Don't Let Your Newsletter Become AI Slop
A good newsletter is one of the most valuable things a real estate agent can build. It keeps you in front of the people who already know you. Plus, it reminds your past clients that you still exist, without having to ask them for anything. Done well, it’s one scalable way to nurture repeat business and referrals year after year.
According to the National Association of REALTORS®, repeat clients and referrals make up roughly half of a typical agent's business. Which is why it is worth paying attention to what is changing with newsletter marketing, especially with AI and AI search.
AI has made writing, creating, and publishing newsletters easier than ever before. You can generate a whole newsletter in the time it used to take to write just one story. AI assistance sounds like a gift, and in some ways it is. But it's not a gift when it’s changing the value of what lands in your clients’ inbox.
Some of you may have noticed your favorite newsletters are all starting to sound the same—more words and less impact. Many are turning into something nobody wants to read. This annoying content has a name: AI slop.
The good news is that staying out of the AI slop pile is completely in your control when you approach newsletter production with three things in mind:
1. Get Off the AI Merry-Go-Round
Getting off the AI merry-go-round starts with understanding how newsletters got on it in the first place.
The same AI writing tools you use are available to every other agent in your market. It all draws from the same well. Even if you’re paying for the pro version of some Large Language Models (LLMs), the only way to dip into a different well of knowledge is to personalize your LLM.
If you don’t take the time to personalize and teach your AI writing tool(s) your voice, tone, brand, and knowledge, then your AI writing tool will spit out the exact same thing to every agent prompting, “Write an email newsletter for my farm area in Westwood, including a market update, upcoming events, and the newest listings for sale.”
Think of it this way: When everyone can produce a well-written market update in seconds, market updates stop being meaningful.
Thankfully, we've seen this pattern before. When something scarce becomes abundant, all value doesn't disappear, it just moves to whatever's still rare. Once you’ve trained your LLM to write like you do, then you add the rarest pieces: you and your knowledge.
2. Know the Difference: Machine Fact vs Lived Knowledge
The barrier to writing a decent newsletter is gone, so what can you do to make the newsletter actually valuable? By adding what a computer never can.
There’s a big difference between “machine fact” and “lived knowledge.” The lived part is yours and it’s what makes your voice important—your read on the market, your read on your people, and the care to tell the difference between what matters and what's merely sayable.
The human part can never be replaced by AI, and it’s up to you to add it in and make judgement calls about what’s important to write about in your newsletter.
For every story idea you get from AI, make sure it passes your judgement check first, and then be sure to weave your lived knowledge and experiences into the narrative.
3. Let AI Help You Repurpose
Your newsletter shouldn't live in just the inbox. The same lived knowledge that makes a newsletter worth reading can work three or four more times if you let it. Take the best thing you said this month (the rezoning, the diner, the tax reassessment) and repurpose it with AI for more people to see. Turn it into social media posts, videos, and a blog on your website.
Every time you publish that repurposed content on your website and social channels, you're building your search visibility. So the next time someone in your market types a real estate question into their AI or Google search, your name is what surfaces. You're not just staying in front of the people who already know you. You'll be getting found by the ones who don't yet.
Over half of the country’s real estate agents say they use AI in their day-to-day business, but are all of them really doing it effectively? Your newsletter is one place where AI can be a real load lifter if you use it the right way.
The point of automating work isn't to remove yourself from the equation. In fact, it’s the definition of leverage just as Gary Keller teaches—outsource the stuff you’re OK at, so you can have time to do the things you’re really great at. When you use AI to help you write your newsletters (not take them over), you’ll have more time to focus your efforts where it matters most.
Let the machine carry the drafting, scheduling, formatting, and repurposing. Keep for yourself the judgment about what's worth sending and the edits of voice and tone that make it unmistakably you.
Want more information about newsletter production and how it can become a great source of repeat, referral, and new business? Check out the newly updated Newsletter Playbook in Connect (free to all KW agents)!
Do you have any additional newsletter tips? We'd love to hear from you! Check out our Facebook or Instagram for more content, or subscribe to our newsletter here.