Over the years, I have tried to hammer home the importance of sending a newsletter to your database. In fact, in my Renegade Millionaire Strategies for Real Estate Agents book, I included an entire chapter that detailed how I structured my client newsletter. I didn’t just send any old newsletter. I copied the template for the highest circulating paid magazines. The idea was to look for commonalities and use these commonalities in my newsletter.
There are many reasons why you should send a newsletter to your database. I’ll summarize a few of them here:
- To build and deepen your relationship with prospects, past clients and current clients
- To lead generate for other sales opportunities (ex: promote an investment property)
- To share great content that helps create expert positioning
- To have fun and entertain
- Market other businesses you own or affiliate programs for additional income (disclose all compensation)
- To test different email subject lines to see which ones get opened the most (convert the best ones to headlines for your advertisements)
- To share news articles, stories or videos that may help convert a prospect into a client
- As a cool way to generate new leads through JV relationships with other businesses in your area
No matter how much I preach about the importance of newsletters, I cannot get agents to send them consistently. I guess newsletters are viewed as too much work. This is why I include a weekly email newsletter for my Master Marketer members. All they have to do is copy the newsletter and paste it into their email program and it’s done. I honestly view sending a newsletter as THE most important task for your business. It is more important than generating new leads.
In #8 above, I wrote that you can use your newsletter as a tool to generate new leads through JV relationships with other businesses in your area. The basic idea is that you promote other businesses in your newsletter. In turn, these businesses promote you to their database giving you access to their best customers. In reality, it’s a proactive referral program between you and the other business owner.
In my email newsletter template, I feature a banner advertisement at the top. This banner advertisement is simply a picture file format, like a JPEG. I create these banner advertisements on my computer and upload them into my email program. It’s pretty easy and very effective. Check out this screen capture video where I share exactly how to create a banner advertisement:
VIDEO (How to Create a Banner Advertisement)
In this video, I talk about creating banner advertisements for affiliate programs.
However, in this article, I’m suggesting you use banner advertisements to promote other businesses in your area. The basic idea is that you can create a banner advertisement for another business in your area. Include their logo, phone number and offer. Have the banner advertisement link to the business’s website. Use this banner advertisement in your newsletter and promote the other business for free. Now have the other business promote you to their database for free. This way, you’ll be helping each other generate high quality leads without spending a penny!
Now, if you decide to use this strategy and I hope you do, you have two choices for the advertisement used by the other business to promote you to their database:
1. Focus on Quantity of Leads: With this approach, the idea is to use an advertisement that generates a lot of leads. The goal is to maximize the number of leads generated. For example, you might offer a free list of foreclosed homes because this offer typically generates the highest response. This will maximize the number of leads generated. These leads will all go into your database and you can keep in touch with them each week via your newsletter.
2. Focus on Quality of Leads: Instead of maximizing the number of leads generated, focus on attracting the highest quality leads possible. In my business, the highest quality leads came from free classes. I offered various free classes to the public and those who attended were very serious about buying. Class attendees typically became clients and used our services for their real estate purchases. Instead of teaching a live class, you could also automate this by using webinars.
A weekly email newsletter delivered to your database gives you the opportunity to promote 4 different businesses in your area, one each week. This means you have the opportunity to have these 4 businesses promote you to their databases, too. Who knows, you may be able to hit your marketing goals simply through this JV marketing strategy. All you have to do is turn your email newsletter into a JV lead generation machine.
Additional Reading:
How to Automatically Convert Prospects Into Appointments
How Real Estate Agents Can Create Money
The Book That Changed My Life
