Review request email for real estate brands

The trigger is a closed transaction, not a pageview or a purchase. Wire this email to a CRM status change. In Klaviyo, fire it off a "Closed Deal" or "Lease Signed" metric. In HubSpot or Follow Up Boss, push the close date as a date property and let a time-based flow wait 7 to 14 days after it. Send on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning, when buyers sit at a desk instead of unpacking boxes.

Timing carries most of the conversion. A review ask sent inside 14 days of close converts roughly 18 to 25% of the people who open it. The same ask sent 60 days out drops under 5%. The memory fades fast once the moving truck leaves.

The offer angle is constrained. Google's review policy bans pay-for-review incentives and will strip paid reviews off your profile, and RESPA and NAR rules limit anything that looks like a kickback. Do not offer a gift card. Lean on reciprocity and the social outcome instead. The favor is for the next family, not for you.

Copy should anchor on a concrete outcome the client can verify. Reference the property address, the offer terms, or a moment from the transaction. Real example copy:

Subject: "Your new keys, {{ first_name|default:'there' }}" Preheader: "One quick favor for the next family moving in." Opening line: "We got your offer accepted in 36 hours and you to the closing table on schedule. If that felt good, would you write two sentences about it?"

The CTA is one button to one destination. Pick the platform that needs the lift. Google Business Profile reviews feed local SEO and Maps, so send buyers there when you need local ranking. Zillow agent reviews feed listing-side credibility, so send them there when you need seller trust. Always use the static review link, the g.page/r/XXXX/review URL for Google or your agent profile URL for Zillow, so the client lands on the form itself. A landing page that asks them to log in costs you half the reviews.

Every layout is built from nested HTML tables, not divs or flexbox. Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo all strip or mangle flex and grid. Tables survive because every email client, including the Outlook Word rendering engine, understands them. The outer table sets the 600px width. Inner tables form the header, body, and footer rows.

All CSS is inline on the element it styles. Gmail clips the head of emails over 102KB and ignores style blocks for many selectors. Inline styles mean your padding, color, and font-size ship with the element.

The button is a bulletproof VML button. Outlook renders HTML email through Microsoft Word, which ignores CSS backgrounds and border-radius on anchor tags. Without VML, your rounded brand button turns into a flat underlined link in Outlook desktop. The VML fallback draws a real rectangle with a clickable background, so the button shows up correctly for the 15 to 25% of real estate clients who still live in Outlook.

Text is live, not baked into images. Many agents drop a hero image of the sold house with the headline printed on top. Gmail and Outlook block images by default on first open, and Apple Mail enlarges live text for users who need it. Live text always renders.

Dark mode is handled with a color-scheme meta tag and explicit background colors on every table cell. Without the meta, Apple Mail dark mode inverts your white background and your navy button turns into a washed-out grey. The meta tells the client you already chose your colors.

There is one custom mobile media query, set at 480px. It stacks columns and bumps the font sizes. Keeping custom queries to one keeps the file light and avoids the override wars that break layouts in older Android clients.

Web fonts fall back gracefully. The brand serif loads in Apple Mail and iOS, where web fonts render. Gmail and Outlook fall through the stack to Georgia and Times, so Windows clients without the custom font still get a readable serif at the right size.

Copy the HTML or MJML. Paste it into a Klaviyo HTML block inside a flow email, or into Mailchimp under Campaigns, then Code your own, then Paste in code. Both ESPs accept raw HTML in a single block.

Swap three things before you send. Replace the logo and brokerage name in the header. Replace the hex colors with your brand palette, your navy might be #1a3c5e and your accent might be #c8a55b. Replace the review URL with your own Google or Zillow link.

Wire the merge tags so each client sees their own transaction. In Klaviyo, use {{ first_name|default:'there' }} for the name and event properties from your Closed metric for the details: {{ event.address }}, {{ event.close_date }}, {{ event.agent_name }}. In Mailchimp, use *|FNAME|*, and add custom merge fields like *|PROPERTYADDRESS|* and *|AGENTNAME|* mapped from your CRM export.

Test before you schedule. Send a proof to yourself in Gmail on web and on mobile, Apple Mail on an iPhone, and Outlook on Windows. Open it once in light mode and once in dark mode. Confirm the button is clickable in Outlook, the images load if you use any, and the address line renders. Real estate compliance also wants a physical brokerage address in the footer. The template includes a footer slot for it, plus an unsubscribe link so your ESP accepts the send.