Should Real Estate Professionals Bother Email Marketing to Gen Z?

How to Capitalize on Gen Z Online Behavior

Email marketing to millennials is still a hot (and super-important) topic. Real estate professionals now have an additional generation of users to consider: Gen Z. Born anytime after 1997, Gen Z recipients will become increasingly important and prominent as they grow up and start making money.

How exactly does online home search differ between generations? As a data-focused company, we’re as curious about this as you, the realtor. We set out to collect data on showing inquiries (emails) across those generations. In this post, we’re focusing specifically on how Gen Z uses email by expecting a high-level of responsiveness from agents and how that may change in the future.

Gen Z Email Usage and Best Practices

According to some studies,  85 percent of Gen Z use email for inquiries (mostly apartment rentals at this point), and for receiving emails from real estate companies and their representatives. We expect this to evolve as their generation enters the workforce and begins opening and becoming first-time homebuyers in the next five years.

With this in mind, you can start to pull together a plan that considers the usage and needs of Gen Z recipients. Right now, they’re using email less than other generations, so dialing it in to provide only relevant and contextual content will be critical for reaching Gen Z.

Sending a non-relevant promotional email that will be hard to act on will decrease engagement but also lose your recipients.

Takeaways

Although Gen Z uses an array of digital communication methods, email is still a core part of their daily digital usage. In order to capitalize on that, it’s going to be crucial to keep in mind the following:

  • Identifying your user by generation will help you tailor your messages and keep better track of recipient engagement. Targeted messages that resonate will be more likely to convert and keep your GenZers engaged.
  • A/B testing within generations as well as testing across generations will help you glean a better picture of your engagement and where there might be some room for improvement.
  • Keep a close eye on the metrics of the Gen Z users, notice how that changes over time so you can provide them with listings and or messages they want, at the time they want, and in a way that transforms them into your future high-converting users.

And finally, all the data in the world can help you as you build and optimize your program, but keep in mind that you are the expert, so finding a balance in the data will be key as you analyze and perfect your online clientele strategy.