After a while, coming up with new ideas for your real estate client newsletter can be . . . how do I say this nicely . . . trying.
You’ve written the usual articles: tips for homebuyers and sellers, renovations with the highest ROI, the importance of curb appeal, what to look for in an agent, the best restaurants in town, blah, blah, blah.
You’ve looked online for more ideas—real estate newsletters, real estate newsletter examples, real estate newsletters ideas, real estate newsletter content, real estate newsletter topics—but at this point, it all sounds the same.
Sometimes coming up with a fresh idea for your real estate newsletter will strain your patience.
You’ve asked colleagues, friends, and family members for their thoughts (you may even have conversed with the dog), and it’s all “been there, done that.”
At this point, you might be bored with the entire enterprise. You may even resent using the time to build a newsletter that could be better spent on doing the “real” work of real estate. Perhaps you’re considering giving up on your newsletter altogether.
I understand; sometimes I struggle for hours hoping that an idea will bubble to the surface. Even so, I suggest you don’t give up.
Your newsletter is an important component of your content marketing strategy that keeps you in front of your audience and increases your brand recognition. The people who have signed up to receive your newsletter want to receive it—and that’s no small consideration.
Newsletters are powerful marketing because your recipients have signed up to receive them. This interest makes for warm leads.
But still, it sometimes takes great effort to know what to write, and it’s easy to understand why the well of creativity can run dry.
Let’s give your real estate newsletter for clients renewed life with an approach to creating content that makes it easy to consistently write articles that are engaging and, most importantly, valuable.
Use the 3 Es to create content with ease
The best real estate newsletters provide clients and prospective clients with information they perceive as valuable, which, generally speaking, is material they can use and enjoy. Valuable information tends to be educational, entertaining, or endearing—the 3 Es.
You can use the 3 Es to approach any topic that is timely and relevant to your recipients. All you need to do is ask yourself, “What can I write about X that will educate, entertain, or endear my readers and create goodwill?”Since your newsletter will likely have more than one article in it, you can educate your audience of clients and prospects about one topic, entertain them with another, and endear them with a third.
As an example of how to use the 3Es, let’s pick painting a home as a topic and approach it with the intent of writing an article that meets each of the 3 Es:
- Educate: The Most Popular Kitchen Colors of 2021
- Entertain: What Were They Thinking? Crazy House Paint Jobs
- Endear: ABC Realty Assists in Painting Local Playground
Some topics are going to lend themselves more easily to one of the Es than the others, while other topics just won’t make any sense. That’s okay—simply change your topic or select another E.
One person’s cozy modern kitchen is another’s gastrointestinal episode waiting to happen.
Another example of how to use the 3 Es is to decide upon a type of newsletter and then fill it with articles using the most appropriate E.
- You could write an industry newsletter that is devoted to publicizing recent events in real estate and what they mean to people buying and selling homes. This would suggest a newsletter dedicated to educating your audience and, with the amount and pace of recent changes, could make for a valuable real estate weekly newsletter.
- Another option would be a real estate monthly newsletter whose primary objective is to entertain your sphere. You could read town websites and local newspapers, call the town halls and chambers of commerce, and stay in touch with civic organizations to collect news of events happening in and around your farm.
- Another idea for a monthly newsletter would be to keep your sphere up to date about what is happening with you, your family, your team, and your business. This type of newsletter requires that you offer personal information, and you would need to decide how much you are comfortable sharing. Yet, an appropriate degree of personal information will help endear you to your audience in ways that help them to know, like, and trust you even after the transaction.
Real estate newsletters for clients provide a chance for you to share moments of your life with your audience.
Real estate content ideas
So what can you write about a topic that would be educational, entertaining, or maybe endearing?
The ancient Greeks knew the value of looking at topics from as many perspectives as possible. By asking different types of questions, categorized into topoi, ancient Greek politicians were able to invent arguments for and against political action proposed in the senate.
And, while agents are not in the business of running a government, you can use the same technique to examine your selected topic.
I borrowed questions that the Writing Center at the University of Maryland asks students and others to answer so that they can develop ideas for their writing. Not all questions applied to a topic are going to produce sensible ideas, but you can use them to begin to explore the possible directions you might want to take your topics.
In tactical terms, you might run your topic through a set of questions, select one idea for your topic that you believe will be valuable to your audience, and create a piece of content focused on it. You could select a second idea for the same topic and develop another piece of content. You could also include several ideas in the same piece of content and then later break it up into single topics to repurpose it. The choice is yours.
Let’s pick home inspections as our sample topic and run it through our Table of Topoi questions to see how you might use them to find ideas you can share with your sphere that are valuable; that is ideas that are educational, entertaining, or endearing.
Questions of definition allow you to set the parameters of what you’ll include in your content and what you’ll deem irrelevant. For example, if your audience of sellers defines home inspections as a necessary evil, then you might create content about how to lessen the potential problems of an inspection. At the same time, you’d exclude any ideas you might have about the benefits of inspections.
Questions of division or parts are helpful if your goal is to examine your topic in more detail. This approach to a topic would allow you to examine or analyze different aspects of the same topic in a single piece of content or, again, you may choice to create one long piece and then repurpose it into smaller pieces.
Questions of comparison are useful in many ways. You can use them to compare something unfamiliar to your audience with something they know well. You might also use comparison to demonstrate why something is positive while another thing is negative. They’re also helpful when trying to persuade your audience about the benefits or drawbacks of taking one course of action versus another.
Questions of relationship can assist you when you want to create content that addresses your topic in terms of cause and effect; what happens first, second, third, etc.; contradictions; and either/or choices.
Questions of circumstance can be used to develop content that suggests what is possible and what isn’t with regard to your topic. It’s also handy for persuading someone that based on what happened in the past, another event is likely to happen in the future.
Finally, questions of testimony will boost the credibility of the information you provide about your topic. If, for example, you are writing to an audience of potential buyers who are considering foregoing a home inspection because competition for the house is high, you could refer to authoritative sources who argue that not insisting on a home inspection is a bad idea.
If you find yourself struggling to find just the right way to treat your topic, the folks at the Writing Center suggest adding an adjective or adverb to make a question more specific. For example:
- What are the financial effects of home inspections?
- What are the social causes of home inspections?
- Who benefits politically from home inspections?
It’s important to remember that these lists of questions are simply tools to help you come up with ideas about what you might say about a topic. If a question doesn’t make sense for your topic, offer any value to your audience, or creates more confusion than clarity, then move on.
What if I’m Not That into Writing?
It’s an obvious understatement to say that writing real estate newsletters for clients is a task that requires a fairly significant amount of time, energy, and thought.
And that’s just the writing part of it.
If you want to track how your newsletter performs (and you always want to track results), that’s even more effort.
And you wouldn’t be alone if you simply aren’t that into writing. You may not enjoy writing or think you’re not very good at it or would rather spend your time on other activities—like running your business.
Writing is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Notwithstanding your reluctance to write a newsletter, it’s a useful marketing tool. Fortunately, there are alternative ways to produce a newsletter that won’t require you to do all the work yourself.
Hire a copywriter
There is no shortage of freelance copywriters who would love to write your newsletter for you, but be warned—you get what you pay for. Because someone can type doesn’t mean they can write.
When hiring a copywriter, you want someone who has been trained to write persuasive copy, who knows how to structure a message, and who understands the importance of knowing an audience. A professional copywriter can supply you with content you can insert into a template (see below), but ask if they work with a designer—many do—and you can probably hire both for one cost.
Rather than write your newsletter, you could hire a freelance copywriter to do it for you.
You can look to any of the sources listed below or discussed here to find a qualified freelance copywriter:
- Facebook business pages
- American Writers and Artists, Inc.
- Copyblogger
- ProBlogger
Use a template
While a template won’t solve your writing issues, it will help your newsletter look more professional than a regular email or plain paper mailing.
If you’re interested in sending your sphere a real estate email newsletter with a quality look, then be sure you select a service that offers responsive templates so that your newsletter looks equally good on a desktop as it does on a mobile device.
Also, look into whether you can change a template to your liking by changing its colors or font style and whether they offer A/B testing.
As an alternative to digital newsletters, there are also newsletter services that will provide you with print templates that you can send as part of your direct mail marketing.
Using a template will give your real estate newsletter a professional look. Look for one with a real estate theme so your audience will recognize it.
With email being as saturated as it is, direct mail marketing and printed materials are fashionable again because they stand out. And it never hurts to use a variety of channels to keep your brand in front of your audience.
When shopping for print templates, compare prices as they can vary widely. Don’t be swayed by companies that offer hundreds of templates versus one or two dozen because once you find one you like, you’re going to stick with it to remain consistent and recognizable to your recipients.
Here are just a few template providers you can check out:
Use a provider of real estate marketing newsletters
Some businesses can provide you with real estate email newsletters for your clients. Their offerings and costs will vary, as will their quality, tools, and support. But let me invite you to explore what ReminderMedia offers.
Digital Marketing Platform
Imagine not just a professionally created client newsletter but also an abundance of prewritten social media content and an interactive digital magazine—all personally branded to you with your branding, photo and contact information, and logo.
Imagine having easy access to all the analytical data you need to ensure your marketing was hitting the most important KPIs.
Imagine the convenience of automated mailing where someone else makes sure you don’t ever forget to send something of value and quality to the people in your sphere.
Image an easy-to-use dashboard with client support staff whose expertise and willingness to help every client is second to none.
Finally, imagine awareness of your brand growing exponentially as your personally branded marketing is shared with hundreds of other potential clients.
The following tools in our Digital Marketing Platform offer tremendous value:
- Local Events Newsletter: an automated, biweekly client newsletter featuring local virtual and in-person events (where available) and national virtual events. This newsletter makes you the go-to person for everything happening in and around your community.
- Branded Social Posts: A vast and growing library of prewritten social media content that meets the 3 Es of education, entertainment, or endearment that you can post to any of your social media platforms. You can also use the Facebook scheduler to schedule posts weeks or months in advance—it’s a “set it and forget it” tool.
- Interactive Digital Magazine: Select between American Lifestyle which features articles about home decor, travel, design, and food, and Start Healthy with its focus on healthy living. All the content and gorgeous images plus delicious recipes in both publications can be shared right from within the magazines’ platform.
The Digital Marketing Platform is three top-quality marketing tools in one. For one affordable price, the content is branded, shareable, and 100% automated, and it leaves an impression far greater than any email template, and all at one affordable price. (Or, if you prefer, each tool can be purchased separately.)
But we’re not done yet . . .
Direct mail print publications
If you like the idea of sending a tangible piece of printed marketing, something that will make it past the trash can and into the home, then you’ll want to check out our beautiful, 48-page, personally branded magazines.
Each publication has its special appeal, while all have engaging articles, gorgeous photos, and tempting recipes. Your branding appears in six prominent locations, including two tear-out cards that recipients love to share. Each issue of your magazine is automated for delivery every eight weeks to your exclusive list of recipients to keep you top of mind for referrals and repeat business.
- American Lifestyle is our flagship product. It covers travel, food, design, home, and more.
- Start Healthy is dedicated to healthy living and includes articles that address the health of the whole person—physical, mental, and emotional.
- Good to Be Home, our newest magazine, is devoted to home and garden with a distinctive “how-to” approach appreciated by homeowners.
CLICK HERE for a free PDF copy of one of our recent issues and a special deal.
