Over the years, a real estate agency accumulates many contacts: buyers, sellers, owners, tenants, former clients, prospects whose project did not materialise, partners, etc.
Of course, not everyone has a real estate project at any given time. An owner who does not want to sell today may change his mind in six months. A former buyer may come back with a new project after a few years. And a satisfied client can continue to recommend his agency long after a transaction has been completed.
The challenge is therefore to maintain contact without having to wait for a new project.
This is where the newsletter comes in. Provided that it is not reduced to a simple list of properties sent every month to the entire database.
Maintain contact between two real estate projects
The real estate cycle is long. You don’t sell your apartment every year, and you don’t buy a house every year either.
So, there can be several years between two interactions with a client. During this time, regular communication from the agency helps to stay present without there being an immediate commercial reason to do so.
An analysis of the local market, news about the community, some advice for homeowners, or an invitation to an open house are just a few of the ways to maintain this connection.
The goal is not to achieve a transaction after each mailing. Rather, it is to ensure that the contact remembers which agency he or she has already contacted in the past when a new real estate need arises.
In the long term, this presence can help to re-engage old prospects, generate referrals, or obtain new mandates.
Yes, properties, but not only.
Presenting the latest available properties is still relevant in a real estate newsletter. But for a portion of your contact base, this content will be of little interest.
Consider a homeowner who is thinking about selling their property. Receiving a selection of apartments to buy every month doesn’t really address their concerns. On the other hand, an analysis of the price trends in their area, advice on how to prepare for a sale, or an example of a successful marketing campaign might be more interesting.
Content can therefore vary depending on the agency’s news: new properties, real estate projects, market analysis, advice, open houses, blog posts, local news, regulatory changes, or even events the agency is participating in.
A good question to ask before each send is quite simple: will someone without an immediate real estate project still find something useful in this email?
If so, the newsletter is already going beyond its role as a property catalogue.
Not all of your audience will be interested in the same content
Creating more content isn’t always necessary. Targeting your audience more effectively can make a big difference.
An active buyer is looking for different information than a seller. And a former client probably has different expectations than a renter looking for a new home.
For example, homeowners and potential sellers might be interested in price analysis, local market trends, or selling tips.
Buyers might be more interested in new listings, financing, or the buying process. Renters might want to know about new rental opportunities and practical information, while former clients might want to stay up-to-date on the agency or local market news.
This doesn’t mean you need to create a separate newsletter for each profile. Before sending, ask yourself: who really needs to see this information?
A smaller, more targeted audience is often more effective than sending to your entire list.
When CRM data is used directly for communication
Segmentation becomes easier when the sending tool and the real estate CRM work with the same data.
An external email marketing tool usually only has the data that has been imported into it. The CRM has a richer context: contact type, relationship history, responsible agent, property search, language, mandates or previous interactions.
This is the logic behind the newsletter module of Immomig®.
The agency can create its own topics, such as “New developments,” “Homeowners,” “Open house” or “Market news” and subscribe the corresponding contacts and mandates.
When creating a newsletter, the recipients are already organized in Immomig®. There is no need to recreate this segmentation in a separate tool.
Not every newsletter needs to be a magazine
A newsletter doesn’t need to be long to be useful.
In a crowded inbox, it’s important that the reader immediately understands why they received the email and what they can find in it.
One main piece of information with a few supporting items is often enough. This could be a new property, an article, a guide, or local news.
Each piece of content should then lead to an action: for example, discovering a property, reading an analysis, requesting an appraisal, or signing up for a viewing.
The newsletter therefore provides the necessary information to spark interest, and directs the reader to the agency’s website if they want to learn more.
Reusing content that the agency already produces
Creating a newsletter does not necessarily mean starting from scratch.
Agencies already produce a lot of content in their daily work: new properties, blog posts, news, real estate projects, events or analyses.
Some of this content can be reused in newsletters.
In the Immomig® newsletter creator, for example, three types of content can be added: a news item, a property or a blog post.
When a property that has already been registered in Immomig® is selected, its information is automatically imported and can be edited if necessary. Blog posts can also be reused if the agency uses the blog module linked to its Immomig® website.
This reduces the need for double entry and makes it easier to reuse information that is already available in the software.
The subject line is already part of the job
Even the best newsletter is useless if no one opens it.
Subject lines like ‘Check out our new features!’ or ‘September Newsletter’ don’t really tell the recipient what they’ll find inside.
A few more specific words can already give a better idea of the content:
- ‘Are prices rising in your town?’
- ‘4 new properties to discover this week’
- ‘Homeowners: what’s changing in our market?’
- ‘Our next open houses’
You don’t need to go to any lengths to get the click. The subject line just needs to give a good reason to open the email and match what the reader will find inside.
A newsletter should make the next step easy
Someone who is interested in a piece of content shouldn’t have to figure out what to do next.
Depending on the topic, the next step might be to view an object, read an article, request a quote, schedule an appointment, sign up for an event, or contact a realtor.
It’s not necessarily helpful to use a lot of call-to-action buttons. Instead, each piece of content should clearly point to the next logical step.
View statistics to understand what your contacts are interested in
Statistics are not just there to tell you whether a campaign was a “success” or not.
They also help you to understand which content resonates with your own target audience: Are there topics that are read more often? Are there topics that generate more interest? Do the results change from mailing to mailing?
It is often more insightful to compare your own results over time than to rely on general averages.
In Immomig®, statistics are available by topic and newsletter. For example, you can see the overall open rate, the open rate of individual sections, and the number of unsubscriptions.
You can also view the contacts associated with the statistics. This way, the agency not only sees a percentage, but can better understand which topics resonate with its target audience.
And after the send?
This is where the integration of the newsletter into the CRM makes sense.
When sending a newsletter from Immomig®, it is possible to schedule a follow-up reminder and choose which calendar the task should appear in.
Let’s take a newsletter about the local market evolution that was sent to a group of owners. The agency can distribute its content, view the statistics and then organize a follow-up action, all without leaving the CRM.
The newsletter is thus more easily integrated into the daily commercial work instead of being isolated in an external marketing tool.
A newsletter that looks like your agency
Content is important, but the newsletter must also be immediately recognisable.
In Immomig®, the text, images, colours, fonts, logo and layout of the elements can be customised. A layout can then be saved as a template and reused for future mailings.
The footer automatically includes the contact details configured for the agency.
Several delivery addresses can also be used: the agency address, the address of a user, a department or the broker responsible for the contact.
This option is particularly useful for maintaining a personal relationship. A campaign addressed to many contacts can therefore be sent from their usual contact person at the agency.
A good newsletter also depends on the quality of the database
Invalid addresses, subscriptions that no longer match the contact’s interests, or people who no longer want to receive certain content: over time, a database evolves.
Managing it is therefore part of the job.
The Immomig® Newsletter module allows you to identify invalid email addresses, keep track of the emails sent to each contact and manage subscriptions and unsubscriptions to different topics.
When this option is configured, contacts can also manage their subscriptions from the agency’s website.
They are therefore not forced to choose between receiving all communications or unsubscribing from everything: their preferences can be managed by topic.
Newsletter and data protection: the two go hand in hand
In Switzerland, the use of e-mail addresses for commercial prospecting purposes constitutes a processing of personal data subject to the new Federal Data Protection Act (nFDP).
For mass e-mail advertising, the principle is that of explicit prior consent. An exception exists, for example, for existing customers when the communication concerns similar products or services and an option to opt out is offered.
Each advertising message must also identify the sender and provide a simple and free way to opt out of future mailings, usually via an unsubscribe link.
These rules also help to maintain a high-quality database. A list of people who are genuinely interested in the agency’s communications is more relevant than a larger but less engaged database.
Why manage your newsletters directly in Immomig®?
There are many tools that can create and send newsletters. For a real estate agency, the difference lies mainly in how the tool integrates with the work already done in the CRM.
With an external solution, contacts, audiences and content often have to be managed in several environments. Information is transferred from one tool to another and must be kept up to date.
In Immomig®, all the necessary elements are already in place.
Contacts are found in the CRM and can be organised by theme. Properties can be directly included in a newsletter, as can blog posts when the corresponding module is used. The responsible agent can become the sender of the communication and a follow-up reminder can be created at the time of sending.
Statistics and history are also accessible in the same environment.
The Newsletter module therefore does not add another platform to the agency’s daily routine. It uses the data and content already present in Immomig® to simplify the preparation, targeting and tracking of communications.
Your contact base should to stay active
An agency invests time and resources to develop its contact base. Real estate portals, the website, advertising campaigns, social networks and referrals gradually feed it.
But a contact does not lose its value simply because the project is over or postponed.
The newsletter helps to maintain the relationship: share expertise, provide useful information, present a property when it matches the target audience or simply remind people regularly of the agency’s activity.
The goal is not to send more emails. It is to make better use of the relationships that have already been created.
Interested in the Immomig® Newsletter Creator?
Your contacts are already in Immomig®. Your newsletters can be too.
For more information about the module or to request activation, our support team is available at 0840 079,069, at support@immomigsa.ch or via the ticket system in your Immomig® software.
Sources :
eminence.ch – Artikel
blog.facilogi.com – Artikel
citima.co – Artikel
immo2.pro – Artikel
immo2.pro – Artikel