Real estate newsletters are still one of the best ways Realtors can engage, educate, and sell to their audience in 2022. In fact, according to data from HubSpot, 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months. The problem for busy Realtors is that they need to come up with new content ideas to engage their email list every week. That’s harder than it sounds!
To save you some time, I put together these 29 proven real estate newsletter ideas that you can use so you can spend more time selling real estate. After the list, I’ll show you nine resources to get “done-for-you” content for your newsletter and wrap up with tips and tools to make sure people read it.
Download the Best Real Estate Email Templates
Engaging Local Content Newsletter Ideas
Since most of your audience will have the attention span of a flea, the first goal of your real estate newsletter should be to keep them engaged. Fun content like a wrap-up of cool neighborhood pictures from Instagram are going to be much more interesting than another market update. Don’t worry, though, we’ll cover education content in the next section.
1. Open House Highlight
Highlight a few notable open houses happening this weekend. Brand-new listings tend to do best here, but low-priced listings, waterfront properties, and vintage homes can do well too. Of course, if you have your own open houses, promote them here too!
2. Local Business Spotlight
Everyone loves to be in-the-know about hot new restaurants, bars, or shops opening in their neighborhood. Highlighting them in your real estate newsletter will help you show off your local knowledge and even better, give you an excuse to go and meet local business owners.
3. Local Event Highlights
Including a calendar of local events in your farm area is great, but people also love to see highlights from events that already happened. Head to Instagram or ask your friends to send you fun pictures from events that recently happened.
4. Meme Monday
Memes are fast becoming one of the most popular ways big businesses communicate with their audience. Even big companies like Netflix, Gucci, Disney, and Tinder use memes to engage their audiences. Of course, you don’t want to include too many in your newsletter. Including a meme at the bottom of your newsletter every Monday and calling it “Meme Monday” will do the trick.
5. Fact Fridays
Including fun facts in your newsletter is another great way to engage your audience. Like memes, you don’t want to overdo it. Include one fact at the bottom of your real estate newsletter each Friday and call it “Fact Friday.”
6. Throwback Thursdays
You can also use the popular social media idea of “Throwback Thursday” in your newsletter and include vintage pictures of artwork of your farm area at the bottom of your newsletter each Thursday.
7. Local Charity Spotlights
If you want to show off how much you care about your local community, highlighting a local charity in your newsletter will go a long way. Even better, it might just encourage your audience to volunteer or donate to that charity.
8. Local Instagram Highlights
Are there any fun trends or viral photographs from your farm area or city? Include them in your newsletter with a shoutout to the creator. These could be as simple as beautiful pictures of a local lake or beach.
9. Home Improvement Tips
Since you want to reach homeowners with your real estate newsletter, including home improvement tips is a great idea. You can either come up with them yourself, or create an infographic from articles on Homedepot.com or sites like Houzz.
10. Budget Interior Design Tips
Another thing many homeowners love but still struggle with is interior design. Everyone wants a beautiful home like they see on HGTV or Pinterest, but few know how to design one, especially on a budget! You can get this kind of content from sites like Houzz, Pinterest, or The Spruce and link out to it.
11. Landscaping Tips
Landscaping might be a struggle for new homeowners, especially those who just moved from the city. Including some good tips in an infographic will help them get the hang of it.
12. House Hacks
These are fun and thrifty ideas, like mixing your own window washing solution from vinegar and dish soap. You can summarize them quickly, link out to articles or social media posts, or create infographics.
13. Local Contractor Reviews
Did your client have a great experience with a contractor you recommended? Highlight how awesome they are in your real esate newsletter. This will help your audience and help the contractor get more leads. A win/win.
14. This or That Content
This is a super-popular trend on social media that you can use on your newsletter. Include two pictures of kitchens of very different styles and ask your audience to say which one they like better.
15. Polls & Quizzes
Polls and quizzes are another proven way that Realtors build engagement on social media. Including them in your newsletter can work too. Just make them super-short and focused on real estate.
16. Highlight Beautiful New Listings (e.g., Waterfront)
This one’s a no-brainer. Anyone who signs up for your newsletter has at least SOME interest in real estate, so they will naturally love to see beautiful new or noteworthy listings. Waterfront homes, unusual listings, or listings that sold for a very high or low price will be like catnip for them.
📌 Pro Tip
If you want to make sure your newsletter actually gets read, use a full-featured and affordable email marketing platform like Mailchimp.
Mailchimp will save you time, stress, and money with free templates and a suite of marketing tools to help you send better emails and track your results.
Educational Newsletter Ideas
After you engage your audience, you need to show off your local market expertise and educate them. This should make up the second-most frequent content in your real estate newsletter. Just make sure not to overdo, otherwise you will bore your audience.
17. Local Market Updates
This is the data and data analysis that your audience signed up for. Just make sure to present the content in an engaging way, maybe with an infographic, and remember to include YOUR analysis of the data!
18. Interest Rate Watch
With the housing market so uncertain recently, updates on where experts think interest rates are headed and why it will be very useful information for anyone even thinking of buying or selling a house. You can get this content from newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, and just provide a high-level summary, or even just the headline.
19. Quarterly Market Wrap-up
How your local market performed over the last quarter is crucial data for your audience. It might not tell them where the market is headed, but it will tell them exactly how it performed, which is almost as important.
20. Yearly Market Wrap-up
A yearly market wrap-up is another great way to keep long-term subscribers interested in your real estate newsletter. Homeowners stay on average five years in their homes, but a summary of the last year’s performance might help them decide whether to make a move.
21. Interview With a Mortgage Broker
If you have a lot of first-time buyers on your list, an interview with a mortgage broker is a great way to educate them, and hopefully give you fewer questions to answer if they eventually become leads!
22. Interview With a Real Estate Lawyer
Lawyers have a wealth of knowledge that your audience might want to know. If you can get a local real estate lawyer to break down complicated housing questions, your audience will love you for it.
23. Answer Real Estate FAQs
This is one you can do yourself, and maybe even answer enough common questions that any leads you get from your email list won’t ask them when you first meet!
24. Define Real Estate Terms
Giving quick, easy-to-digest definitions of common but misunderstood real estate terms is a great way to have more educated leads! You can define more common terms like FHA loan, or more obscure terms like 1031 exchange.
25. Local Government News
Sometimes even small changes in local government can have a big impact on real estate prices. Zoning changes, building code changes, or the construction of new parks or highways can mean big price swings for homeowners and buyers.
26. Buying & Selling Myth-busters
This is a fun way to educate your audience and make it seem like a game. Think up common myths you hear about buying or selling real estate and use your expertise and data to bust them.
Self-promotional Newsletter Ideas
Finally, self-promotional content, which is the content that actually sells your services as a Realtor, should be included in your newsletter only rarely. Maybe once or twice per month, if that.
27. Sneak Peeks of Your New Listings
Have a fresh new listing? Including a sneak peek preview in your real estate newsletter will help drum up interest. You can also announce price drops to maybe increase your showings of a listing that’s been sitting on the market.
28. Highlight Your Just Solds
Your track record as a Realtor is the main reason people hire you, so highlighting your ‘just solds’ is a great way to show it off. Try to include some interesting information about the sale instead of just bragging.
29. Brag About Your Awards & Accomplishments
If you win any awards or close a record number of deals, your email list should be the first to know! Just make sure not to brag too much and always remember to thank anyone who helped you along the way. Including a line like “I couldn’t have done it without my amazing clients, thank you!” might help.
Where to Get “Done-for-You” Content for Your Real Estate Newsletter
Sources for done-for-you content are easier to find than ever these days, but finding GREAT content to share with your email list isn’t easy. Here are our favorite sources for engaging or educational done-for-you content to include in your newsletter:
| Content Source | Best For | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Keeping Current Matters | Prewritten content for email newsletters, social media, and blog posts. | $29.95/month |
| ACEsocial | Real estate articles you can custom brand | $40/month |
| Coffee & Contracts | Attractive email templates and graphics | $54/month |
| Content inspiration and connecting with locals who want to share photography | Free | |
| Infographics about interior design, house hacks, and real estate | Free | |
| Realtor Magazine | Market data, surveys, and high-level overviews of the real estate market | Free |
| Zillow | Market data and trends, listings to highlight | Free |
| The Spruce | Fresh content about interior design, cooking, and home tricks and tips to link to | Free |
| The Close | Real estate memes, jokes, and interesting real estate facts | Free |
4 Crucial Real Estate Newsletter Tips & Templates
Of course, getting someone to open your email is only half the battle. If they don’t take the time to read your email, then you might as well not send it. In 2022, people are more distracted than ever before, so if you want people to take two minutes out of their day to read your email, you need to make sure it looks good. After all, you’re competing with Instagram and Facebook for their attention.
Here’s a quick guide to creating attractive newsletter templates your audience will actually want to read.
1. Use a Professional Email Template Builder
While it may seem easy, organizing the text and images in your newsletter in a readable, attractive way is actually very difficult. In fact, there is now an entire field of graphic design called UX (user experience) design dedicated to just that.
Use the Template Builder in Your CRM
For most agents, using the template builder in their customer relationship manager (CRM) is probably going to be the easiest way to quickly create great-looking templates. Propertybase, for example, uses the industry-leading Salesforce CRM to power its system. That means you not only have an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop email template builder (pictured above), but can access hundreds of templates via Salesforce plugins.
If you want to access true enterprise-quality CRM software for your team, Propertybase is an excellent choice.
Create a Custom Mailchimp Template
If you’re an individual agent or can’t afford an all-in-one solution like Propertybase, then you can create newsletter templates with standalone email marketing software like Mailchimp.
They have hundreds of email templates to choose from, and if you can’t find one you like, you can easily buy templates for Constant Contact from professional designers on Themeforest.
2. Go Easy on the Images
Since it’s so easy to create beautiful emails these days, many agents go overboard and add tons of images, GIFs, and videos to their newsletters. This can be a huge problem because they will load slowly for some users, and generally clutter up your actual message. For most agents, that message will be “I’m a talented market professional you want to hire” not “I’m someone who bombards you with pictures.”
As a rule of thumb, only use one or two images in each email. If you’re sending a video, you should make that the only image in your email. Remember, your goal is to get them to watch your video. Adding distracting images to that email will make them less likely to watch.
3. Use Buttons for Your Links
Some agents shy away from using buttons in their emails because they think they’re too salesly. In fact, buttons just make it easier for your readers to click on your link. First, because they’ve been “trained” to click on buttons by social media, and second because buttons are way easier to press than tiny text links on mobile.
4. Always Include a Play Button for Videos
Even if you’re not able to embed a video in your email, you should still include a play button. An easy way to do this is to take a quick screenshot of your YouTube video before you hit play.
Tools to Create Your Real Estate Newsletter
Here are five tools to help you build your newsletter.
| Newsletter tool | Best For | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Canva | Creating DIY graphics | Free-$10/month |
| VistaCreate | Creating DIY graphics | Free-$10/month |
| Mailchimp | Email marketing software | Free-$17/month |
| Unsplash | Stock images | Free |
| Coffee & Contracts | Email graphics and fresh social media posts for Instagram Reels, Stories, and more | $50/month |
Over to You
Have some real estate newsletter ideas that yield high open rates and tons of client engagement? Let us know in the comments.
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