Real Estate Lead Nurturing

Most real estate professionals aren’t struggling to generate leads. It’s converting those leads into customers that’s holding them back. 

Why? In most cases, their follow-up system is broken. It doesn’t include effective lead nurturing tactics like email drip campaigns, multi-channel outreach, and sales automation. 

Let’s look at how to bridge the gap between lead generated and lead converted. 

What Is Lead Nurturing in Real Estate?

Real estate lead nurturing is the set of activities that realtors, sales teams, and brokerages use to build relationships with new leads. Common tactics include automated follow-up emails, email campaigns with personalized content, and direct calls by agents. 

How Nurturing Differs from Lead Generation

Real estate lead generation brings leads in. Nurturing moves them down the sales funnel. 

Targeted lead generation strategies use marketing tactics, AI tools, and top-of-funnel content to attract leads and build interest in your service. 

The process ends with collecting the lead’s contact information, usually via a web form in return for a lead magnet, like a real estate market analysis report or a home valuation.

Here’s an example of a real estate lead magnet (a home valuation) from Zillow: 

Once contact info is collected, lead nurturing begins. Marketers and agents usually start by educating the lead about their service.

They send the lead more mid and bottom-of-funnel content, such as case studies, monthly market reports, home-buying process timelines, and client success stories. 

Nurturing ends when the lead decides to take a meeting with an agent. 

Why Lead Nurturing Works in Real Estate

Lead nurturing can work wonders for your real estate business for the following reasons:

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  Builds trust for high-ticket sales: Since the price point of properties is so high, real estate is highly relationship-driven. Leads need to trust you if they’re going to accept your help on such a large investment. Lead nurturing is the best way to start building this trust. 

  
  
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  Long decision timeline: A lead might not choose to buy or sell until six months after submitting their contact info. When they’re ready to make a move, it happens fast. They’ll reach out to the agent that’s top of mind. If you’ve been nurturing them, that’s likely you.

  
  
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  Information-heavy process: When buying a house or investing in office space, the client has to learn a lot of complex industry jargon, legal processes, and market dynamics. If your nurturing content helps them navigate this process, they’re going to value you as their go-to expert. 

  
  

To illustrate, an article like the one below might be so helpful to a lead that they decide to book a consultation with the real estate agent who wrote it.

Best Practices for Real Estate Lead Nurturing

From fast lead response times to personalized messaging, here are the best tips for effective lead nurturing in the real estate industry.  

Respond Quickly and Often

When a lead expresses interest, it’s important to follow up quickly—within minutes, if possible. Otherwise, they might forget about you, or worse, be snapped up by another agent. 

The best way to ensure fast follow-up? Automate it. Use a sales automation tool that sends a personalized follow-up to the lead immediately after they interact with your brand. 

Remember, just one follow-up message isn’t enough. The lead likely won’t respond. After all, they’re still in the early phase of the process. 

The solution? Put the lead into an email drip campaign that automates follow-up over the next several months, sending them one to two emails per week about topics related to their specific interests.

This way, you provide them a constant drip of value over time, and you’ll be the first person they think of when they’re ready to work with an agent. 

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo

Personalize Your Outreach

Personalized emails, calls, and texts generate a much higher engagement rate than generic messages.

In fact, according to research by McKinsey, 71% of customers expect personalized experiences, and 76% get annoyed at generic ones.  

Follow these tips to tailor your messages to the needs of your leads: 

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  Segment your leads: Are they first-time home buyers? Are they selling their fifth flipped home? Break your list of leads into groups based on interests, location, and their stage in the buyer’s journey. This makes it easier to bulk personalize your outreach. 

  
  
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  Reference the lead’s interests: Regularly bring up the lead’s reason for reaching out. What sparked their interest in working with you? What are their goals and concerns? This makes them feel understood. 

  
  
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  Share relevant advice: Is the lead selling a house? Send a guide on how to stage that type of property for the best results. Are they looking to buy in a certain neighborhood? Provide them with a neighborhood guide or tips for finding good deals in that area.  

  
  

Sal Dimiceli, owner and senior broker at Lake Geneva Area Realty, recommends that agents should "create hyperlocal content highlighting neighborhoods, schools, parks, and local businesses.” 

For Sal, it’s all about showing your relationship with the local community: “Host or sponsor community events, virtual neighborhood tours, or webinars featuring local experts. By displaying genuine interest in the leads' future community, you position yourself as a true neighborhood insider.”

Many agents, however, struggle with the task of personalizing large numbers of emails. 

Fortunately, AI is making personalization possible at scale. AI sales tool Artisan, for example, has a powerful set of outreach features. Ava, Artisan’s AI business development rep (BDR), nurtures leads over email and LinkedIn with tailored content based on their online behavior and demographic data. 

Use Multi-Channel Touchpoints

Multi-channel lead nurturing sequences that span phone, email, and text perform best.  According to Omnisend’s analysis of over 135,000 campaigns, marketers using three or more channels had a 494% higher order rate than their single-channel counterparts. 

Using multiple channels is especially important in real estate because it’s such a relationship-driven sales environment. Texts and phone calls, which are more personal than email, build a feeling of partnership more effectively. So it’s smart to add them into the mix.    

Phone calls

Use phone calls to build rapport with leads. Aim to learn more about them. Ask questions about their needs, real estate history, goals, and concerns. Open-ended questions are the best for getting them to open up and connect with you.  

Text messages

Weave text messages into your automated nurturing sequences to share time-sensitive, valuable information with leads, such as listings that are new on the market.

Email

Automate email as much as you can with marketing automation software. Email is the background nurturing channel that warms leads up.

Put your prospects into segmented email campaigns that auto-send pre-written emails every couple of days. Ensure these emails align with their interests and current phase in the buyer journey.   

Provide Value in Every Interaction

Most leads are nervous. They need an expert they can trust to guide them through the process of buying or selling real estate. Show them you’re that person. Lead with education. 

There are five types of content that perform exceptionally well in real estate:

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  Market insights 

  
  
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  Home maintenance tips

  
  
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  Neighborhood guides 

  
  
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  Analyses of the local schools

  
  
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  Financing options

  
  

You can also send ultimate guides as attachments or links in some of your emails. These should cover big challenges, like saving for a down payment or decluttering a home before moving.

What’s interesting to one lead could be irrelevant to another, so make sure you understand segments deeply. 

What are leads’ financial constraints? Do they have a family? What’s their dream home? 

Store this data in your CRM and reference it to send content that resonates. Send enough value, and you’ll earn the right to show them suitable properties. 

We asked Mark Sanchez, founder of Tropic Residential, for one of his top value-providing tactics. To make his leads feel special and give them something unique they can’t find anywhere else, he hosts invite-only virtual home tours…with a twist.

“These aren’t your typical open houses or generic virtual tours you find online. I take the time to create an experience where potential buyers feel like they’re getting an insider’s look at a property. I incorporate live Q&A, highlight hidden gems in the house, and even walk them through renovation potential or neighborhood amenities they might not have noticed.” 

Now that’s how you show your worth as an agent or brokerage. 

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Real Estate Lead Nurturing

Sometimes, the best way to gain proficiency in a skill, whether it’s cold calling or lead nurturing, is to identify the most common mistakes beginners make and avoid them at all costs.

So, let’s cover the top “oopsies” in real estate lead nurturing and how to prevent them. 

Giving Up Too Early

No response doesn’t mean no interest. The lead gave you their contact info. They must have some level of curiosity in your service. 

So why didn’t they answer? Usually, they’re not ready for a sales conversation. They have more research to do. More conversations to have with their spouse. They’ve only just initiated this long-term project. 

Your job is to be there for them. To guide them with helpful content and outreach, whether they respond or not. Because one day, they’ll be ready to take action, and you want to be the one they think of when that happens. 

How long should you continue to reach out? According to Realtor Barry Jenkins, it often takes seven follow-ups to connect with a lead. 

Our two cents? Keep following up until they tell you to leave them alone or respond positively. 

Reduce the frequency after the first seven touches, but keep nurturing. Set a reminder to reach out personally once per month. And use automation software to send a weekly newsletter that lists new properties they might be interested in. 

Being Too Salesy

Push value, not listings. Leads have a lot of distrust towards sales reps who are always pushing for a sale. 

They tend to prefer working with someone who shares interesting, helpful information and asks to conduct a viewing only when it’s appropriate (i.e., when a suitable property comes up). 

Follow these three tips to avoid coming across as salesy: 

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  Take a consultative approach. 

  
  
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  Start conversations by talking about needs. 

  
  
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  Listen carefully. 

  
  

Aim to understand the true desires behind their vocalized wants—when they say they want a palace in the mountains, are they actually looking for a sense of privacy? If you can identify root desires and make your buyer aware of them, they’ll love you for it. 

Using Generic Messages

Cookie-cutter outreach leads to low engagement.

Segment your audience by desired neighborhood, financial situation, real estate type, and other factors that help you create personalized bulk email sequences. 

Also, leverage tools like Artisan that can scrape the web and social media for lead information and automatically create personalized outreach sequences from that intel. Artisan’s lead enrichment tools draw on a wide array of sources across the web. 

No CRM or Follow-Up System

Without CRM-powered follow-up systems, leads fall through the cracks. Or your follow-up is delivered too late. A dedicated real estate CRM is invaluable. 

Most CRMs also enable you to create web forms you can embed across your real estate website to collect lead contact details. 

Here’s an example of a contact form from Village Square Realtors that likely goes straight to a CRM: 

A good CRM will also have automated lead routing and notifications, so the sales rep in charge of the account can reach out ASAP over phone or email. Overall, these platforms are excellent for streamlining workflows and boosting conversions. 

Lead Nurturing Tools and Automation for Real Estate

From CRMs to AI sales agents, there are plenty of lead nurturing tools you can use to automate sales and marketing tasks, email campaigns, and delivery of follow-up messages. 

CRMs Are Essential

CRMs help real estate companies track leads, set reminders, and organize follow-ups. They also provide you with a place to store lead information for reference, so you can personalize outreach and prepare for phone calls. 

Many also offer lead scoring functionality, which helps your team qualify and prioritize leads based on their online behavior and how well they match your ideal customer profile (ICP).  

Whether it’s Salesforce or HubSpot, these platforms are a necessity, saving you time and headaches and preventing leads from falling through the cracks. 

Use Drip Campaigns

Email drip campaigns are sequences of pre-written emails that automatically go out to leads over a set period. Typically, they’re triggered by a conversion event, such as a prospect downloading a lead magnet or filling out a contact form. They’re excellent tools for building relationships on autopilot. 

To set up drip campaigns, use email marketing automation tools like Mailchimp or Follow Up Boss. These tools make it easy to create and schedule sequences. 

They also typically have integrations with CRMs, allowing for cross-platform automations like triggered email follow-ups. Most come with templates, too, which speed up the setup process. 

Ideally, you should set up all of the following drip campaigns: 

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  Welcome campaigns that introduce you and your brand and offer some initial value. For example, NJ Real Estate Geek gives leads a mini-course on how to achieve their real estate goals. 

  
  

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  Promotional campaigns that include new listing alerts, open house invitations, and special deals.  

  
  
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  Re-engagement campaigns for older leads who haven’t been reading and interacting with your content. 

  
  

You can also create seasonal campaigns to invite leads to local events, as Jodie Cordell has done in the example below posted on The Close: 

Be sure to track engagement in your email marketing platform. Open rates, conversion rates, and other metrics will help you optimize your drip campaigns for resonance. 

How Artisan Helps

An AI sales platform like Artisan takes your lead nurturing to the next level. 

Artisan comes with an AI BDR named Ava who can do all the following without human intervention:

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  Find leads that match your ICP from a database with over 300 million profiles

  
  
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  Gather information about leads from a variety of sources across the web

  
  
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  Write personalized cold emails and LinkedIn messages

  
  
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  Create and manage multi-channel outreach sequences 

  
  
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  Integrate with popular CRMs 

  
  

This comprehensive set of AI features saves your team time and allows them to focus on the essential human elements of closing leads, rather than getting stuck in the weeds of nurturing. 

Example Lead Nurturing Sequences

Email and text sequences are the lifeblood of lead nurturing. They ensure consistency and, through automation, save you a lot of time. Here are three main sequences you can use to turn hesitant leads into eager prospects. 

Email/Text Sequence for Ready-to-Buy Leads

This sequence is for new clients ready to buy property. The goal is to nurture them through a mix of educational content, listings, and check-ins over both email and text. 

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  Day 1 (Email): Introduce yourself, thank them for their interest, and share your most valuable piece of content (typically a home buyer’s guide or local market report). 

  
  
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  Day 3 (Text): Mention a common concern of homebuyers like them (like mortgage pre-approval), and provide information to help them resolve it (like two pre-approved lenders). 

  
  
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  Day 7 (Email): Share new listings in the area, as well as a summary of price trends and inventory levels (flex that expertise). 

  
  
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  Day 15 (Text): Check in and share a quick success story about a client who recently bought in the area (this builds credibility and trust).

  
  
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  Day 21 (Email): Send an educational email helping them navigate the buying process. For example, “5 steps to finding your dream home” or “3 mistakes new homebuyers make.”

  
  
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  Day 30 (Text and Email): Share three listings that fit their needs, explain why they’re a great fit, then include a call to action to schedule a viewing. 

  
  

Seller Lead Nurturing Sequence

This sequence is for leads trying to sell property. It makes use of value-driven emails like market updates and a home valuation.  

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  Day 1 (Email): Send a welcome message introducing yourself, along with a home valuation and a write-up of what’s selling in their neighborhood (and for how much). 

  
  
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  Day 3 (Text): Share a market insight that encourages them to act and builds urgency, such as the fact that buying inventory is down YoY in their neighborhood, while demand is still the same.

  
  
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  Day 7 (Email): Tell a story about a recent customer who sold a property similar to the lead’s. Also, share some statistics about home sales in the area. 

  
  
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  Day 15 (Email): Share educational content that helps them navigate the selling process—for example, “6 staging secrets that help you sell for more.” 

  
  
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  Day 21 (Text and Email): Send an offer for a listing consultation. Reference recent homes you listed that have sold in the area, highlighting any that sold above asking price. 

  
  

Open House Lead Follow-Up

Here’s a follow-up sequence for leads who attended an open house. It includes a thankyou message, a listings recap, and personalized next steps. 

It’s a shorter sequence but with higher frequency because open house attendees expect faster responses and are further along the customer journey. 

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  Day 1 (Email): Thank them for stopping by, mention a key detail from your conversation, and share helpful content (such as detailed property info, neighborhood info, and comparable sales data). Let them know you’re here to help if they have any questions. 

  
  
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  Day 2 (Text): Share a few other listings similar to the one they toured. If possible, mention that it has an aspect they liked in the other place (for example, a large yard). 

  
  
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  Day 4 (Text and Email): Follow up to see if they’re interested in moving forward with the house or want to schedule a tour of any of the other listings you shared. 

  
  

Automate Real Estate Lead Nurturing With Artisan

Most agents aren’t taking advantage of AI automation. By adopting the right tools, you’ll give yourself a razor-sharp advantage over 90% of your competitors. 

Artisan’s AI BDR Ava researches leads from a database of over 300 million leads, gathers personalization data, and automates outreach and follow-up. All of which frees you and your team to focus on the all-important human elements of closing deals. 

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo

FAQs on Real Estate Lead Nurturing

How long should I nurture a lead?

Nurture a real estate lead until they opt out or convert. Real estate sales cycles are long, so this can sometimes go on for years. 

How often should I follow up?

Follow up with leads frequently at first (every other day), then taper off based on engagement with your outreach until you’re sending them a weekly newsletter. 

Can I automate without sounding robotic?

You can automate lead nurturing without sounding robotic by using AI sales tools like Artisan that use lead data and AI to personalize messages based on the lead’s specific interests. 

Should buyers and sellers be nurtured differently?

Buyers and sellers should be nurtured differently—you want to customize content and cadence based on their particular journey.