When looking for the best approach to real estate farming, begin by trying to see the situation from your lead's point of view. You should always have in mind that real estate is still a people's business, and that the real estate agent is very important. Buying or selling a home are among the most important transactions in a person's life, especially since there are a lot of money involved. Therefore it is essential for a real estate professional to build a trusting relationship with his clients, that must always be focused on the latter and their needs and expectations.

The most important question in the mind of potential customers is "What's in it for me ?". The marketing efforts of real estate agents usually fail to answer this basic question. Most usually they create a brochure or a flyer, in which they call themselves the best agents in the area. They claim that by choosing them, you are guaranteed to get your dream home, fast and cheap, or sell your current one for a great price. They often forget that these statements can be made by anyone, and that they have no value for their clients.

Of course, the aim of every campaign is to demonstrate that the product or the service it promotes is the best on the market, and therefore it is the number one choice. But it is proven that a purely advertising copy is not only ineffective, but it also makes the audience reject the message. In this case, what is the best method to promote yourself ?

People need to know why you are the best choice for their needs. So you need to convince them that you are truly number one, as opposed to merely telling them. 

Traditional advertising campaigns are efficient for big companies, because in their case the aim is to enhance the brand equity. But this does not apply for real estate professionals.

You might think that the brand equity of big real estate companies like Coldwell Banker, Remax, Prudential, Royalepage (Canada) reflects on their agents image. This is false. People know that within the same agency there are good agents, as well as poor agents.

To become the agent of choice for a community, you have to prove that you deserve their business. You can do this by showing that you care about people's problems, and that you truly want to help them. Don't focus only on making money, build lasting relationships with your clients. Don't forget that people change homes every 4.5 years on average, so you have to do at least 2,5 years of constant and continuous quality farming if you want to be their agent.

Good farming campaigns consume both time and money, with results coming in sometimes months later. That's why is very important for real estate professionals to find the most efficient and cost-effective methods and combinations.

Real estate farming can be done successfully through direct mail: postcards, letters, brochures, printed newsletter and of course, email newsletters. Each agent has his choice of farming methods, considering the specific of the community, the budget and his previous experience.

A good alternative to the traditional newsletters are the electronic newsletters campaigns. A successful e-newsletter campaign doesn't mean sending an email once in a while, but a flow of constant informational newsletters with useful and interesting content for your readers.

E-newsletter campaigns have the big advantage of being cheap compared to other advertising methods.

Just consider that the costs associated with farming 1000 homes for 2,5 years. If you use printed newsletters, you have to spend $25,020 (CompanyNewsletters.com - no content included), compared to $872.5 (NetRealinTouch – content included) for e-newsletters.

Aside from the price, e-newsletters have a lot of other advantages compared with printed newsletters and postcards. The sending frequency is higher: 1 printed newsletter/postcard per month versus 1 e-newsletter per week or even daily if you want. E-newsletters can be easily customized and personalized for each category of audience. They contain as much information as you want, and very importantly, they come with complete statistics modules that allow you to monitor your prospects' response.

It is usually best to use multi-mix campaigns (printed materials, online promotion, TV, newspapers), like large companies do. For example, you can combine a weekly Farming newsletter with two or three beautiful postcards every year on special occasions.

Having all this in mind, when it comes to choosing an e-newsletter farming solution, you don't have to look twice.

NetRealinTouch offers you all the features needed to maintain constant quality contact with the community you are farming in. It provides you not only with the technical platform, but also professionally-written content covering a variety of topics.

NetRealinTouch is extremely easy to use, allowing you to efficiently target several segments of audience simultaneously. To monitor the response, you can use the detailed statistics.

We invite you to test our system anytime, absolutely FREE of charge, for 30 days.