You’ve created an email newsletter for your real estate business, and you’re ready to send out your first issue. But you’re not sure what kind of content to include in your real estate newsletter.
You’re not alone. This is one of the most common questions real estate professionals have when it comes to creating an email newsletter campaign.
The good news is, you’re in the right place! This article explains seven things you can include in a real estate email newsletter—and why they’re worth including.
What to Include in a Real Estate Newsletter
The hardest thing about creating a successful real estate newsletter is getting people to subscribe. The second-hardest thing is preventing them from unsubscribing.
And when it comes to your newsletter content, these challenges are closely related. The steps you take to gain subscribers in the first place will also help you reduce the number of people who unsubscribe.
How do you accomplish these goals? By providing something of value.
The best real estate newsletters offer a valuable source of information for a specific audience. They provide information about local market conditions, local events, and other content that is truly useful to the target audience (which usually consists of buyers and sellers).
Think of your real estate newsletter as a kind of information service. When people sign up for it, they can stay up to speed on local real estate market trends and related news. This is the kind of mindset you want to adopt when creating a real estate newsletter campaign strategy.
Here are seven things you can include in your newsletter to accomplish this:
1. Local Real Estate Market Updates
In my experience (which goes back 17 years), this is the most important type of content to include in a real estate email newsletter. Why? Because it will help you overcome the two challenges mentioned earlier.
It will help you gain subscribers, while also minimizing the number of unsubscribes.
From an information standpoint, home buyers and sellers both want the same things. First of all, they want to know the current state of their local real estate market. They also want to know what steps they need to take to accomplish their goal of buying or selling a home.
You can check both of these boxes with your newsletter by providing timely, in-depth real estate market reports and updates.
I touched on this topic in an article on gaining social media followers. And while an email newsletter is obviously different from a social media platform, the basic concept is the same. You are transforming your real estate newsletter into a valuable source of local market news and information.
When you create local market reports, try to include all of the trends that local buyers and sellers care about most—recent sales trends, home prices, inventory levels, mortgage rates, etc. You can also shift into forecast mode by telling buyers and sellers where you think the market is headed in the coming months.
By including this kind of content in your real estate newsletter, you are positioning yourself as an authority on the local housing scene. You’re also giving people a good reason to subscribe to your newsletter, and to stay on board for the long term.
2. Featured Listings
You can also include current real estate listings within your email newsletters. This kind of content will interest local home buyers and sellers alike.
For buyers, it provides another source through which they might actually find a home to purchase. For sellers, it shows them what they’re up against in terms of competition.
Remember, you want to make your newsletter as useful as possible for your target audience. This will help you gain subscribers and minimize unsubscribes, two of the primary goals when publishing any kind of business newsletter.
If you include property listings within your real estate newsletter, be sure to use high-quality photos and informative descriptions.
You might also want to use an image optimizer to reduce the file size of your photos (without sacrificing quality). This could improve deliverability and prevent your newsletter from getting blocked by the recipient’s email server.
3. Educational Content
You can make your real estate newsletter more valuable to the recipient by including educational content. This is different from the real estate market reports mentioned previously. In this context, I’m talking about useful and practical advice for a specific audience.
For buyers, you could include how-to articles and tutorials relating to the home-buying process and specific to your area. For sellers, you might offer some pricing strategies that can help them attract more offers and sell their homes more quickly.
4. Upcoming Community Events
You could also include local community events within your real estate newsletter. These events could be related to your business, such as open houses or home buyer seminars. They could also be non-real-estate events that might interest your readers, like a local farmers market or a new business opening in the area.
Including this content in your newsletter adds another layer of value. The people who sign up for your newsletter will mostly be interested in items #1 and #2 above, and to a lesser extent topic #3. But it never hurts to pile on the value. Local events are one way to do that.
5. Testimonials from Past Clients
Sharing testimonials from recent clients can help you build trust and credibility with local home buyers and sellers.
If you decide to include testimonials in your newsletter, try to turn them into a story. Instead of just saying “I helped so-and-so buy a house,” put it into a broader perspective. Explain what challenges this client encountered, and how you helped them overcome those challenges.
6. Links to Social Media
If you happen to use one or more social media platforms for your real estate business, be sure to include links within your real estate newsletters. This gives people a way to stay connected in between newsletters.
If you distribute your email newsletter monthly but post on social media daily, your newsletter subscribers might want to know about that.
In this way, you can use your email newsletter to gain social media followers. And it works the other way as well. As I explained in a previous article, you can use social media to encourage people to join your real estate newsletter. It’s all connected!
7. Call to Action
Last, but certainly not least, we have the call to action. This is another important item to include in your newsletters, especially if you want to generate leads.
A call to action (CTA) is a clear and direct prompt urging readers to take a specific action. In the context of a real estate email newsletter, the call to action might involve scheduling a consultation, attending an open house, or exploring current property listings.
The CTA tells readers what steps to take next, based on the information provided in the newsletter.
Ranked From Most to Least Valuable
This article covers seven things you can include in your real estate newsletters. But they’ve been presented in a very specific way.
At the top of the list, we have the kind of information that will be most valuable and useful to your target audience. This includes real estate market updates, featured listings, and “how-to” articles geared toward your specific audience.
The other items on this list are worth considering as well, but they’re an optional add-on rather than a necessity.
When trying to figure out what to include in your real estate newsletter—and what to leave out—think about value. Ask yourself the following self-assessment questions:
- Does this content help my audience accomplish a specific goal?
- Will my subscribers appreciate this and benefit from receiving it?
- Will it make my newsletter more valuable for my readers?
If an item checks one or more of these boxes, it’s probably worth including in your newsletter.
Content Strategies for Niche Newsletters
All of the content strategies presented above cater to a general audience of buyers and/or sellers. If you’re focused on more of a niche audience, you’ll have to be more specific with the content you include in your newsletter.
Remember, the goal is to deliver value with each newsletter you send out. To accomplish this, you have to know who your audience is, what they are trying to accomplish, and what kind of information will help them succeed.
Here are some examples of niche real estate newsletters and the type of content they might include:
| Niche | Content ideas |
|---|---|
| Real estate investors | Market updates and forecasts, investment trends, tips on finding and evaluating properties, case studies of successful real estate investors, interviews with industry experts |
| Military homebuyers | Information about VA loans, home buying programs for military members and veterans, tips on moving to a new duty station, articles about the unique challenges of military homeownership |
| Luxury homebuyers | High-end listings, information on luxury markets, articles about luxury home trends and design, tips on buying and selling luxury homes |
| First-time homebuyers | Information on the home buying process, tips on saving for a down payment, articles about the common challenges of first-time homeownership |
| Downsizers | Information on downsizing options, tips on selling your home and moving into a smaller space, articles about the benefits of downsizing |
| Seniors | Information on senior housing options, tips on aging in place, articles about the financial and lifestyle considerations of retirement |
The goal is the same with all of these examples. In addition to providing regular updates on the local market, you’re delivering useful information tailored to a specific audience. This should be your guiding principle when deciding what to include in your real estate newsletter — and what to leave out.
Brand It Like a Newspaper or Magazine
Let’s wrap up with a few words about branding.
If you really want your real estate newsletter to succeed, promote it similar to a newspaper or magazine. You can even brand it by choosing a name that relates to the intended audience and the type of content you publish.
A lot of real estate agents publish email newsletters. But I know from experience that many of them struggle to gain subscribers. Branding your newsletter in a specific way can help you overcome this challenge, while helping your newsletter stand out from the crowd.
Consider the difference in these two promotional pitches:
- Sign up for my newsletter to receive market updates, home buying tips and more.
- Subscribe to Phoenix Housing Weekly to receive in-depth market analysis, local real estate trends and more, delivered straight to your inbox.
The second pitch is obviously stronger than the first. The name “Phoenix Housing Weekly” carries more weight than the plain vanilla “my newsletter” from the first example. It also suggests more value from a reader’s perspective.
That’s just one example of how you can give your real estate newsletter its own brand and identity, based on the type of content you plan to include.
Here are some other examples that sound better than the generic “my newsletter”:
- Metro Living Monthly (New York City)
- Bay Area Realty Digest (San Francisco)
- Sunshine State Homes Report (Miami)
- Mile High Market Monitor (Denver)
- Windy City Market Watch (Chicago)
- Golden Gate Realty Review (San Francisco)
So there you have them, seven types of content you can include in a real estate newsletter, and some strategies for making it stand out!
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