Sphere & Past-Client Marketing

What to Send Past Clients: The Market Update They Actually Read

A reason to reach out that isn’t “just checking in.”

Staying in touch with past clients is the part of the job everyone agrees matters and almost nobody enjoys, because the easy options — “just checking in,” “thinking of you” — feel like fishing for business. A monthly market update is the usual answer. It’s a good one, with one condition: it has to be the kind anyone actually reads.

Most of your repeat and referral business comes from people who already know you. The clients you closed, the friend of a friend, the neighbor who watched you sell two houses on their street. The hard part was never believing in that. The hard part is the actual reaching out, because the scripts that come to mind all sound like asking for a favor. Everyone on the receiving end can read “let me know if you or anyone you know is thinking of making a move” for exactly what it is.

A local market update solves that, because it gives you a reason to show up that’s about them, not your pipeline. Here’s what’s happening to home values in your neighborhood. Here’s how fast homes are selling nearby. That’s useful whether someone is moving this year or staying for ten, and it changes the message from “do you know anyone selling” to “I thought you’d want to see this.”

Why a confusing update is worse than none

There’s a catch, and it’s the reason most agents who try this quietly give up. A market update only works if it gets read, and most of them don’t, because most of them are a mess. A stock-photo header, five fonts, a chart crammed into a corner, the one number that matters buried three lines into a paragraph. By the time the reader has worked out what they’re looking at, they’re already gone.

This is the part worth being blunt about. A cluttered market update isn’t a neutral effort that just didn’t land. It’s worse than sending nothing. Sending nothing is forgettable. Sending something messy and hard to read quietly tells a past client that this is the level of care they’d get on the biggest transaction of their life. A confusing chart is worse than no chart.

What “clear” actually looks like

Clear isn’t fancy. It’s closer to the opposite. One headline that says what this is and where. The three or four numbers that matter, given room to breathe and big enough to read at a glance: what homes are selling for, how long they’re taking, how many sold. The change from last year noted right under each one, so the trend is clear without a chart to decode. A real photo of the neighborhood earns its place; a generic stock house pulled from anywhere is just noise. Your name and brokerage at the bottom, once.

That’s the whole thing. The goal isn’t a beautiful design, it’s that someone can glance at it on their phone and understand it before they decide whether to keep reading. Clean reads as competent. Cluttered reads as careless, even when the work behind it was careful.

How often, and how to actually keep it up

Monthly is the rhythm that works for most agents. Often enough that you stay familiar, rare enough that it never reads as spam, and tied to something real, since new numbers come out every month and you always have a reason that isn’t manufactured. Quarterly is fine if monthly feels like too much. The point is that it’s regular and you’re not reinventing it each time.

That last part is what makes or breaks it. The agents who keep this going are the ones who aren’t rebuilding the thing from scratch every month. They have one layout they trust, they drop in the new numbers, they change the month, they send it. Closer to fifteen minutes than an afternoon. If it costs you an afternoon, you’ll do it twice and stop, and a past client who got two updates and then silence is back to wondering whether you’re even still in the business.

A market update is not a home valuation

One thing to keep straight, for you and for the person reading it: a market update is not a home valuation. You’re showing what’s happening across the neighborhood, what’s sold, what’s moving, where prices are trending. You’re not telling anyone what their specific house is worth. The strong move is one short line that invites that conversation without answering it: “Curious what your home might be worth? Request a free neighborhood price check anytime.” It points to the call you want, and the update earns that call precisely because it doesn’t print the number on a flyer.

The easiest past-client touchpoint: a local market update

The answer to “what do I send past clients” is something genuinely useful, on a regular rhythm, clean enough to actually get read. The first two are on you. The third is the easy part to hand off.