Elyse Harney

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This article was published by Realtor Magazine on: 04/01/2002

TOP PERFORMER

Country charmer

The worlds of high tech and country living meet up each week in Elyse Harney's Country Journal, an e-mail newsletter she sends to past customers, clients, and city folk longing to visit—and possibly move to—the countryside.

Harney, broker-owner of Elyse Harney Real Estate in Salisbury, Conn., used her newsletter to help net more than $38 million in team sales in 2001.

She and her son created the journal two years ago after a customer said he'd like to know more about events going on in the weekend-getaway town, just three hours from New York City.

"People didn't find out about our town's neat events until the day they took place, because their local paper didn't list them until the weekend edition," she says. "The Journal informs people of upcoming and recent past events, such as the town picnic, ski jump contest, dances, and concerts."

Harney sends the e-mail to 500 people on her database, many of whom are New Yorkers looking for a weekend respite. The letter goes out every Tuesday or Wednesday, giving readers plenty of time to make weekend plans to visit the town of 4,000.

The Journal also serves as a marketing tool, featuring historical information about the town and a listing of the week.

Another way Harney uses the Journal to encourage people to visit the town—and fall in love with it—is by holding a contest called "Name That Historic Site." The newsletter features the picture of a historic place, and the reader who names the site first wins a night or weekend at a local bed and breakfast or a dinner at a restaurant she and her husband used to own.

Harney used connections from the restaurant to help launch her real estate career in 1985 in this town in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. The restaurant, located in the heart of downtown Salisbury, provided a way for Harney to get to know many locals. She formed her initial database with the names of regular diners who later became loyal real estate clients.

After two years of selling real estate for another company, Harney decided to open her own business, focusing on historic properties. But due to the limitations of the niche, she soon expanded to other types of properties. She now also sells new construction, single-family homes, and some commercial buildings, ranging in price from $92,000 to $4.5 million.

This broader range of properties helped her team increase sales and led to Harney's decision to open a second office in 1999 in Norfolk, Conn., and a third office in 2000 in Litchfield, Conn.

As she expanded her company, she expanded her use of the Internet to bring in sales. She added more information to her Web site, including the Country Journal and community links. In 1999 Harney's site was named "Best Web Page" by the Connecticut Association of REALTORS^®. The site is her primary source for new customers and she's continuing to improve it, most recently by adding summer rentals and recent sold properties.

"I'm putting things on the Web site my customers tell me they want, and it's working," she says.

—Leslie Cummings