My Top Tips for Real Estate Email Newsletters
Every week I put together an email newsletter. Here are my top tips when it comes to sending out email newsletters…
- Don’t make it too fancy. You don’t need a lot of html code and colorful banners and tons of photos. Most people read their email on their phones these days so you want to keep it simple.
- Name your newsletter something fun. Our team name is Ron Henderson & Associates. Our newsletter is called The More Ron Update and the first line of the newsletter is always “…when Ron’s not enough, you need More Ron!” Anyone who knows Ron long enough is sure to hear him say this. He thinks it’s funny, and people always laugh when they hear it. Hence the name of the newsletter. It makes people feel like they are in on the inside joke.
- Consistency is key. I make absolutely sure our newsletter goes out every Friday at 4:00 PM. I guess my thinking is that people are goofing off Friday afternoons and looking for a distraction before they get to home. I don’t know that it matters a whole lot when you send the newsletter, just that you make it the same day of the week and the same time of day every week. If I am on vacation or have the day off, I will schedule the newsletter in advance.
- Use a service. We use Happy Grasshopper. I love it. We have all our past clients in there, plus every lead that comes to us from Realtor.com, Zillow, eEdge, etc, are all entered automatically. Every time a client closes with us, we make sure they are in the Happy Grasshopper database. When it’s time to send the newsletter, it goes out to everyone.
- Ideally you will want to use a service that lets you track open and click-through rates. Happy Grasshopper does it which is how we have learned to fine-tune our email newsletter. For instance, we discovered that certain homes in our Featured Home of the Week were getting more click-throughs than other homes. So we made sure to choose the homes that would get a better response.
- Post your email newsletter on your blog so you can benefit from having information on the web that people can read when they are researching your agent or team.
- Include links to various places on your website, but not too many. You don’t want to be spammy.
Real Estate Email Newsletter Contents
Featured Home of the Week
I have an auto-email that goes out to our Buyer’s Agent Scott every Wednesday to remind him to send me a home. Scott shows lots of houses so he knows what wows them.
When he’s looking for a home, he will choose one that first and foremost has really good pictures.
Then, he’s looking for something unique: an amazing pool in the backyard, a knock-out kitchen, a fabulous master suite.
Typically these homes are in the higher price ranges. People who look at homes on the internet will check homes that are realistic for them in some way. If they earn $100,000 a year, they typically won’t be looking at $800.000+ houses.
Then, Scott writes his own description of the house using the word YOU. He wants it to feel as though he’s talking directly to the recipient in a personal way.
I will take four or five photos off the listing and put them in the newsletter along with Scott’s description and a link to the home on our website.
If the home is not listed by your team, get permission from the listing agent. You don’t want to cross any boundaries here.
A Personal Story
The second section of the newsletter is written by our lead agent.
If for some reason, he gets busy and doesn’t do it, I fill in as best I can by writing about something in my own life or about real estate in general.
The reason why people love our newsletter, I think, is because of the personal stories Ron tells. It’s a way for past clients to learn more about Ron and it’s a way for us to stay in front of them. Especially for our past clients, it’s like receiving an email from a friend. And you would never delete an email from a friend without reading it first, would you?
In fact, we received an email from a past client just recently who had accidentally unsubscribed from our newsletter and asked to be added back! That’s how I know people like reading it.
Client Success Stories
People love stories. They just do.
Our transaction coordinator, Courtney, does her best to get written testimonials from our clients. When one comes in, she will forward it to the agent on our team who helped them, and that agent will write the story of how we met the clients, any challenges they had, and what a pleasure it was doing business with them.
You May Also Like…
For this last section of the email newsletter, I will add links to two of our past blog posts.
Finally
You can see the blog posts of our email newsletters here. I don’t include the links to previous blog posts on the blog itself…I only do that after I have copy/pasted it into our email client (Happy Grasshopper).
Email me or post your questions in the comments below!
