When designing your own real estate newsletter to send out to your clients and prospects, it’s important to first identify what your purpose is in sending out the newsletter. Ideally, we want the newsletter to bring us more business both in the short run and in the long run. Beyond this, make sure you are consciously aware of what your goals are for your newsletter so that you can better determine whether or not your newsletter achieves these goals.

One would think that two of the goals in sending out a good newsletter would be to:

1. Have it look very professional
2. Have it be the best newsletter published by any agent in your territory

However, in looking at many of the newsletters I’ve seen mailed out by agents, most of them fall short of accomplishing these two objectives.

Think about this. Your newsletter is a total statement of who you are as a real estate agent to your clients and prospects. If you send a newsletter out to these people several times a year, your newsletter may be the most important tool you have to create the image you want others to have of you as a real estate agent. Now granted, the clients who have done business with you and who have loved you for years will probably continue to love you anyway, but so many of the newsletters you send out are being read by people you have only talked with on the phone, or people you have never even spoken with on the phone. For people who fall into these two categories your newsletter is the single most influential factor that may determine whether or not they call you or another broker when it comes time for them to list their property. Now, how interested are you in being the agent they think of calling first?

Become aware of the newsletters that your competition is sending out. Take the best ones and put them alongside of yours. How does yours compare? If you were a property owner which newsletter would you be more impressed with, and which agent would you call first when it’s time to list your property?

If after doing this you decide that yours is not currently the best newsletter in your territory, you now have a choice. You can continue sending out the same newsletter you have been, which you can count on to produce the same results for you that it always has in the past. Or you can decide to improve your newsletter and have it be the best one in your territory. The truth is you could also decide to improve your newsletter and have it still not be the best one in the territory, but if you’re going to do the work anyway why not just make it the best one out there?

If you don’t have copies of the other agents’ newsletters in your territory ask your favorite clients if they will give them to you after they are done reading them. And while you’re at it ask them which newsletters they like the best and why? Also ask them which features they like in each individual newsletter. And, you might also want to ask them if there are any other features that aren’t included in the newsletters that they would like to see. If you’re really gutsy you might even ask them to tell you straight out how your newsletter measures up to the others, but since you may be their favorite agent you might not get a completely unbiased opinion out of them.

When talking with clients and prospects in your territory you might simply tell them that you are designing a new newsletter and you want to know what you could put in the newsletter that would have them really want to read it. Make a note of the responses you get and make sure to include the things in your newsletter that many of your clients and prospects have requested.

The truth is that as you are an expert in real estate marketing in your territory you will probably instantly recognize how your own newsletter measures up to the others in your territory once you look at them side-by-side. If you feel that yours falls short of some of the others don’t feel bad. You have just created an opportunity for yourself. Now you have the freedom and ability to design a newsletter that will blow your competition off the map and begin to solidify YOU in the minds of the people in your territory as "the agent" to work with.

Having a great real estate newsletter can be the most important tool you have to create the ideal image you want people to have of you. A great newsletter has your clients and prospects feel that you are in contact with them on a regular basis even if you haven’t spoken with them on the phone or seen them in-person in many months. This will then increase the probability of them calling you when they are ready to list their property.

If you are committed to publishing the best, most professional-looking newsletter in your territory you will reap great benefits from doing so. People simply want to work with others whom they feel are the best at what they do. The agent who publishes the best newsletter in his or her territory will be rewarded with the most amount of new business from their newsletter than any other agent in the territory. Are you interested in having this agent be you?

The truth is that the cost of publishing your newsletter on an annual basis will easily be recouped by you by closing only one or two additional transactions a year from the newsletter. Depending on the territory you work in, closing only one additional transaction from the newsletter per year will recoup your costs AND give you many thousands of dollars of additional income on top of this. And if you publish a great newsletter in your territory, you will close many more transactions every year from your newsletter and any additional mailings you do.

Regarding additional mailings, you want to again have these mailings be impressive and position yourself ideally in the minds of the people in your territory. Every time you list, sell, or lease a property send the information out to all of the clients and prospects in your territory. You can even mail out this information on something as simple as a postcard. However, make sure that the postcard looks sharp and conveys the image of you that you want it to. Whatever the extra time and expense is, DO IT! Ask yourself the question, "If I were a prospect in my territory, would I think that the agent sending me this postcard is the best agent in the territory?" If not, design something that you definitely feel will convey this message.

I also highly recommend that you always include a great picture of yourself on both your newsletter and on any other mailings that you send out to the people in your territory. Make sure that the picture conveys the image that you want your prospects to have about you. Now I know that as a commercial/industrial agent you may have preferred not to include a picture of yourself in your mailings up until now. The truth is that when people continually receive mailings with a picture of the agent on them they begin to feel like they already know the agent personally. It’s as if a personal relationship has already begun to develop between the prospect and the agent in the mind of the prospect. Sometimes the agent can even take on a bit of a celebrity status in the mind of the prospect if the ongoing mailings that have been received are impressive and have the prospect think that someday when the time is right they will definitely do business with this person. This is not easy for agents to accomplish when sending out mailings with no photographs of themselves. While these mailings may contain great information, they don’t allow for much bonding to take place between you and your clients and prospects. People want to do business with people they feel they have good relationships with. It’s difficult for people to begin to feel that they already have a relationship with you if all you send them are words on paper.

As an example, have you ever liked a television star, movie star, or sports celebrity that you’ve never met but have seen on television or on the big screen? If so, this is the exact same effect that I’m talking about. You feel you like this person and in many cases feel that you know many things about the person, but you’ve never actually met them. You wouldn’t feel nearly as strongly about this person if your only experience of them came from words on paper with no photo of the person. While looking at your picture on your newsletter is not as dynamic as seeing you on television, it definitely allows people to begin to form a positive relationship with you in their own minds as they are now connecting with a visual representation of you as a human being. And, when it comes time for your prospects to actually meet you in person, they will feel as if they already know you. This is a great way for you to begin a working relationship with any prospect! And it all begins with your commitment to sending out the best newsletters and mailings in your territory.

Newsletters and mailings are a very important part of your business. Because both you and your prospects are so busy day-to-day you cannot possibly contact everyone in your territory by phone or in person as often as you would like to. Newsletters and mailings are then, in effect, very much like additional cold calling you do on a continuous basis. Over time by constantly sending out impressive, professional-looking newsletters and other mailings you will begin to solidify yourself in the minds of your clients and prospects as "the agent" they must do business with when the time arrives for them to buy, sell, or lease commercial/industrial real estate.

As a real estate agent, it simply doesn’t get much better than this.