Newsletters are a mixed blessing for many Realtors. They can be time-consuming and expensive, but a great newsletter can bring you more business, and they can work even better online.

No other marketing tool is more versatile at retaining new and past clients. Properly designed, content-filled, and distributed, newsletters are the only marketing tool that can simultaneously:

• Contact customers with news and valuable information
• Provide new leads
• Position you as the local market expert
• Nurture leads until they are ready to buy, sell

And, if you use an online newsletter, you can add two more benefits. Online newsletters can also:

• Provide new leads from the wide net of the Internet
• Help you capture leads in real time

That's a pretty tall order for a single marketing tool, but used properly, you'll need little else to capture new business.

So if newsletters are so great, why doesn't everyone use them? If you're not a born writer, newsletters can appear daunting. Gathering and producing content is a challenge, then there's putting the newsletter together in an attractive format, and mailing or e-mailing it out. But the main reason people don't use them is that they don't understand how newsletters really work.

Newsletters are used to further a relationship. They can help turn strangers into leads, and leads into clients, and clients into referrals and repeat clients. But, they don't work alone. Newsletters are best used as nurturing or interest capturing tools as supplements to other marketing efforts.

Newsletters as farming tools

Newsletters are a contact/nurturing tool, which means they are best used in the initial stages of doing what Realtors most dislike doing - collecting and managing names to build a farm. Farming is work, but it makes all the difference between agents who thrive and those who don't survive, and that difference is keeping prospects alive. You can't send out a newsletter to people when you don't have their names and addresses or e-mails, so that means you have to create and stick to a strategy for collecting and managing the names you come across.

Farms are made up of two kinds of people - those you know and those you don't know, and sometimes a strategy works for one kind but not the other. If you are dependent on newspaper ads or your Web site to bring you new business, you have to employ a strategy that will help you make the transition from stranger to business contact. That's why many agents prefer to advertise or use a Web site to get new business. But once prospects have seen your ad or your Web site, how do you keep them coming back to you? Ads and Web sites work to make the phone ring, but they don't help you build a relationship. That you have to do with your follow-up skills, and that is where newsletters come in.

Let's say you have a listing, and you put it in the newspaper. When prospects see it, you can send them to your Web site for more details, or to view a virtual tour. While they are at the Web site, you can invite them to leave their contact information so that you can send them updated market information - your newsletter. That way, you don't lose the prospect because the listing didn't meet the prospects' needs. It's next-step marketing.

Newsletters as transaction tools

When you do get the prospect under a contract, you can use your newsletter to stay in touch and keep the client informed of the market. This can be handy for frustrated sellers and buyers who may not understand why the market isn't cooperating to help them meet their goals. For example, a newsletter story about how to stage a home when sales are slowing in your newsletter might help you explain to your seller why their home isn't getting as many offers as it should. Buyers who are missing out on homes may get a clue when your newsletter explains that sellers favor buyers who are prequalified by a lender. Your newsletter can include changing market conditions and what you think they mean, and what they mean is it's time to buy or sell! Or both! If you use an online newsletter, you can always include an "ask me" link that encourages quick e-mail questions from your prospects without obligation.

Newsletters as post-closing tools

If sellers move every five to seven years, that is a long time to stay in touch and hope that the relationship between you and your client stays together. Without an information tool, you may have a tough time calling periodically and asking for business. Sending a newsletter allows you the opportunity to share information, and gives a chance to make a follow-up call with something new to talk about. That's why your newsletter should include information for homeowners as well as buyers and sellers. These can be reminders as simple as to fertilize in the spring and to cover their outside pipes in the winter. Alert readers always to local changing market conditions, such as solds, days on market and prices of average home sales in the area.

Farming is a constant process of seeding, watering, cultivating and replanting, and that is why newsletters fit comfortably in every phase of your "continuum of client care."

Published: May 25, 2001

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