📧 Newsletter Cheat Sheet for Local Service Businesses (Virtual Assistant Ready)

If you're not sending a regular newsletter to your owner clients and leads, you're missing out on the easiest, most effective way to grow your business and build lasting relationships.

Just about every top entrepreneur, property manager, and home service business operator that I work with does this... Because it works, it's simple, and it's essential.

• Ridiculously Easy to Start: You don't need fancy tech. Modern tools make it simple to design, write, and send a newsletter in minutes.

• Every Successful Entrepreneur Does It: The best entrepreneurs that all of us follow use newsletters. It's a proven, repeatable strategy for staying top-of-mind and building trust.

• No Reason Not To: There's virtually zero downside. Newsletters are cost-effective, easy to automate, and deliver a massive return on investment.

What Makes Newsletters a Must-Have

• Remind Clients Why You’re the Expert: Each edition reinforces your expertise and keeps your brand front and center for both existing clients and leads.

• Share What You’re Working On: Give your clients and prospects a peek behind the scenes. New projects, success stories, and updates.

• Educate and Upsell: Introduce new services, explain existing ones, and highlight how you’re adding value.

• Engage at Scale: One newsletter can reach hundreds (or thousands) of people, creating conversations and connections you simply can’t manage one-on-one.

I want to harp on that last point of "engage at scale." As your business grows, your time becomes your most precious resource. You can't personally connect with every client or lead anymore. There aren't enough hours in the day. Life gets busier, your priorities shift, and your client base expands. Something has to give.

Newsletters solve this problem... They let you speak to everyone at once, but in a tone that feels personal and genuine. You maintain the human touch, even as you scale. Your audience still hears from you, learns from you, and feels connected, even if you can't pick up the phone for every call.

So let's dive into this.

PS: As with all my guides, I am going to create this in a more bullet point format so that you can take these instructions and give them to your Virtual Assistant and ChatGPT.

The Plan

📝 Instructions » 🛠 Reformat for Biz » 🤖 Create LLM Prompt » 🙋‍♀️ VA Handoff

Newsletter: Step-by-Step Process Flow

For this guide, I am going to focus on property management. The frameworks are applicable for any industry and will need to be tweaked for your specific business and audience.

Step 1: Generate Newsletter Content

The best way to get email sign-ups is by providing something valuable in exchange for an email address, known as a "lead gen asset". I am sure most of us know that. But I bring this up because I cannot reiterate this enough…

Focus on quality over quantity.

You want people who are genuinely interested and likely to become leads, not just a large volume of addresses. Here are some content ideas.

• Updates: Share market trends, policy changes, or news relevant to property ownership/tenancy

• Educational Content: Offer tips on property maintenance, tenant communication best practices, or financial advice for landlords

• Maintenance & Property Updates: Notify about upcoming renovations, maintenance schedules, and improvements

• Community News & Events: Highlight local events, business spotlights, and resident achievements

• Educational Tips & Seasonal Advice: Offer practical tips on property care, energy savings, and seasonal maintenance

• Success Stories & Testimonials: Share brief stories of resolved issues, quick lease-ups, or satisfied residents

• Policy Reminders & Emergency Info: Communicate lease changes, payment reminders, and emergency contacts

• Q&A or Reader FAQs: Ask owners to send in questions and answer one per newsletter. It's a great way to engage and show expertise

• Feedback & Surveys: Invite feedback and conduct quick polls to gauge resident satisfaction

• Market Activity & Property Values: Share recent sales data and new listings in their area to help owners understand their property's current market position.

• Local Real Estate Insights: Highlight market trends, recent sales, and what they mean for property owners in terms of equity and investment opportunities

Step 2: Create Cheat Sheet Newsletter Templates

You should try to use the same sections every month so readers know what to expect. I cannot reiterate how important it is to have a template. It makes writing so much easier and keeps things organized.

Here are some common patterns you can copy:

Version A: Minimalist Monthly Digest

• Header: Title, logo, date

• Intro: One-sentence summary

• Top 3 Updates:

  • Market/legislation

  • Maintenance

  • Community/event

• Quick Tip: Seasonal or operational advice

• Feedback Box: "Reply with your questions or suggestions!"

• Footer: Contact, unsubscribe, social

Version B: The "One-Minute" Digest

• Header: Newsletter name, date

• This Month's Focus: One key topic or theme

• At-a-Glance:

  • Market update

  • Maintenance alert

  • Community event

• Quick Poll: One-question feedback

• Team: "Meet the Team Section"

• Footer: Contact, unsubscribe

Version C: Visual Highlights

• Header: Logo, date

• Photo of the Month: Brief caption (new listing, renovation, event)

• Top 2 Updates: Short bullets (market, maintenance, or policy)

• Tip Box: Seasonal or operational advice

• CTA: "Share your thoughts!" or "Follow us on social"

• Footer: Contact info, social links

Version D: Quick-Read Essentials

• Header: Newsletter title, logo, date

• Opening Line: One-sentence welcome or highlight

• Top Update: Most important news (market, legal, or company)

• Maintenance Reminder: Key upcoming or recent maintenance

• Community Note: Local event, business, or resident mention

• Quick Tip: Seasonal or operational advice

• CTA: "Reply with questions or feedback!"

• Footer: Contact, unsubscribe, social links

Each version is designed for fast production and easy reading, so that your audience gets the most important updates without information overload. Adapt these structures to fit your brand and audience preferences.

Steps 3-6: Create a High-Quality Newsletter

You want to create emails that are appealing and prompt action. This provides inspiration for the structure and style of your newsletter. I am going to outline each step in the sequential order that your clients will experience. Each step, if optimized correctly, will reduce drop-off rates. They all flow into each other.

Step 3: Subject Line

• They should be appealing and act as a hook to stand out in the inbox.

• Keep them concise, ideally under 50 characters, especially for mobile readability.

• Make them self-evident, so subscribers know what the email is about at a glance.

• Consider adding a touch of personalization, like the subscriber's first name, which can increase clicks, particularly in win-back campaigns.

Step 4: Design

• Prioritize a simple, elegant, and clean design

• Use a clear typeface and ample negative space

• The design should "lean in" to look distinctive in an inbox, rather than being overly elaborate. Think of how a clean, white Apple email stands out in a sea of colorful marketing messages.

Step 5: Body Copy

• Aggressively Concise: Get straight to the point without unnecessary fluff

• Fulfill Expectations: The content should deliver on the promise made in the subject line.

• Promise Value: Clearly articulate the value to the recipient

• Provide Evidence: Support your claims with evidence or social proof where possible. For example, "Join a community of over 350 real estate investors”. For property management, this could be client testimonials or statistics on rental success.

Step 6: Call to Action (CTA)

• Single Goal: Most emails should focus on a single primary CTA to drive people to your goal. Including too many CTAs can distract subscribers

• Value-Driven: The CTA copy should be value-driven, describing the benefit of clicking. Instead of "Subscribe," use something like "Send me the latest market insights" or "Unlock Property Maintenance Tips" or “Free Revenue Estimate.”

Pro Tips

Consistency: Posting a lot in a short period and then going silent for a while will only show your audience that you do not take your newsletter seriously, and chances are, they will unsubscribe. Don’t do that. Build a system.

My recommendation is to literally take this article, make your specific business tweaks, ask ChatGPT to turn it into an SOP, and then ask our marketing virtual assistants to produce this content for you on a weekly or monthly basis.

Quality Content: The more consistently you post, the more opportunities you create for engagement. Every email is a chance for someone to like, comment, share, or inquire about your services. However, bombarding your audience with irrelevant content isn't the goal. Content-market fit is incredibly important. It's about delivering value with each post.

Quality content + regular frequency = a winning combination!

As always, I hope this is thought provoking. Again, as I mentioned earlier, you should use this template, make the necessary tweaks for your business, feed it into ChatGPT to convert it into an SOP, and then give it to our virtual assistant team to produce for you on a weekly or monthly basis.

Contact Us

As always, our marketing virtual assistants can help you build out your marketing projects.

We work with operators on GoHighLevel & Hubspot, setting up marketing automation, email, SMS, & voicemail drop campaigns, skiptracing, Facebook & Instagram posting, ghost writing, and other marketing tasks.

I'd love to make an intro to the team — https://www.csoutsource.com/why-cs-outsource/