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Marketing with an Email Newsletter – Part 2

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Now that you know the general rules with sending out email newsletters, we can move on to the actual content of your newsletters.  So what do prospective clients want to read when they receive an email from you?  Here are a few ideas of what to include in an email newsletter:

Ideas for Content in real estate newsletters:

  • Interest rates and their current trends
  • Mortgage and appraisal information
  • Buying and selling tips
  • Tax information such as home buyer tax credit
  • Changes in real estate laws
  • Market report on neighborhood and area sales

Remember to create content that has real value for your readers.  They don’t want to hear about you, they want to hear about things that can help them in the future.  Offer something free to your readers, such as free property evaluation or something that may be of value to them.   There are services that can provide content for you, but you’ll have to pay for those.  This may be the way to go if you are too busy to write the newsletters yourself.

A great resource for those of you that are members of National Association of Realtors is “HouseLogic”.  Houselogic (at www.houselogic.com) provides free, up-to-date content that is meant to be used in your marketing efforts with clients. The only catch is that you must be a member of NAR.

Now that you know what content to send in your newsletter, who do you send it to?  The most important rule is this: only send to those that have agreed to receive emails from you.  It may be tempting to buy a list of emails or get the email addresses from someone else.  If you do this, you will be at risk of being marked as a spammer by internet service providers (ISPs).  That is the last thing you want for your business.

Send your newsletters to any past clients, close friends, or business contacts.  Another way to build a list is to create an opt-in form on your website where clients can subscribe to your newsletter updates.

Feel free to share any ideas you think have been helpful in your newsletters.

Marketing with an Email Newsletter – Part 1

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Email newsletters are a cost-effective and efficient way to keep clients coming back.  Email newsletters are a great tool to stay “first in mind” with your clients as it allows you to have repetitive contacts in an unobtrusive way.   You can design, customize and publish your newsletter yourself, or if you don’t think you have the skills to design and distribute a newsletter, most web designers can find a system to fit your needs.

It’s important to know a few things about email marketing before sending out your first email newsletter.

First, you must be careful about sending out a mass email because it is possible to be blacklisted by internet service providers.  When you send one email out to a large list, systems can pick this up and consider it spam.  If you are blacklisted, you can be blocked from sending emails to certain recipients or even have your email blocked altogether.  The easiest way to avoid this is to use a company that specializes in email marketing and use their system to send the emails out.  A few services with good reputations are: Constant Contact, Vertical Response, iContact, or eCampaignPro (which is designed for real estate agents).

Second, make sure your emails can be read through any email client.  Most email clients (such as Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo) keep images turned off as a default.  This means that if your email contains information in the form of images, it will not be seen.  Make sure important headlines or information is in the text of the email, not in the pictures.

Lastly, send your email newsletter at the right time.  Half of the people that normally read their email during the week will not read their email on the weekend.  The best time to send emails is in the middle of the week (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday) and during normal business hours (try between 10am and 5pm).

Check back next week for part 2 of this topic.  We we will go over ideas for your newsletters as well as how exactly to implement your newsletter campaign.