How One Agent Built a 1,000-Person Newsletter From Zero Contacts

Amy Swanson moved to Westport, Connecticut with her family after 22 years living abroad, knowing essentially no one in her new market. Fifteen years later, she’s a top producer in a competitive luxury market, and much of that growth traces back to one consistent habit: a weekly newsletter she’s sent, almost without fail, for 14 of those 15 years.

Amy joined Meredith Fogle on “So You Want to Be a Real Estate Agent” to break down exactly how that newsletter works and why it’s become one of her most effective tools.

It started with open houses, not a marketing plan

Before the newsletter existed, Amy built her early business almost entirely through open houses, holding them nearly every Sunday for years, at one point completing 49 out of 52 possible weekends in a single year. Since she didn’t have her own listings starting out, she worked other agents’ open houses, treating each one as an opportunity to build both client relationships and referral trust with the listing agents themselves.

That trust-building included a habit most agents skip: writing a same-night follow-up email to the listing agent after every open house, summarizing who came through, whether they were represented, and how interested they seemed. “That’s really brilliant,” Fogle noted, pointing out that this made Amy genuinely helpful to the listing agent, not just present at the event.

From a simple PDF to a full local market report

The newsletter began as a basic list of upcoming open houses. Over time, it evolved into a genuine hyperlocal market report covering two towns, pulling new listings, price changes, pending sales, and closed transactions directly from the MLS. It now reaches roughly 1,000 people weekly with an open rate around 32%, well above typical email marketing benchmarks.

The consistency has become part of its value. Amy sends it at the same time each week, and her audience has come to expect it enough that missed weeks prompt concerned messages asking if she’s okay.

A simple three-paragraph structure

Rather than overthinking the format, Amy follows a repeatable structure: an opening paragraph that’s warm and personal, often referencing something happening locally that week; a middle section covering hard market data pulled from her brokerage’s monthly statistics; and a closing paragraph that shares something personal, a new restaurant, a hobby, a weekend trip, that also happens to showcase the lifestyle of the area she serves.

That personal closing section does double duty. It builds genuine familiarity with readers (Amy described being recognized by name from newsletter readers she’d never directly met) while subtly reinforcing why someone would want to live in her market in the first place.

Using AI carefully, not blindly

Amy uses ChatGPT to help streamline parts of the writing process, particularly turning raw market statistics into more readable summaries. But she’s learned from experience not to publish AI-generated content without careful review: a mistake where an AI tool returned an incorrect date for a local fireworks event led directly to a client calling her, alarmed, after publishing it unchecked.

Her advice for agents who want a similar newsletter but don’t feel like natural writers: train the tool with clear custom instructions on tone, phrasing preferences, and formatting quirks to avoid (no em dashes, no over-bolding), keep the personal section to a single paragraph, and lean on real facts and data to fill out the rest.

Relationships that compound over time

Amy also credits her career growth to relationships built with more experienced agents early on, describing one mentor whose day-to-day habits and negotiation style she learned simply by observing closely. Her advice to newer agents: if someone opens a door to learn behind the scenes, even in an unglamorous role, take it. That kind of access is difficult to come by once agents are working solo.

If you’re building your own business and want to develop a consistent system like this one, reach out to The List Realty to learn more about the coaching and support available to agents here.

Watch the original episode

Watch: The Newsletter Strategy That Helped Amy Swanson Dominate Her Market