Real Estate Newsletters: 5 Essential Tips to Make Clients Adore You

While this post is directed at Realtors the tips apply to all types of businesses and services.

Simon Payn of ReadyToGo Newsletters provides some excellent advice for increasing the effectiveness of your newsletters.  Coincidentally they have a great service that gets an editable newsletter in your hands every month for only $ 29.97 per month. Or contact me and I can take care of all of the details for you.  Click on the images below to see a sample of my 2 page version. These can be totally customized for your use and I can provide them pre-printed and ready for delivery.  Click here for a sample of a customized version.

Sending a real estate newsletter to your farm isn’t about getting a client or a listing right there and then. Unless you hit their mailbox at precisely the right time – just when they are looking for an agent or wanting to list their house – you’re in the business of building a relationship rather than making a sale.The best way to build that relationship is to provide a newsletter that meets the needs and interests of your farm.

Do it right, and you’ll grow a farm of adoring fans.

1. Make the newsletter about them, not you. You’re probably sick of me going on about this…but it’s the #1 rule. People are not interested in you, they are interested in themselves. If your services are mentioned at all, do it on the basis of how you can help them, how you can meet their needs.

2. Write articles that are useful, interesting and entertaining. Create articles that make the reader think: I never knew what! Or: What good advice!

3. Keep up a regular schedule. Relationships aren’t built sporadically; they take regular contact over time. That’s how trust is created. So send your newsletter  at least monthly.

4. Be truthful. Good friends don’t lie. So nor should you in your newsletter. A lie can wreck a relationship.

5. Be upbeat. Nobody likes a downer. Who wants to form a relationship with someone who’s always bringing bad news? Think of good, upbeat, positive things to put in your newsletter. Then you’ll be a welcome friend.

Follow these rules and, over time, you’ll build a strong farm of people who will adore you and your newsletter.

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Importance of Email Subject Lines

If you want your emails to be opened then personalize the subject line according according to a study done MailerMailer a leading email service provider. The MailerMailer study found that personalized “subject” lines in particular increased the number of times recipients opened their mailings.

While this study was based on Business to Business emails I think it applies across the board for email.

The day of the week makes a difference too. Emails sent early in the work week or on the weekends earned higher open and click rates; Mondays being the best, followed by Tuesday. Recipients were least likely to open emails sent on Wednesdays and Fridays.

In addition to personalizing the subject line it would be a good idea to keep it short as email recipients were significantly more likely to open messages that used short subject lines (35 or fewer characters).

One last interesting result of the survey which applies to our branded email stationery at inboxFX is that over 95% of recipients opt to receive HTML formatted messages instead of text so if you were sending branded, customized emails you would be making a positive impression.

If you enjoyed this article and don’t want to miss the next one click here to get my marketing posts by email as soon as they are published. You will be prompted for an email address and you are set to go.

Email Newsletter Usability

The Nielsen Norman Group has published a study on Email Newsletter Usability that sheds some light on the effectiveness of this marketing strategy.

Their findings were interesting and highlighted the importance of both design and an effective subscription management service. The study also confirmed that newsletters have a social impact as they are often forwarded to friends, family and colleagues.

If you are in this business this is probably a report worth purchasing, but as a user I have paraphrased the findings from the Executive Summary.

Following are some of the highlights:

“69% of the users indicated they looked forward to receiving a particular newsletter.”

“Users have highly emotional reactions to newsletters. This is in strong contrast to studies of website usability, where users are usually much more oriented towards functionality. Even a website that you visit daily will feel like a tool where you simply want to get in and get out.”

“The positive emotional aspect of newsletters is that they can create much more of a bond between user and company than a website can. The negative aspect is that usability problems have much stronger impact on the customer relationship than they normally do.”

“Users spend 51 seconds reading the average newsletter. The layout and writing both need superb usability to survive in the high-pressure environment of a crowded inbox.”

“Averaged across the study, newsletters lost 19% of potential subscribers due to usability difficulties in their subscription processes and designs. People often stay subscribed to newsletters they don’t want (cursing the sender with every new issue that clutters their inbox), so the unsubscribe process is also worth improving.”

“Newsletters need to be smooth and easy: they must be seen to reduce the burdens of modern life. Even if free, the cost in e-mail clutter must be paid for by being helpful and relevant to users – and by communicating these benefits in a few characters in the subject line.”

The study also explored why people who were frustrated by the Unsubscribe process continued to receive the newsletter. I can personally attest to this as I continue to receive newsletter that I do not read, but every time I try to unsubscribe I end up spending too much time trying to get through the process.

The four main reasons people didn’t attempt to unsubscribe were:

1. Emotional attachment to the newsletter: Users said that it didn’t feel good to sever the relationship, even when they no longer read the mailings.
2. Low expectations for the website’s usability: People assumed that it would be difficult and time-consuming to unsubscribe, so they postponed the job for another day and simply deleted the newsletter’s current issue.
3. Fear that unsubscribing would fail and would subject the user to even more mail: Many people have heard that asking to get off spam lists only confirms the validity of their email address to the spammers; this notion has become an urban legend that contaminates users’ mental model of legitimate newsletter publishers as well.
4. Easier options: It’s often easier to simply use a spam-blocking feature to stop future issues than it is to unsubscribe.

Competing For Readers Time
Users are getting more selective about which newsletters they’ll read. According to the study some are cutting back on the number of newsletters they receive. These users view newsletters as being in direct competition with each other for a limited number of slots in the inbox. Users will unsubscribe from a newsletter or stop reading it—even if it’s good—if they come across a different one on the same topic that better serves their needs.

This study also revealed that users spent an average of 51 seconds on each of the newsletters they read from their own inbox. Users spent an additional 33 seconds on information found by pursuing newsletter links to websites.

How Do People Read Newsletter? (Click on image for larger view)

Eyetracking heatmaps showing how many users read each part of two newsletters. The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas.