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Real Estate Agents Spamming Each Other - This is Not Marketing
By Ryan Ward | February 11, 2008
A quick vent here about what is and what is not effective marketing. Emailing your listings to me is NOT effective marketing. It is spam. Most of it comes through as spam and the rest I simply delete. I already know about your homes for sale and you already know about mine so go find something that effectively utilizes your time to market your listings.
Effective marketing is what we should be trying to accomplish here and this is not it! On a given day, I receive probably between 75 - 100 homes for sale emailed to me by other agents. I do not have time to look through these listings as I already know how to find them and will look them up when needed.
If you are a seller, you need more than this as effective marketing!
Sorry, needed to vent.
Topics: Marketing |
February 11th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Touche’. We recieve these very emails everyday and like you, we delete them. I do not partake in this waste of money for the simple fact that any good agent will check all the new listings that are published in the MLS either every day or close to it. So, like you said, don’t need the SPAM because we already know what is listed. The unfortunate thing here is that agents that do not educate themselves and learn what good, aggressive marketing is are the same ones that get taken advantage of by these companies that propmote the next best thing in real estate marketing, in this case SPAM.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Well said. We get enough spam without having agents add to it.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I agree about the SPAM from other agents. However, what if they are informing you of a home they know of that IS NOT on the MLS.
How will you know about it?
What if a seller got your address and is informing you that they have their house for sale, it is not on the MLS, but, they are willing to work with cooperating brokers.
Hopefully you still scan and just not delete…I know I get some emails from sellers directly.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:00 am
True Johnny, you have to scan, but, they are easy to spot. Usually they come over and the pictures aren’t downloaded or they go right to my spam folder.
Agents that have listings that aren’t in the MLS are few and far between and generally won’t come through an email from the listingwidget or some other preformatted flyer.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I have found great success from emailing property flyers to agents in the area of my listings. We only send an email flyer when we have scheduled an Open House, and we offer agents to send their clients directly if they are not available. Susan’s Tip: It is important to peak an agents interest in the subject line and have great photographs of your listings (Photography is my passion.) The cost is $19.95 to email a flyer the first time and $9.95 thereafter. Our market area is approximately 8,500 agents. This is also a great listing tool as well!
February 19th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
What are you talking about thats most agents “Internet Marketing Plan” they use the internet to email some listings hoping that will get them sold. Here in Tucson AZ real estate agents do the same thing.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I totally agree with you, I mean isn’t this what the MLS is for? I check the MLS everyday for new property that fit my clients criteria. I was getting so many emails on my Black Berry that I had to set up a new email that I just give to my clients.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Interesting debate and I just wanted to weigh in one more time. Having thought about it, I think what makes emailing listings spam (and I agree with you here) is that it is a mass-sent email. If there is a listing you know I would be interested in, a quick line or two and some facts about the property is not spam. In fact, it’s good marketing. Emailing me every blessed thing you have and hoping some of it will stick is spam.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Ben why is that any different. Spam is just an unsolicited email and even if it’s just one out of five listings that are sent to you because I “think” you might have an interest it’s still spam. Plus there is no way for an agent to know what you (or your clients) would have an interest in. This is an ever changing group of properties unless you work some supper small niche.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
To follow that up Ben, I would also say it is spam (to me) because it isn’t just one agent that sends me their listings. I receive them from other states and areas of my state that I didn’t even know existed. I think someone even sends me their listings in other countries. Seriously, there are just better ways to marekt (at least for me). The shear volume of these emails makes it a complete impracticality for me to read through them thus making them essentially worthless. Perhaps it’s just me and a few other agents, but, because I get so much web traffic I also get a lot of email. These are very low to no priority and I never look at them.
March 1st, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I totally agree Ryan, I get that same stuff every day, and every day I go to the unsubscribe option and yet the stuff keeps coming from different REALTORS. I have to reach the end soon, but yet it keeps coming strong as ever.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Hi Ryan,
According to Bob W and Greg B yes you all are just spamming the heck out of everything. But then again Greg is getting all kinds of traffic from the contest. By the way this is me spamming you from my new blog. hehe
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Ryan,
I agree with you. I get about 50 of these eflyers a day. These eflyers are SPAM and these agents should have the “send” key removed from their computers as punishment.
Wish I knew who is selling my email address to these list providers. I suspect it’s our friendly MLS provider.
Some day I’m going to create a website where we I can post the email addresses of the agents that send out the SPAM and post their email address for the email scraping robots to grab. Figure that would be adequate pay back for sending me their SPAM.
Just venting. I feel better now.