"turn key" newsletters

[SELLITNOW]

Any one use newsletters? Do you create your own? or buy into a service that makes it for you ?

[webmaster]

Are you talking for mailers or for on your website?

[SELLITNOW]

Primarily for email - but it would be great if I could take the "email" newsletter and print it out as well.

[austinguy]

Just get one of those REW blogs or set up your own. Email newsletters are not as effective as they used to be. If you have a blog, people can grab your RSS feed and stay tuned without giving out their email address and being spammed. The less of a barrier you make for them, the more likely you'll get someone to subscribe.

my $0.02

[SELLITNOW]

I feel you. However, I will probably need to do both - there are people who are not "hip" to blogs - one prospect in particulr is just coming up speed with emails . . . so I know this prospect would really "enjoy" an email newsletter . . . a blog may be overkill for this person . . .

[coastal]

Those pre-built monthly newsletters are crap. I went to a number of my competitors site and signed up for their newsletters to see what they were sending. Almost all of them are from national real estate sites with very genaric real estate related news having nothing to do with our local market. I'm sure most of them end up in the spam box/trash instantly.

I would much rather get a newsletter with LOCAL news.

[austinguy]

Haha, that's funny, I did the same exact thing. Some were sending out useless home decorating tips and recipes. The best one I've seen had generic news but at least it was professionally done. These are people stuck in the 90's when just having something out there and especially on the internet was so great that it got you business.

Sellitnow: just publish monthly market stats or something. Download all the sold data and break it down by area, home size, whatever. It'll at least interest most people to see where the prices are headed.

[Benjamin Dona]

Never used a "canned" product. Too typical for me.

We do one created in Hi Impact. Took about a day to get it the way we liked. Then, because of living in Florida, almost all our area neighborhoods are HOA's of some sort. Over time we've collected quite a few e-mail addresses. In fact, when we get a new neighborhood listing, we impress upon the client the need to let all his/her neighbors know. You'd be amazed how many times we can get the neighborhood e-mail list. Then we send out about their house for sale and combine it with their area specific sales data. Give them an opt out option for future e-mails etc. In the last year we have sent over more than a couple thousand e-mails and have had less than 5 opt-out. Mostly we get responses about how they like the information.

Do one here in Pelican Landing, where we live. The last one was on Decemeber 15. Got a new listing and 3 new buyer clients from it. Also, added about 10 folks to our drip campaign, who are more than 6 months away from proceeding to sell. Just be sure to give them useful information and not just a sales pitch. Its worked for us.

[waynelong]

I use Realty times for a mail out and I take their first page which has current mortgage rates and national Real Estate news and then they have blank one which only has only the design work on it. We fill in the local mls info, personal news and other local info of interest on this blank one and post it to the back of the newsletter. That way the letter is only one page with a front and back. National real estate news on the front and custom local on the back. It looks professional without a lot of work. We have had a good response to that.

We just started using True wire for an email newsletter. You can customize the info on it as well or not. It goes out automatically 12 times per year and has dynamic buttons that click through to our site. We chose it because it was simple and went out automatically. We can customize if we want - so we can put in as much time as we have or if we don't have time for customization our base will receive a contact from us.

I don't know if these are the best but they are simple and it gives us 24 contacts per year. Our goal is to call a couple of times a year and to send out a couple of hand written notes a year in addition to these other contacts.

Hope this helps. Wayne

[judyo]

I use two newsletters. I make one up for my snail mail sphere (friends, relatives, past clients, future clients, farm, etc.). That is more local.

For my e-mail campaign I just don't have the time. Plus, my total service area is so huge I'd have to truly make up many newsletters to really keep the focus local. Most of my e-mail newsletter "customers" are those people that have registered for my VOW (registration is required by our MLS).

My VOW provider offers a 7 letter e-mail follow-up campaign which people have actually complimented me on! I tell these people that after the 7 letters they'll only be receiving my monthly newsletter which is actually a little intro e-mail with a link to my realestateabc newsletter.

Every time they receive my "newsletter" e-mail (which doesn't contain the actual newsletter, just a link), I get more activity on my site.