How to Make Great Subject Lines in Apartment Marketing Emails

Running a dedicated email marketing program is essential for success in the apartment industry, as it’s one of the best ways to keep prospects in your sales funnel and increase the likelihood of a signed lease. But an apartment email program is only going to work as intended if those emails get opened.

Emails are only as good as their subject line. Here’s what you need to pay attention to in order to create email subject lines that will boost your open rates.

Make The Email Subject Line Personally Relevant

There’s no such thing as a clean email inbox. Your prospects and residents are already getting several emails a day from several sources, so they’re going to pick and choose which ones are worth their time to even open. The way to make your emails stand out is to make them personal. So how do you do that?

Use The Personal Information You Have

Chances are you’re building your email list through your Property Management System or existing CRM – and if you’re not already, we can help. That said, you should already have a wealth of information about every member of your list, and you should be using that to personalize your subject lines. Use your email service to insert conditional content to address your contacts by name, so they feel less like spammy form letters.

Personalize it even further by pulling in information about their living situation. If they’re a single tenant, a family, or someone with a roommate, use that information to further personalize it, like so:

“Brett, have you found the right apartment yet?”

“Kelly, have you and your family found the right apartment yet?”

“Deshaun, have you and your roommate found the right apartment yet?”

Be Timely In The Subject Line

In email marketing, deliverability hinges on the what and when, as in what you’re saying and offering, and when you do it. Making the subject line timely helps bridge the gap between those two. In a regular newsletter to prospects or current residents, use timely language to make the email relevant now, such as “today,” “this week,” or the current month.

For automated emails that might be sent out after certain triggers, try to use timely language as well, even though they’re already time-based. Here are a few examples for prospects or current residents:

“How was your tour at The Lodge yesterday?”

“Hi Diane, are you ready to sign a lease this September?”

“Any questions about your move-in date next week, Jared?”

Including timely language makes your emails more actionable and helps increase open rates across your list.

Act Like A Human

It’s a fact that people prefer to interact with other people instead of machines. Even though your emails aren’t being written out in real time, approach them like they are. Instead of thinking “What’s the right subject line for the automated tour follow-up email?” ask “How would our leasing specialist follow up in email to someone they just gave a tour to?”

Be conversational, less business-like, and more approachable in your subject line.

Offer Something Specific To Their Needs

Most headlines work on a “pain or gain” premise, meaning you’re trying to help your prospects gain something, or avoid pain. That offer should be front and center in your email subject lines. The obvious “gain” you’re offering your prospects is a great living space in the long run, but a more specific one to their situation might be an easy way of navigating the process of finding an apartment. So what may be the more pertinent gain in an email subject line for someone thinking about signing a lease is a friendly voice that’s willing to answer any questions and concerns that they have.

Fortunately, not every subject line you write in all of your email communications has to satisfy all of these rules laid out above in order to be effective. However, keeping all of these in mind will help you write better email subject lines that improve your open rates and can help translate into more leads converting into long term residents.

To learn more about creating email automations to manage communications with current leads and residents, schedule a short demo with Resident Spark.