It takes time to build a lasting relationship based on trust and professionalism. With this fact in mind, you need to draw in potential prospects and referrals before they actually start thinking about buying or selling their houses. Newsletters (both traditional printed newsletters and electronic newsletters) have been proven to be effective in farming campaigns, because unlike straight-promotional materials, they contain useful information that gets read more often than ads.

It is known that if a marketing campaign is only 90% done, the results may well be a 0% rate of success, because the targets of the campaign will only react after a certain time and number of contacts. Therefore, it is not unknown for new agents to give up before the time the results become visible, as well as for lack of funds. But it doesn't have to be that way.

E-newsletters are more cost effective

Unlike the traditional printed newsletters, electronic newsletter are a far more cheaper method, especially useful for newly-starting agents that do not have the means for a full-blown marketing campaign.

Let's begin by making a cost comparison between the two types of newsletters. We considered three newsletter providers: CompanyNewsletters.com for printed newsletters, and ConstantContact.com and NetRealinTouch.net for e-newsletters.

In order to obtain a satisfactory revenue, an agent needs to farm at least 1000 homes. Therefore, in order to draw a correct conclusion, we have put together a price comparison table between the three newsletter providers.

For the printed newsletters, we have considered the minimum price for a 2-page, 2-color item, both with or without content from CompanyNewsletters.com. While ConstantContact.com offers only the technical platform and the templates for e-newsletters, NetRealinTouch.net also provides the content.

The table above clearly shows that e-newsletters are more cost-effective.

Also, please keep in mind that the prices for printed newsletters do not include mailing rates

Now let's consider this fact: people change homes every four and a half years on average, according to the 2004 National Association of Realtors (NAR) survey. Real estate agents need to maintain constant contact with the community they are farming for at least half of that time. So what would be the costs associated with farming 1000 homes for 2,5 years (30 months)?

The price for printed newsletters has been calculated for 1 newsletter edition per month, whereas the price for e-newsletters was for 1 newsletter edition per week (4 per month), sent to 1000 recipients for 30 months.

If a house sells for an average of $250,000 and a real estate agent's commission is around 3%, we can conclude that a real estate agent makes $7,500 per house.

So in order to pay for a traditional marketing campaign, agents would need to sell three or four houses. They will not earn any profit until the fifth house.

Compare this to the result of an e-newsletter marketing campaign: agents will start having profit from their first sale!

In conclusion, email newsletters are a great alternative to their traditional printed counterpart. If you are just starting as a real estate agent and you have limited resources, or if you are a seasoned agent who's looking to expand the geographic farming area, you should consider trying newsletters as a marketing solution.

You have your choice of newsletter systems. There are systems that only offer the technical platform for sending emails (ConstantContact.com, VerticalResponse.com), and the agent needs to supply the content. For specialized content, the biggest provider is RealtyTimes.com (it doesn't offer the technical platform). But there are also complex systems that offer both, namely NetRealinTouch.net.

We believe that our newsletter solution, NetRealinTouch.net, is by far the best answer to most real estate professionals' needs, at the moment. The system is extremely easy to use, making it easy for less-computer savvy people to benefit from newsletter marketing campaigns. Our editorial team creates and selects general interest content that is appropriate for long term farming.

And to show you that this is not another empty sales pitch, we invite you to test our system anytime, absolutely FREE of charge, for 30 days.

If you know of other email marketing systems that are as good as NetRealinTouch.net, please write to us about them and we will include them in future comparison articles.