How estate agents should use email newsletters

I did a demo of our PropertyADD software to a firm of letting agents last month who were keen to know what options we provided for sending out monthly property summaries via email to potential tenants.

Personally I see this approach as a bit old fashioned these days. With PropertyADD, you send out your marketing to all matching tenants via email or sms as soon as the property is ready for marketing, or following a price reduction. Equally, you send details of all matching properties immediately that you register a new applicant.

It's a more real-time way of working. More convenient for you and your customers.

We still see the value of monthly emails, but more geared towards relationship building - keeping in touch and proving your expertise. Sure you might want to profile interesting properties to help illustrate your portfolio to potential landords and vendors, but you can also reinforce your branding with relevant news and advice.

The Agent Applause site had a good example of a monthly email newsletter yesterday. Richard Silver's template has strong imagery, a personal photo, prominent contact details and information about the local market.

I.e. valuable content content content!

The free property market updates that property portals such as MousePrice or Zoopla provide are great resources.

If your software doesn't allow you to send out broadcasts like this, there are even free services such as MailChimp which make it very easy.

Some estate agents struggle to even respond to leads received via email - the best use it as a great way of connecting with their local market.