Bryan Guentner is a
Certified
Residential
Specialist with Re/Max
Properties, specializing in Sarasota, Longboat Key, & Siesta Key Florida real estate.
He can be reached at 941-316-6550 or via e-mail at topagents
@home.com.
You can also visit Bryan's Web site.
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Creating Customers for Life by Utilizing E-mail in Your Business
by Bryan Guentner, CRSRe/Max Properties
Sarasota, Longboat Key, & Siesta Key Real Estate
We have probably all heard the phrase "take care of your customers and they will take care of you." This is true when utilizing the Internet to increase your business. The more you learn how to use e-mail more effectively in your business, the more successful you will become. Before integrating the Internet into my real estate business, I did 15% relocation-out of town buyers and 85% local business. After deciding to take action, my business is now 75% relocation - out of town buyers and 25% local. My average price has increased by 100%. All because I have embraced the Internet and e-mail. E-mail is becoming a necessity.
There are many ways to utilize electronic mail. The most common way is to use it to send messages to your clients and friends. As simple as this sounds, do not underestimate the power of it. Have you ever heard "a picture is worth a thousand words?" When your client receives your e-mail, it says lots of thing about you even before they read it. It says you are in touch with tomorrow's technology today. That you care about your client enough to be literate in a technology that provides them with quick information about your products and services when they need it - now!
You can use e-mail to keep in touch with your clients by sending out a monthly newsletter. You can also follow up with your clients on a weekly basis until they buy or sell a home. With e-mail this can be done automatically with no postage cost. E-mail is free, other than your ISP (Internet Service Provider) cost.
You should also know the rules about using e-mail. You shouldn't sent unsolicited information to people just because you have found their e-mail addresses. This is called "junk" e-mail or "spam." Not the canned variety but just as tasteless. Yes, there are companies promising you the moon and stars with this kind of service. Three words of advice: "Don't do it". You run the risk of losing your great reputation and your business…or at the very least having your e-mail service and ISP account terminated.
This doesn't mean that you can't send "bulk" personalized e-mail to a group of people who have given you permission or have volunteered to be included in your mailing list group. You can send out new listing information, "just sold" notifications or "cyber-postcards" to your mailing list. Remember the "postage" is free. All it costs is your time to prepare the e-mail mailings. There are plenty of programs to help you out on this endeavor too.
How to get started? Get dial-up accounts with America Online and a commercial ISP. You'll need to do this if you are serious about the potential of e-mail in your business. You will need the capability of sending your prospects attachments. An attachment is a file that attaches to your e-mail message. These could include listing presentations or customized photos with music on that perfect property that the buyer will decide to buy sight unseen. It is possible. Are you starting to see the benefits? Outstanding!
Signing up with a nationwide ISP costs between $16.95 to $19.95 per month for unlimited access time. Also, this provider should give you browser and e-mail software such as Microsoft Explorer, Outlook Express or Netscape Navigator. You could purchase a specialized e-mail software like Eudora Pro to help you manage those hundreds of messages you will get each week from potential clients and junk e-mail that you will want to sort through fast, but this is not necessary. The basic e-mail packages included with the browsers will get you started. And you may even want to get America Online just to get your own AOL account name. There is special pricing for AOL if you access it from your other ISP. It is about half price.
After you are comfortable with sending e-mail and attachments you'll be ready to graduate to the next level: sending out personalized e-mail messages to anyone or any number of lists. Friends, family, clients, sphere of influence, past clients. Anyone with whom you would like to keep in contact. How would you like to send a personalized e-mail to hundreds of people with a few clicks of your mouse? Better yet, how would you like your clients to think you individually wrote and sent the message just to them? If you were to actually do this with hundreds of people, it would take you hours or days to compose and send personalized messages. But with technology you can do this in under one minute plus the time it takes you to write the letter.
This is possible in several ways. The first way is to set up a list serve on someone else's computer. You e-mail the user's e-mail address and the webmaster for this service will keep your list intact. Then you send one message to an e-mail address given to you by the webmaster and they will then forward your message to everyone on your list. This is fast and eliminates all those addresses of your friends and clients being seen by everyone who receives the e-mail. One drawback to this method is the message is not personalized like "Dear Tom" or "Dear Mary" and costs about $10 per month. Yet I understand that some companies are charging as low as $30 per year or free if you are willing to see their advertising each and every time you access your account.
You can also purchase a software product that can help you by importing a simple file called an ASCII text file from your contact management program. The best part is that in the body of your message you can merge anything you want (as long as you have exported it to the ASCII file) into each and every message you send. You can merge the person's name, town and other information that will personlize the message. One of the best programs for this is World Merge.
I believe e-mail is the most important marketing tool since the telephone. Give it a chance. Take a few minutes a day to learn how to use this 21st century tool.
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