Christina, I agree with you.  I developed a business and made a great living, and I would say that my newsletters were a great deal of the reason for that.  And interestingly, when I first started writing and mailing my newsletter, relatively no companies or agents who were my competition were doing it.

And one bit of a hint.  I always sent a copy to the barber and beauty shops and the doctors offices.  The newsletter would end up on the table in the waiting room where a whole lot of bored people would look it over.

Bill Cherry, Realtor

My 43rd Year Serving Texans

These are excellent hint's Bill. We are always expanding our database and mailing and we include vendor's and businesses in our mailings as well.  Which reminds me, I'll have to make sure our dentist within our business complex has a copy of our newsletter each month :D  Thanks!

I love to do mailers.  I send postcards to my "farm areas" every month and to my SOI every 3 months.  I have heard that this is a waste of time but I don't think so.  Believe it or not- there are a lot of people who do not have computres-yes it is hard to believe-but they are out there.  These people are still good contacts and potential clients.  Just because email, websites and computers have developed and evolved doesn't mean everyone out there has.  Sometimes doing things the "old fashion" way is the right way for some people.  (It obviously worked for some years before the dawn of the computer).  I obviously use the web as well, and I do put an email address on my mailers, but I keep an open mind that emailing isn't the only way to contact people and will always be faithful to my mailers.  I don't know exactly which address or person has email or not, so I will always "snail mail" because someone may not have email.     

Christina - I applaud you!  I was surprised when I read your newsletter is 6 pages, but than when you explained what you put in it I understood.  I agree with you in that recipes and the how-to's just doesn't cut it.  People want relevant information. 

Wow, this is one of the best posts I've read. You really know your stuff, Christina! I agree with everything you said.

I had a hugely successful newsletter while in the auto leasing business. We mailed AND called a list of people that had leased cars in our county, but NOT from us.  We were so consistant for so long that something amazing happened which was quite unexpected!

We actually brainwashed them. That's right, many on our list completely forgot who had originally leased them their car. They made the assumption they had leased it from us, and we weren't about to tell them differently. They literally made comments like, "remember when we leased the car we decided we would take the 12,000 mile a year lease because....."

To this day I think this is one of the most remarkable marketing success stories I have ever come across, and might not have even believed it had it not happened to me. Newsletters are very powerful.

We do the same and hand address all the envelopes - people rave about it and it's been a great way to keep in touch with our sphere of influence. Great post! Loking forward to part 2

Christina-I love the newsletter.  When you speak of the 4,000 strong database, is this a personal clientelle or your whole office?  That could get really expensive!  I do a neighborhood news flyer for my farming area once per quarter and I include market statistics, listing the addresses of properties new on the market or have sold and I also put in articles about "Slow Down on Our Neighborhood Streets" and "Lost Parakeet:  $100 Reward".  In my newest newsletter, I included a coupon good for one month to one of our local businesses.  If you buy one "shave ice" you get a small one free.  The guy that sells the shave ice was most greatful for me doing that and I gave him $100 up front to cover the first group of coupons.  In time, I am sure he will have a stack of my business cards on his check out counter.  Good luck with your newsletter in the future.  At 6 pages long on a monthly basis I just dont know how I could ever keep up on it.  Aloha!

Wow, your post couldn't have been more timely for me as I'm revamping and revising my direct mail program.  The most successful Realtors in our area ALL use monthly newsletters in various formats.  Nice job.

I've been "in the process" of creating my next newsletter.  This is a good reminder that it needs to be done, because it does generate more business.  I like the idea of a coupon, too.

Christina- my first Realtor (1980's) used to go door to door with his handmade newsletter.  I loved getting it, because hand made or not, it provided me with all of the information re. our area.  As he became more and more successful, his newsletter quality improved.  I still, all these years later, and a move to NY, get his newsletters on a quarterly basis.  Who do you imagine  I enlisted when I had to sell my Colorado property, long distance from New York  (at, I might add, a higher commission rate than I could have located) ?  Great post.

Penny - Amazingly enough, it's not just those who don't have email that contact us from the newsletter.  Our newsletter is more of a catalyst to call and connect with us then any of our email blasts are.  Yes the email blasts work, it's just that the newsletter humanizes us and connects us in a different way.  We are ever expanding our newsletter.

Joddie - I actually hear comments from our clients every single month - I LOVE the newsletter.  Keep sending it.  When asked what else to include, they usually let us know they love what is in it and want more of the same.  I fully expect it to get larger as time goes on.

Janet - That is one of my goals.  We 'adopt' buyers and sellers.  By this I mean that when we list a house and another agent brings the buyer, we add their buyer to our newsletter farm.  For one, the newsletter is extremely informative and people find it valuable.  Second, unfortunately 99% of agents just don't maintain contact with their clients. 

Cyndee - I commend you for hand addressing.  We do not.  With 4,000 names and a goal of 6,000 by years end, that's just not going to happen:D

David & Tonya - We are a small real estate team - my Dad, myself, my husband and my brother-in-law are the ones who actually work in the real estate arena.  We do have a licensed transaction coordinator and unlicensed marketing/advertising assistant.  My sister is licensed as well but doesn't do real estate (she's owner of the property management company).  We just formed the actual "team" early last year (although we've all been working with Dad for years).  The database is our clients, no one elses.  We are not a brokerage, just a team. 

Diane - The key is to 1) go where the competition 'ain't' and 2) to be consistent! 

Ed - I've had my 'in the process' moments as well.  In fact, I'm a perfectionist and sometimes to a fault.  I kept waiting and waiting to start the mailing systems and finally I said heck with this, I've got to start something.  I started with postcards and then in January, because I didn't have the full template down and content outlined, I went ahead and just ran a CRS newsletter.  By February I had our current newsletter.  It's been a huge success since day one.

Laurie - Exactly!  We plan on using this newsletter in so many ways.  One of which is for our forth coming buyers agents to walk farms and introduce themselves, then we'll add the farm to the monthly mail program. 

Christina,

For snail-mail newsletter to work it has to be custom-made, like yours. I'm doing an email newsletter that is custom-made and is doing well. So, either way, avoid the mass-market products.

Esko - I strongly disagree that a snail mail newsletter must be custom made.  Mass-market products will work, very well.  The main key is consistency.  I personally know several very top producers that only use mass-market newsletters, quite successfully I might add.  Custom House Publishers makes a nice one for real estate.

Thanks for a worthwhile read.

Nice post Christina. Glad to hear you're having such success with your newsletter. I do mine by email for now. I feel that the majority of my market is more likely to read that than one they get in the mail, however, I plan to test that theory in the next few months.

Ryan - We also have an email newsletter we send.  Amazingly enough, it gets far fewer readers (our current recipient database is 1800 for email).  We utilize a tracking method that allows us to see how many people opened it, what they clicked on, who they forwarded it to, etc.

Christina-You guys are awesome!  Maybe someday I can be like you but that seems so overwhelming to me right now.  You guys are farming a HUGE area.  I bet your business is run like a well oiled machine.  You seem to have all the pieces in place right where they need to be.  Good luck and best wishes for more success.  Aloha!

David & Tonya - we aren't there yet, we are striving to get there.  Our first step to master was farming our past clients/prospects.  We weren't doing that effectively and now we are (although we can always improve).