We don’t have to tell you that referrals are important for your real estate business because you likely already know. But are you really getting everything you can out of loyal customers, or is there more you can do? Just because you’re already getting referrals, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and get more. There’s always room to grow and improve.

Whether you're looking to breathe new life into a stagnant program or kickstart a new one, announcing your referral program is crucial — and email is the way to go.

We’ll go over exactly what this email should look like to launch or relaunch your referral program. We’ll be going through specific examples using Locorum, but you can still follow along with any referral program. 

Why You Need to Announce Your Referral Program

You may wonder why you need to announce your referral program. It’s simple: if people don’t know about it, they won’t use it. So, you want to share your program with as many people and as often as possible.

82% of all real estate transactions come from repeat and referral business, showing the importance of nurturing loyal customers. Rewarding these customers is a great way to stay in their minds and show that you value them.

How to Send an Announcement Email

One of the most important steps after creating your referral program is to send out an announcement email. Start with a clear announcement outlining how your contacts can participate in your referral program. We recommend sending it to all previous buyers.

Real-Life Example

The Parker Coulter Team did an excellent job introducing their program through a bulk email through their CRM. While bulk email is effective, overdoing it can have negative effects, so don’t overuse it. One way to help is to personalize and segment the emails so the recipients feel like they are being directly sent to them. 

Here’s the email that Parker Coulter sent:

Email subject: Your Next Reward is Just a Referral Away - Earn $250 Each!

This email subject tells recipients what the email is about and the benefit of opening it (earning $250). This entices people to open and consider the email rather than archiving it right away.

This body of the email makes it very clear that they are “Introducing: A Rewarding Experience for You and Your Friends!”

In this example, they have a marketing budget of $500, split 50/50 between the referee and referrer ($250 each), which is sent after the deal closes. 

It is also very important to include instructions on how your contacts can participate in your reward program. Most often, this is described as a four-step process, which could look something like Parker Coulter's email:

This email was sent to thousands of clients, had an open rate of 47.4% and resulted in one successful referral. The gross income potential was over $30,000 + HST from a single email. 

Sending Announcement Emails with Locorum

To introduce your referral program to your database, you can use the previous email or one of Locorum's templates. Here’s what to do:

1. Upload your database (to send the email to)
2. Create a campaign
3. Send the email(s) to your database - you can tag contacts to segment emails if needed

And that’s it! As you probably noticed, we linked some information in the above steps to help you along the way. But we aim to make this process as simple as possible, and it should take you less than a couple of hours total. 

Want to launch your referral program? Get in touch to learn how!