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ReminderMedia prints glossy, customized lifestyle magazines for agents to use in marketing efforts.
Platforms: Browser; coffee and end tables; office lobbies
Ideal for: Any agent or team looking for a unique form of differentiation
Top selling points
- Professional, high-quality publication
- Multiple levels of customization
- Proven readership metrics
Top concerns
The quality of your database will determine how well this marketing effort works for you.
What you should know
Don’t tell the people at ReminderMedia that print is dead.
Actually, I’m not much a believer in that notion, either. I just subscribed to a hard copy magazine the other day.
ReminderMedia is a company that publishes a magazine called “American Lifestyle” for businesses to use in marketing. Real estate is a heavy focus for the company.
The cover can be printed with a headshot and contact information, and the inside editorial letter is written directly by the sender.
The magazine is sent six times a year and is customized via a very sharp administrative interface that offers an array of cover options, tear-out card promotions and even custom mail lists.
If 75 solid contacts were made from a weekend-long open house, ReminderMedia could help generate an edition strictly for that list to be sent upon next printing.
The magazine can be delivered to a number of different lists, such as previous customers, current listing clients and a sphere of influence list. The minimum amount that can be sent to a list is 50.
Each editorial letter is personalized per list, too, making this glossy, snail-mailed magazine as technically segmented as any email-campaign.
Agents can insert listing ads to be interspersed among articles about travel, food and art. The publishers leave out anything hard-hitting, like politics and tabloid fluff.
If you choose to pay more for the tear-out cards, your design choices are many — as they are for covers when special editions and holiday themes apply.
The biggest concern people have when they sign up with ReminderMedia is a poorly managed database.
The company employs two full-time staff members strictly for managing and cleaning real estate agent databases. (We have to do better, people.)
The web interface includes a host of resources to help you upload images, headshots and logos.
Users can choose from a number of different cover designs for each issue (up to nine) all related to the gist of that issue’s editorial slant.
This kind of marketing effort is only viable if the numbers make sense.
Well, they do.
Like most respectable print publications, American Lifestyle is regularly audited for readership metrics.
The results show that each issue has a four-week shelf life, is read for an average of 44 minutes and has a 38 percent recipient referral rate (readers recommend it to others). It’s also reported that 92 percent of readers have taken some form of action as a result of the magazine, which could include passing on the magazine or saving a tear-out card.
Tear-out cards are used to share contact information by 84 percent of the recipients, and the majority of its readership (78 percent) prefer content about recipes and food.
The digital edition of the magazine is a separate product that was launched last year. It currently has 6,000 users emailing it to their databases.
The emailed version incorporates video, clickable articles and ALTV (American Lifestyle television), a long-form “living article” that functions as television-quality content, complete with an actual traveling production crew.
In the midst of so much Facebook advertising talk, Matterport and Zillow premier accounts, ReminderMedia is offering agents a compelling marketing alternative to the digital flypaper that’s attracting and trapping the industry majority.
Will a branded magazine make the difference in your year? I doubt it. No single marketing effort will; it takes an array of efforts.
But can ReminderMedia set you apart from the five other agents fighting for control of your ZIP code?
I believe it can.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
