. This is primarily determined by the subject line. We recommend testing different subject lines. Keeping it short and casual usually results in higher open rates.

For example, the subject line Resquared uses for our templates is "Space available". This consistently achieves open rates over 40%, which is excellent. We have seen that open rates fall if you add to this subject line, for example changing it to "Space available in Huntington Heights for Salon".

Reply Rate

Your singular goal when you send an email should be to get a reply. The prospect won't sign a lease or probably even schedule a tour right away. Design your message to get an answer to the question: Are they interested in new space? Once they respond in a positive way, then you can send them more information or try to book a tour.

As an added benefit of using plain-text emails, they usually get 10x higher reply rates.

All emails should have one, specific ask. Something that makes it easy for the prospect to reply. Take a look at our default template below to see what we have found successful.

Template

Subject line: Space available

Message:

I'm working with a beautiful shopping center in town. We have a space available. Do you have any plans to relocate or expand? I was reading about [business_name] and thought you might be a good fit. Let me know and I can send you a flyer or set up a tour.

You'll recognize this as the pre-built template in the Resquared email tool. That's because it works. Before sending, you should change the word "town" to be your actual market, such as "Norwood". The Resquared email feature will automatically fill in the name of the business for every prospect you are sending this to.

Before hitting the send button, you may consider adding additional personalization. Such as "and thought you might be a good fit (I'm a big fan of your Lemon Cakes!)". However, remember to keep the message short.

To conclude – we believe that plain text emails help you cut through the noise of the competition and build trust with your customers. Reach out to us anytime to learn how Resquared helps automate prospecting with both email AND Facebook Messenger.