10 Tips To Double Your Business In 2010: Tip 7
Today’s tip is to plan your mailings for the entire year.
You need to be in front of your clients via mail a minimum of once a month, but ideally 2-3 times a month. Mail to your clients serves many purposes:
~ It allows you to ensure that you are in regular contact with people. The reality is that we tend to call those that we are most comfortable with and some clients can fall through the cracks if you are only calling.
~ The consistency of mailing on a regular basis shows professionalism and reliability, which is important to your clients
~ Since your phone and face to face conversations will tend to focus on FORD topics (Family Occupation Recreation Dreams) versus real estate, the mailings allow you to provide proof of your competency in business.
I can tell you from experience that mailing is important. I have had times in my career where I have stopped mailing and experienced big drop offs in the amount of business that I did. Along with seeing many of my clients pop up as listings with other agents. Not fun!
What do you mail? Your mailings should be a mix of science (articles about real estate, your listings and sales, etc) and art with things about what is going on around the community, fun facts and more.
It is important to plan all of your mailings a year in advance though because even if you are just mailing once a month, 4 weeks can go by really quickly and then all of a sudden it is time to send out a mailing and you haven’t a clue what to do. If you can automate them as much as possible that helps a lot. My newsletter is in a template form and there are certain things that go on each page so it is pretty easy to put together a 6 page newsletter because I have been doing it for so long. The same thing with my postcards. I have a template that I use so each time I plug in a new picture on the front and then new verbiage on the back, but I do not spend time creating a whole new layout each time I do it.
My plan this year involves one mailing a month and then I supplement that with open house invitations and just sold postcards that also go out to my clients. Here are my mailings for the year:
January ~ Newsletter
February ~ Favorite chocolate shops for Valentines Day goodies
March ~ Commonly overlooked tax deductions
April ~ Newsletter
May ~ The best area farmers markets
June ~ Favorite restaurants to eat on the deck and enjoy the sun
July ~ Newsletter
August ~ Best ways to enjoy a summer day in Seattle
September ~ Market recap, how is the year going?
October ~ Newsletter
November ~ Santa letter and Thanksgiving letter
December ~ Christmas cards
If you have a template many of these mailings can be pre done. With the exception of the newsletters I send pretty much everything else out in a postcard format. When I have some down time I will often go in and create 3 or different postcards at a time so that they are ready and waiting when I need to order them. Then I just upload my current list of clients when the time is right and out they go.
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Love your mailing ideas. I do a fare amount and also with a good mix of art & science. So far just do post cards and of course the HUD 1 letter, xmas cards etc. Newsletter is next on my list. I REALLY like your Valentines idea. I may have to steal that one!
By all means, please do use the Valentines one. I got the idea from someone else and then implemented it too. Have fun with the newsletter! They can be a lot of work, but clients love them and once you get a template set up they are not too bad.