Housing Trends eNewsletter is No More - What Now?

What once was an easy way to send monthly email newsletters to your database has disappeared with no replacement on the horizon. Produced by realtor.com, the Housing Trends eNewsletter offered agents an easy to use, free newsletter that came to their inbox monthly and with a few tweaks (or none at all), could be sent to their entire database and easily shared on social media. That was until now.

Housing Trends eNewsletter is No More - What Now?

This morning, I received the following email from realtor.com:

Dear Valued Customer,

We're writing to let you know that after February 28, 2019, the Housing Trends eNewsletter tool will no longer be available. Currently there are no plans for a direct replacement, but in order to give you time to plan for this change, we will continue to support the eNewsletter until February 28, 2019. After that date, the Housing Trends eNewsletter will be unavailable.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your past participation with the Housing Trends eNewsletter. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to call us at 1-888-481-0736 or email us at housingtrendsupport@realtor.com.

With best wishes for your success,

Move Sales, Inc.

Now, because I have a few clients who use this newsletter, I had already noticed that nothing came out January 2019, but thought maybe I had just missed the email alert or that they had sent a previous notice about there not being a January issue. (They totally could have sent an email in December or January saying it was not coming out anymore, but if they did, I in fact missed it.) So now anyone caught off-guard like myself is looking for a solid resource to replace this handy tool.

Because the Housing Trends eNewsletter came pre-packed with generic real estate news (some of which never changed), market stats, home evaluation requests and direct links to your website, and property searches, it really did make keeping in touch with clients easy, if not a little generic.

But it's all OK because I am going to tell you how to replicate the enewsletter with better, more relevant information and only minimal effort after initial set-up.

Things that are required:

• Mailchimp (or similar) account
• Website with property search (This can be your brokerage's site, especially if they give you a direct url to use and don't charge a fee for leads that sign up under it. But if you can/do have your own site, use it.)
• Email list
• CRM (Optional, but handy for storing all your leads and clients in one place. I personally LOVE HubSpot CRM and use the free version almost exclusively, but there are plenty of great ones out there)
• National source of real estate news (Realtor.com, Zillow and MSN Real Estate all have good articles)
• Local source of news
• Local Market Report (In theory, you already have this on your blog, if not, post it after writing it for the newsletter)
• Your contact info
• At least one Call-to-Action (you know, that thing you add to get people to share a post, give you their contact info, visit your site, etc. Something that gets them to perform an action)

Step 1 - Create Your Email Template
I am going to go out on a limb and assume most of you reading this do not have a pre-designed email newsletter template. That's OK though. You can make one in Mailchimp or use one of their pre-designed ones. If you can make your own or hire someone to make you one, do it. Otherwise, the pre-designed is fine, just make sure to add in all the required marketing logos and verbiage as required by your brokerage, team, etc.

As you can see from the Housing Trends template, they have contact info and social links at the top with menu links to contact forms, featured properties and your website. Then they drop in links to various national and local market reports, news stories and videos. In your template, use national and local news sources so people can see what's going on nationally with the market but locally with events and news. Add in links to your own videos, blogs and market reports with calls-to-action for subscribing to your YouTube, signing up for weekly market updates (use your MLS's client portals/subscriptions for this if you do not have an automatic market report program in use, such as Market Snapshot), etc.

Make your template as detailed or a vague as you want, but know that YOU are the knowledge source for real estate. Make sure your database knows it with solid data.

You can include things like a few featured listings or recent solds, but know that you will need to update this monthly along with the links, so be prepared to know how much time and effort you are not only able to put in each month, but willing to as well (or pay someone to do it, no shame in farming out your contact management).

One thing that you should definitely include is a little brief paragraph at the top (but under the header, in the case of the Housing Trends, I would say below the menu bar and above the national market update). This way if someone forwards the email or if you share it on your social sites, reader who don't know who you are or what area you represent can quickly know what they are looking at without hunting.

After creating your newsletter, be sure to save it as a template for future use. Yes, you can simply replicate a campaign in Mailchimp then update it each month, but saving it as a template is best.

Step 2 - Don't Forget to Send It Out
I add tasks I complete regularly in my calendar with email reminders to remind myself to do them. Do something similar so each month you carve out time to update and send your newsletter to your database. Once designed, it won't take long to create the newest addition to send out, especially if you are using links/information from your own blog whenever possible and are comfortable with the program you are using. (Again, if you are too busy or unable to regularly update your newsletter, hire an assistant or company to update and send your newsletter.)

Step 3 - Repeat Step 2 Every Month
Seriously. Don't forget to send out your newsletter to your database each month. You never know which of your cold leads is finally ready to buy and looking for an agent.

Until next time my lovelies!

-M

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