Cold Calling vs. Cold Emailing: Best Practices for Real Estate Companies

Whether you're an agent selling luxury homes or a firm seeking investors for commercial properties, there's never been a better time to be in real estate - the market in the U.S. alone is expected grow by over 4.5% in the next few years. So, with so many potential customers looking to buy, real estate sales reps should find cold outreach easy, right?

Well, as any salesperson in the industry will tell you, securing potential customers with a watertight outreach strategy can actually be extremely challenging (not least because of high competition). That's why getting to grips with best practices for two of the most common cold outreach methods is so important.

Today, we're going to be doing just that. We're going to compare two of the real estate industry's favourite outreach methods: cold calling and cold emailing, detailing the key benefits of each and the best practices you should be following for better response rates.

We'll cover everything you need to know about cold calling and cold emailing so that you can pick up the phone (or open your laptop) and start filling your sales funnel with qualified leads today.

Let's get started.

Understanding cold calling

If you've ever held any position in sales or business, you probably know what cold calling is. For those who don't, let's give a quick overview:

Cold calling is the process of making unsolicited sales calls to potential customers (or 'prospects') with the aim of engaging their interest and hopefully closing a deal. Most cold calls aren't designed to make a sale there and then, but rather to intrigue a prospect and move them onto the next stage of the sales funnel. Even if you've never actually made a cold call, you've almost certainly received one.

Let's take a look at a few cold calling statistics:

• The average success rate for cold calls is about 4.8% (though some studies put it lower)
• For most sales reps, it takes around eight cold call attempts to reach a prospect
• The average sales rep has between five and ten minutes to convince a prospect

Key benefits of cold calling

It's true that cold call response rates are low, but it remains one of the two most popular outreach methods (along with cold emailing). So why is that?

• Immediate interaction
• When a rep makes a cold call, assuming the right person picks up, they have the opportunity to immediately get to work. Other outreach methods rely on the prospect getting back to you, whereas phone calls see an immediate response (one way or the other).
• Personal connection
• Talking to a human is always preferable to messaging. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest that the way in which you talk determines your cold calling success rate (tone of voice accounts for 93% of cold call success).
• Real-time feedback
• A rep can pretty much assess the response to their call immediately, and has the opportunity to get valuable feedback 'straight from the horse's mouth'.

Understanding cold emailing

In essence, cold emailing is very similar to cold calling in its aims. The goal of a cold email is to make the 'first touch' with a prospect - to introduce yourself and your solution in a way that gets them hooked. And just like cold calls, cold emails should engage their target audience by clearly outlining a solution to specific pain points.

Here are some important cold emailing statistics:

• Cold emails have an average open rate of around 24%
• However, only around eight in every hundred cold emails get a reply
• 80% of consumers prefer to be contacted by email than by cold call

Key benefits of cold emailing

Although cold emailing is similar to cold calling in principle, it's a distinct cold outreach method in many ways. This is reflected in the different benefits offered by a good email-based cold outreach campaign. Let's explore some of them:

• Scalability
• With today's easy-access cold emailing software and technology, it's easier than ever to conduct a cold email campaign on a large scale (and to track it effectively).
• Cost-effectiveness
• Cold emailing remains relatively cheap. Although you still have to pay for sales rep salaries and overheads, cold emails, once written, can be sent off in bulk and at a low cost-per-email.
• Time-efficiency
• Just like its cost-effectiveness, cold emailing efforts are relatively quick (when you look at time spent per email); in short, a single sales rep can ping off more emails per hour than they can make phone calls per hour.

Cold calling best practices

Let's see how you can implement cold calling best practices in the real estate industry so you can start making cold calls that convert key decision-makers.

1. Research and prepare

When conducting any cold outreach - but particularly cold calling, where you'll be 'put on the spot' - it's important you understand as much about who you're talking to as possible. This means not only researching their company and the role of the person you're calling, but the prospect's pain point, too.

Only then can you tailor your cold call in a way necessary to stand out from the competition and demonstrate that you sincerely care about providing a solution to your prospect's problem.

2. Effective communication techniques

In order to achieve a high response rate, your cold call must come off natural, professional, friendly, informative, helpful, and much more. Juggling these tones can be tricky, but practice makes perfect.

In general, you want to:

• Smile while you talk
• Use names where appropriate
• Let your personality shine through

3. Follow ups

At Leadium, we never stop emphasizing the importance of follow ups. When you follow up on a sales call, you're not only demonstrating your commitment to the prospect, but increasing your chances of making a sale, too.

Despite this, most salespeople fail to follow up at all (a staggering 44% give up after one follow up call, even though in most cases a deal requires at least five follow ups).

Google sheets and other software can help you schedule a quick call and keep track of follow ups.

Cold emailing best practices

Skyrocket click through rate, reduce time consuming tasks, avoid spam folders, and boost outreach efforts with these key tips for cold emailing.

1. Crafting effective cold emails

Never neglect the importance of the cold email itself. Writing a great cold email requires practice, but there are some fundamental principles any good sales rep should know. For example:

• Write a compelling subject line
• Include relevant data
• Include social proof
• Link to the company website

Personalization is also super important. Research shows that personalized emails see high click through rates of around 43%!

2. Content strategies

Just like with cold calls, cold emails require strong closing skills - what this means, in practice, is a powerful call to action (CTA).

Unlike cold calls, however, cold emails are a visual medium, so aesthetic considerations must be taken into account. You want the design of your cold email to reflect your brand and guide the reader from the subject line to the CTA with ease. Of course, you may not be an experienced designer; in which case, email templates can be super helpful.

Also, include links, be that to your website, a blog post, social media platforms, or anything else that will help establish brand credibility.

3. Follow ups

Just like with cold calls, you can't expect to make a sales from an initial cold email, and well-timed follow ups increase the chances of a reply by almost 50%. But when should you follow up?

Evidence suggests that the ideal rate at which to follow up is once every three-four days. These emails should remind the prospect of the value proposition, but not be the same message. You should acknowledge that it is, indeed, a follow up.

And if you're having trouble keeping track of all those cold emails manually, the best cold emailing tools allow you to implement automated follow ups.

Launch your real estate cold outreach strategy

Ultimately, cold emails and cold calls could throw stats back and forth forever. There's no easy way to decide which is best for your business, and most real estate agencies opt for a combination of both.

And in reality, as long as you're following some basic principles and best practices, there's no reason why either couldn't give you spectacular results. If you take one thing away from this, it should be that modern outreach efforts rest on great lead generation and personalized messaging.

Established companies like Leadium can help you with that. Our comprehensive lead generation programs cover everything from cold emailing and cold calling to social selling and corporate gifting, making us a go-to choice for real estate leaders in the U.S. today. Head over to our homepage to see how we can get your response rates higher than ever before.