Most real estate agents today are inundated with emails from other agents advertising their new listings. Some days I’ll get 20-30 of these emails and another 10 or so directly to my spam folder. I wish they would all go to my spam folder because that is exactly what they are – spam.
Just for reference, let’s take a look and remember what the definition of spam is when referring to email solicitations. I’m sure they believe these to be a great use of the “new technology” known as email, but, really it’s nothing more than spam.
As agents, we already have all of these listings available for home buyers in the MLS and that does nothing to mention that buyers can find these great new listings and reduced properties simply by searching through the MLS on agent websites, broker websites, realtor.com, and all of the other 3rd party aggregator websites where buyers are searching for homes.
If I receive them, I immediately unsubscribe myself from this innovative use of spam, er, technology. The biggest reason for this is the fact that they are non-targeted to me and my market and the sheer volume makes it impractical for me to try to keep them in my mind.
Since I’m receiving so many of these emails on a daily basis, how can any agent possibly believe that I am interested in looking at this unsolicited regurgitated information from the MLS listings posted in these emails?
On listing appointments, I specifically tell my potential clients that we do not communicate with agents via spam, er, new listing emails because they are ineffective and a tool only used by agents who don’t actually understand how to effectively utilize technology to market listings to agents and directly to buyers.
Let me offer some solutions to effectively utilize some of the real new technologies to help market homes for sale rather than sending bulk messages to people who don’t need the information.
If you are reading this, you are already familiar with blogs.
There are several places to market your listings that will effectively place your home in view of buyers. Try ActiveRain. The localism section is perfect for a quick write up. Try HomeGain. Another excellent resource (and one of my personal favorites) is a blog platform offered for free from Real Estate Websmasters.
Let’s not forget one of the most potent places to market homes on the internet, postlets.com. Postlets.com will feed your listings to a variety of other internet portals automatically for you and last but not least, never ever forget to post your listings on craiglist.org.
There are several others including classifiedflyerads.com, but, this is a great start for anyone looking to actually get their listings out in front of home buyers and people who might be interested in hearing about and seeing your home listings.
Remember what you are trying to do here – build awareness for your listing.
You can’t build awareness by spamming people, you can only frustrate them.
New technologies are truly a friend of real estate professionals, but, they must be used effectively. Email marketing listings to people who already have access to them is not going to build your awareness, only frustrate the very people who will likely be showing your home.
I suppose 5 years ago, emailing listings to agents might have been effective, but, back then, not nearly as many agents were doing it so there was not a constant stream of email listings (spam) coming to me with warnings about downloading pictures or going directly into a spam folder.
What other methods of technology are you using to market your listings?
All too often we are tempted to send out blast emails to show off our new listings. Thanks for the tips on how to expose our listings in a more useful manner.
July 24th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Good info.. Very helpfull.. Thankz…
July 24th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
I get these emails all the time. I just got one the other day that was telling me about a price reduction. The funny thing was it was only a picture; it didn’t say what the price reduction was, where the home was located, or anything else. Now that’s not really an effective use technology, is it?
July 25th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Ryan – I have to agree and disagree with you. I agree with you that the spam listing e-mails usually come from real estate agents in other parts of the USA or other areas of the world. I am not interested nor do I clients that are interested. Or the case where I get a local announcement of an open house after day and time of the actual open house.
I disagree with you regarding the promotion of a local listing from a local real estate agent. Why? Because, it just might jog my mind about a prospect that is looking for that property.
You furnish some good resources for real estate agents to promote their listings.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Ryan I take the easy road and mark all of these emails as spam. Gmail handles all of my email for all my domains and Gmail is very good at learning what you want to see. Now at the most I get one or two of these a week in my inbox, the rest go straight to spam.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Amen to that. There is even a radio show in Houston with 2 agents rattling off their listings for an hour.
Jeffrey
IonHomeInspection.com
Houston, Katy, Sugar Land
July 25th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I agree completely with you Ryan, while I acknowledge that some of what Glenn says is true, coming at this as a technologist, you have to ask…”What would happen if EVERYONE did this?” In our city of Louisville with approximately 11,000 listings, it would be 11,000 squared emails and would melt local servers down.
July 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I used to get a ton of these. I think I have gotten off most of these lists by unsubscribing. I mostly get random ones now for homes in different cities.
July 26th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Glen,
It’s a bit of a tough call and I understand how it used to be effective, but, with several hundred emails a day, I’m not sure that I can take the time to look through the unsolicited emails that typically make it to me. While I understand that it’s possible to jog my memory, these just don’t make the cut – for me. As a best use of time for marketing listings or seeking homes for clients, I would prefer to utilize other tools. I do recognize your point though.
July 27th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I hate spam so much, I started RealtorSPam.org
Just because I’m a Realtor and you LEGALLY can email or spam me, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t spam.
Try this. If after trying to remove yourself (which you should never do since you never added yourself) try sending them a fax using efax to their cell phone. Efax will make 5 attempts.
Frank
July 28th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
What we have noticed is that some people hate it and others dont mind. Some people like to keep up on the market and all the changes, others hate it and want nothing to do with it. Sure, if you’re bombing them multiple times a day then yeah that would probably upset me as well but if its done properly then you shouldn’t have any problems. If you’re supplying listing info then once a day would be ok, any more then that and it can become overwhelming. Great post.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:16 am
You should join RealtorSpam.org and help fight this trash.
Also I have been fighting the MLS system for making it so easy to cultivate multiple email addresses for mass mailings. That is another solution.
Want to see how they get your email? Change your email address in your MLS system to SentViaMLS@YourDomain.com That way know HOW they got my email
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:08 am
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June 29th, 2009 at 11:54 pm