How to Create a Real Estate Newsletter That Your Audience Actually Reads

The real estate market is more digital than ever, with agents creating 360-degree virtual walkthroughs and advertising by sharing insights and fun clips on social media. However, newsletters have remained an influential constant in real estate. You can maintain visibility but also control of your mailing list, rather than leaving it in the hands of a platform.

A well-designed newsletter can establish you as the go-to source in your niche and keep your followers engaged. Segmenting your audience and personalizing content will build trust and help you benefit from word-of-mouth.

Why Do You Need a Real Estate Newsletter?

The National Association of Realtors explains that you have to work your sphere of influence, which makes up 60% of the real estate business — only 10% comes from internet leads. A newsletter allows you to share your expertise with your network. You can also encourage them to share it with others, expanding your circle through referrals.

Top 9 Tips to Create a Successful Real Estate Newsletter

Sending a newsletter isn’t enough. You have to craft it to get readers to open it. Fortunately, you can take numerous actionable steps to improve your stats.

1. Choose the Right Content

Creating personalized content that home buyers and sellers want to read requires knowing their pain points. As a real estate agent, you already talk to your clients about their needs, so you likely have a lot of insight about their problems and how to solve them.

For your newsletter, consider adding a mix of local insights, successful client purchases and facts like interest rate movement and how to calculate your homebuying budget. Then, sprinkle in the solution to your audience’s problems. If many of your clients are first-time home buyers, include an article about choosing the perfect starter home, improving credit scores for lending or understanding the closing process.

If you sell upscale or new houses, educate readers about popular technology in homes today, particularly with the advancements in smart home systems. One survey showed that 7% to 9% of households own a smart garage door opener, and 70% of owners consider the advanced monitoring and control essential.

2. Tweak Your Subject Line

What types of emails are you most likely to open? Some strong headlines include verbs and a sense of urgency. Others are learning tools. Here are some examples:

• Look at These Three New Listings Before Someone Else Snatches Them Up
• How to Afford the Home of Your Dreams on a Budget
• Gather the Right Documents for Closing

You could offer how-to advice, promise to solve an issue or give clients a top 10 list. Over time, you’ll learn which format works best with your subscribers.

3. Hook Readers With New Listings

People subscribing to your list may want to learn more about the real estate market in your area in case they want to buy or sell a home in the future, or they may be actively looking for a new home to buy.

To keep income flowing as a real estate professional, you must list and sell homes. You can share your top three favorite new listings at the beginning of each newsletter. Make sure they tick your typical client’s checkboxes and what they’re most likely looking for. If you aren’t sure, send out a survey to see what top features your readership wants in a home.

4. Make the Email Skimmable

People are busy — many of your clients probably work and have families while they are house hunting. They want quick, digestible information they can skim and absorb. You must rely on formatting and short, punchy sentences to create a fast-read newsletter.

Use short sections, subheadings and bullet points to break up text. Cut anything unnecessary. Make headlines bold for quick absorption and add charts and graphics to guide the reader through the text. If you want to draw attention to a particular section, use an illustration or animation of an arrow to draw their gaze in that direction.

5. Choose Beautiful and Relevant Images

Think about your favorite newsletters and blogs to read. They likely contain images and the sections mentioned above. The right visuals can tell part of your story, particularly in an industry like real estate, where people want to see the homes you’re talking about.

Add a video that shows a 360-degree walk-through of a new listing, include big photos of the beautiful backyard patio on one of the homes in your lineup, and sprinkle in images of happy customers with a key to their new home or standing in front of the sold sign.

Include images of all the generations you reach. Even if you specialize in first-time home buyers, you may find more multiple generations living together to overcome rising housing costs. The average cost of U.S. homes was $410,200 in 2023, but some areas command even higher prices. Adding a few photos of families with kids, parents and grandparents may pull in that demographic of buyers.

6. Create a Template

Spend time creating a newsletter template you’ll follow each time. Having a design in place will create consistency that your readership can count on. People want to know they are working with a reliable real estate professional. Sending the same layout, colors and design each mailing indicates trustworthiness and steadiness.

Many email newsletter providers offer ready-made templates for real estate agents. You can either tweak an out-of-the-box design or develop something of your own. If you use a service like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, they provide tutorials on personalizing your template.

7. Use Calls to Action (CTAs)

Your newsletter should include a CTA at the end of every mailing. The goal of a CTA is to grab the reader and have them take an action that moves them closer to becoming your client. Experts state your CTAs should align with user intent, requiring some detective work.

Send out surveys, pay attention to which website pages people land on and observe how they interact with your site. You need to know your audience and the data from various sources, including one-on-one interactions with clients. Once you have a list of why people might subscribe to your newsletter and what they hope to gain, it’s much easier to craft your CTAs to match user intent.

8. Segment Your Audience

Your mailing list may include names of family, friends, old classmates and past clients. Dividing the list allows you to personalize the content and send the content that interests the person the most. You can also tweak your CTA to match each group.

Another benefit of smaller segments is the ability to personalize the greeting. Most email providers allow you to ask for a first name when people sign up for your list. You can then use a merge tag to greet them by first name. For example, with Mailchimp, you would use: Hello *[FNAME]*.

Another benefit of having your list divided is that you can send out a new listing note to a specific segment when the features match the clients’ house-hunting lists and must-haves.

9. Give It a Quick Proofread

Tools like Grammarly allow you to make quick edits. This ensures that your newsletter sounds professional and is as free of typos and grammatical errors as possible. Spend 10 or 15 minutes editing before sending. You can team up with another person and read one another’s emails to catch awkward phrasing or any errors. A second set of eyes can catch problems you might miss.

How to Track Your Newsletter’s Success

The average open rates for newsletters vary widely between industries and from one agent to the next. Rather than competing for a specific percentage of opens, grab your current open rates from your email provider and try to improve the results. Pay attention to the times you send your newsletter and if more people read it on a Monday or a Saturday. Does the time of day matter?

As you tweak your headlines and add different visuals, run A/B campaigns to see which designs your audience responds to best. Repeat what works and discard what doesn’t.

Open rates are one way to track success, but they don’t always tell the whole story. You can have high open rates and zero calls. You must also see if people click your CTAs and connect with you for showings or advice. How often do they have to see your invitation before listing their home or calling for advice on buying a new one? Try to shorten the length of time so you stay busier.

Ask your clients if they enjoy the newsletter and what else they want to see. The more feedback you get, the more you can engage them.

When and How Frequently Should You Send Your Real Estate Newsletter?

You must send your real estate newsletter often enough to keep clients updated on new listings, but not so frequently that it annoys them. Base your rule of thumb on open rates. Set up analytics with your provider and pay attention to opens and link clicks. If readers stop clicking on your CTA and listings, it could be because you’re sending them messages too frequently. On the other hand, if they ask for more, you may need to speed up releases.

A Newsletter Is a Valuable Tool

Instead of letting an algorithm determine who sees your posts, take control with a newsletter. You’ll gain a direct line to your clients and subscribers to show your expertise and share market news. Over time, your insightful advice and attention to detail will bring more leads and lifelong customers. Your newsletter can become a conversation that turns readers into raving fans.