Mailing to your clients and prospects is a great way for you to stay in contact with them every single month. However, one of the obstacles that I often find with agents in setting-up and implementing a great mailing campaign is them wondering what the heck they're going to write about on an ongoing basis in all of their mailers.

While sending newsletters every month or once a quarter or so can be a great, highly-impressive way to keep the people in your territory informed, you may also be completely missing the boat here if this is what you are primarily banking on to produce new business for you through a mailing campaign.

Why?

Because the frequency with which you mail to your clients and prospects is far more important than mailing something to them occasionally that has a lot more content in it. While your content may be great, people oftentimes aren't going to read everything you've written anyway. They just won't take the time. So as long as you're going to invest your time in writing information that you'll be sending to your clients and prospects why not make sure that you invest your time wisely in writing things that they'll actually read?

This is why short, high-impact mailers mailed frequently are a much more effective way for you to generate new business for yourself. You can still send the quality newsletter every month or every quarter if you want to, but make sure you combine it with other mailers so your people are receiving a minimum of 12-24 quality mailers a year from you.

Why?

Because just like with the commercials you see on television, people are more likely to remember a particular brand when it's time to buy a product if they've seen ads for the brand more frequently. Seeing ten, thirty-second commercials over a period of weeks for a product is far more likely to have a lasting impact on you than seeing one commercial for several minutes weeks or months ago.

The exact same principle applies to your real estate advertising. You never know when a person who receives your mailers will have a need to call a real estate agent. So the more frequently people receive a short, high-impact mailer from you (like a well-designed, full-color postcard), the more likely they will remember you when they are interested in hiring a real estate agent.

Ideally, if you're mailing to your territory frequently, people will receive one of your mailers right around the time they're thinking it's time to buy, sell, or lease property. So you might as well maximize the probability that your name and phone number will be arriving in the mail right around the time they need to contact a real estate agent. If, however, you're only mailing to your territory once a quarter or so, there are a lot of weeks between your mailers when your prospects will completely forget about you when they decide it's time for them to contact an agent. In situations like this they may in fact begin working with the first agent who contacts them when they finally have a real estate requirement.

Sending something simple like postcards on a regular basis allows you to send a high-impact, full-color message with a minimum amount of writing required on your part. This is because there's simply not very much space to write words on a postcard. Or, if you prefer, you can mail out one-page flyers to your territory instead. But keep in mind you'll need to have the flyers folded, placed in envelopes, and mailed at an additional cost of 60% or more in postage when compared with mailing 4" X 6" postcards.

In addition to just listed and just sold (or leased) information you can send postcards on subjects that your clients and prospects will want to know more about as they get closer to entering into a real estate transaction. These are subjects that emphasize what people need to know and how to best prepare for an upcoming real estate transaction. If you already have my E-book on prospecting you've read the section where I talk about this in greater detail and give you about 25-30 different subjects that you can design individual mailers for. What's beautiful about this approach is once you've designed 12-24 postcards on these subjects you can then utilize these postcards over and over again for your mailers for years to come in the future as the information will always be very timely and pertinent for your clients and prospects.

When it comes to mailing effectively to your clients and prospects so that you make more money, send simple, high-impact mailers to them frequently instead of lengthy newsletters less frequently. It's the frequency and impact of your contact with people that will have them think of you first when it's time to hire a real estate agent.

Published: January 21, 2004

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