Since the NAR commission suit settlement, buyer agents have faced new rules, new documents and a new normal. This month, Inman drills down on Today’s Buyers Agent with the fresh marketing strategies, skills and tools buyer agents are using to prosper in changing times.
After years in brokerage leadership and consultancy, I’m getting back into production. I’m a big believer in the pendulum swings of the real estate market, and after the past couple of tight years, I believe that the time is now to focus on the untapped potential in the current and upcoming landscape.
Getting back into the day-to-day means focusing on what drives relationships and revenue rather than chasing shiny objects. That starts with consistent, smart communication with my sphere of influence.
It means rebuilding my pipeline, my brand and my audience. The first move? A smarter, sharper newsletter that’s not just a listing showcase, but a real channel for value-added content that educates and nurtures new leads. After testing a few tools, I landed on Constant Contact, which offers terrific tools for real estate pros.
You’re not just sending emails. You’re building a brand
If your current email blast only goes out on holidays or when you have a new listing, you’re doing yourself and your database a disservice. A newsletter is for building a voice, delivering value and staying top-of-mind, even if the folks in your sphere aren’t currently in the market for a new home.
If your only touchpoint is “just listed,” you’re missing out on the long game. And playing that long game is what keeps you top of mind on the day that someone has a question about their market or their home’s value.
Newsletters work even when you have nothing to sell
A newsletter shouldn’t be an extended advertisement for you or your listings. It can and should include:
- Market insights
- Homeowner tips
- Community events
- Real stories and case studies
- Reviews and testimonials
It offers you the opportunity to display your expertise and to drive traffic to your website, blog, YouTube, social channels and other digital platforms.
Not sure what to write about? Consider the following:
- Explain the meaning of (don’t just list) the latest market data
- Answer the questions you hear clients and colleagues discussing right now
- Give a heads-up on new development projects in your market
- Talk about changes to zoning regulations in your area
- Provide tips on DIY home improvement and maintenance
- Spotlight local luxury or historic properties
- Share photos from a recent community service or volunteer event
The point is to give your mailing list a chance to get to know you, while they get to know more about your local market.
Forget basic blasts. Be strategic
Working with a platform like Constant Contact gives real estate agents the chance to see what’s working and what isn’t in their newsletter planning. Three of my favorite features include:
- A/B testing that lets me experiment and optimize my email campaigns based on real engagement
- Auto-resizing that helps me repurpose one piece of content for use across a variety of platforms
- Templates that are already dialed in and optimized for real estate, cutting out the guesswork
For brokerages and teams, there’s flexibility and scalability, whether you’re a solo agent or collaborating with a 50-agent team. Enterprise-quality tools help organizations centralize branding, content and insights without slowing down production.
As a broker, I’ve always worked with content and design specialists to provide marketing collateral to my agents for email blasts and outreach, but my input ended with the content itself. It was up to the individual agent to format it and send it out in a timely manner.
With the scalability of Constant Contact’s platform, team leads and brokers have an enhanced ability to collaborate and ensure that the content it’s providing is optimally distributed — ensuring their branding is consistent.
Look for a do-it-all tool
If you’ve been cobbling together generic tools, a powerful and flexible newsletter platform like Constant Contact is going to be a game-changer for you. It’s like having a marketing department overseeing the look and function of your newsletter because many of its templates and tools have already been optimized for use by real estate industry professionals.
It offers free education so that you and your team can learn more about multichannel marketing, generating leads with email and even content creation that utilizes AI. It was the winner of Inman’s 2024 Best Use of AI in Marketing Award, so it lives on the cutting edge of this technology, and you can trust that it has made it easy for real estate pros to use.
I’m really excited to use Constant Contact to develop consistency in my newsletter routine, amplify my content to followers on social media and generally get more done with less effort.
Here are some of the ways I’ll be planning ahead for each edition of my newsletter:
- Instead of sitting down and trying to come up with a month’s worth of content, I’ll be gathering stories, stats, videos and other shareable content every day and putting it in a dedicated folder for later reference.
- I’m not forcing myself to write every Thursday at 4 p.m. I’m prioritizing the newsletter when I’m in the zone and have something compelling to share, possibly even doing some batch writing for multiple editions.
- I’m going to use Constant Contact’s AI tools to iterate on ideas for new content and email design, and I think I will learn a lot about the best times to send my newsletter. Nobody likes a guessing game, and Constant Contact will solve that problem for me.
- I’ll be working from one of Constant Contact’s professionally designed email templates so each newsletter looks consistent and follows a familiar pattern. That predictability is good for engagement.
- I’ll repurpose what’s working on other channels, like social posts or videos that get great engagement. That way, I’m not always reinventing the wheel.
- I’ll invite engagement with a clear call to action for each edition — schedule a consultation, download a guide, RSVP to an event — so readers know what to do next and how to reach out.
- I might also experiment with automated reminders and SMS messages — both of which are great touchpoints for new clients and repeat buyers who want to make sure they don’t miss one of my updates.
Whether you’re rethinking your current business model, rebooting after a slow season or just getting started in real estate, I want to hear about your experiences as well. What are you doing to get in front of your SOI now? What’s working and what’s not? What’s keeping you from creating the content you need to engage with your audience? Drop a comment below.
Troy Palmquist is the founder and principal at HomeCode Advisors. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
