Outreach via E-Mail

It's common for agents to mail postcards or letters to a neighborhood "farm" on a regular basis to establish a presence and try to solicit new clients. But at about $1 per recipient, including postage and printing, these mailings can be very expensive. In the Internet Age, there's a new spin on the concept: e-mail newsletters. E-mail newsletters have several advantages over printed mailings beyond their very low cost:

• Immediacy: E-mails can be more immediate, because they can be sent at any time and are available to the recipient within minutes of being sent.

• More content: An e-mail can include more information, since you're not restricted by page size.

• Interactivity: An e-mail can include actionable items, such as links to your site and your e-mail address, making it a bit more interactive for the recipient.

E-Mail Marketing Issues

To send out an e-mail, you must have an e-mail address, and addresses are hard to get. There are online sources where you can buy thousands of e-mail addresses, but it's very hard to get a list targeted to just one or two neighborhoods. (In smaller towns, check with your local Chamber of Commerce: It may rent you e-mail address lists of people who have inquired about relocating to the area.) And we all know how annoying unsolicited e-mail is, so even if you were able to get addresses for many people in your target area, you're more likely to annoy them than to attract them with unrequested e-mails.

That means any e-mail newsletter or other messages you decide to send will be to people who have provided you with their e-mail addresses in the first place: people you met at open houses or at the office, or people who signed up on your Website. These are the people you want to have reading your e-mails, because they have already indicated an interest in real estate in general and your services in particular. E-mail is also a great way to stay in touch with former clients and gives you a chance to communicate periodically so they will think of you when their friends and colleagues ask for agent referrals.

Respect Recipients' Privacy

One really annoying thing about the Web and e-mail is all the spamunwanted e-mails and pop-up adsthat get in the way of what you really care about. It's easy to become a spammer yourself, sending people messages they don't want. Unwanted e-mail can become annoying; almost guaranteeing recipients won't ever do business with you.

Federal lawthe CAN-SPAM Actrequires that you honor privacy requests and stop sending e-mail to anyone who doesn't want it. While you might send an e-mail to someone who didn't request commercial e-mails from you, you must stop sending messages when asked. For more details on the CAN-SPAM Act requirements, see the link in the Web Resources: Services section on the accompanying CD.

At a minimum, your commercial e-mails must include your name, your company name, your e-mail address, your postal address, an accurate message title, and a "clear and conspicuous" way for recipients to get off your list (to unsubscribe). The unsubscribe method can be as simple as a note in each e-mail saying, "Reply with 'Unsubscribe' in the message title to stop receiving further e-mails," or it can be a more elaborate database system that your Web designer creates. However the requests are processed, be sure to honor the requests before your next e-mail goes outby law, you have 10 days to remove their e-mails.

There's a wrinkle for e-mails sentknowingly or notto mobile devices such as cell phones, BlackBerries, and Treos, where the customer pays to receive the e-mails: You must get the recipients' permission before you send them an e-mail. Thus, you should include a statement in your sign-up forms (electronic and printed) along the lines of "Note that some e-mail services charge recipients for messages received. You agree to pay any such charges for the e-mail address you provide." For unrequested mailings, such as from mailing lists you rent, you can check an FCC database of such mobile e-mail addresses before sending.

Additionally, there are now laws that forbid sending unsolicited faxes and making unsolicited phone calls to people on the Do Not Call registry (see the link in the Web Resources: Services section on the accompanying CD). The bottom lineno matter what the mediumis to not send materials to people who didn't ask for them. The sole exception: regular postal mail.

When you do send out e-mail newsletters and other marketing materials, make them as useful as possiblethat will make the recipients more likely to read them. Current market information, useful tips for selling or buying a home, and so forth are helpful types of content to include. It's great to offer your own personal commentary as well, but make sure you don't stray into giving advice outside your agent role. For example, you should not provide accounting or legal advice unless you are an attorney or certified accountantditto for interpreting code or construction requirements. When you include content of this type, be sure to cite the sources or provide links to appropriate materials. (As covered earlier in this chapter, do not use other people's content without permission.)

Tips for Creating E-Mails

After you have your e-mail list and know what kind of content you want to produce, you have to actually produce it. There are two basic ways to do this:

• Use an e-mail campaign system to create and distribute your newsletter.

• Create your newsletter in a Web creation program or word processor and paste it into an e-mail client or e-mail bulk-distribution program.

Most e-mail today is actually in the same format as Web pages: HTML. That means you can create the e-mail content using pretty much the same techniques you use for a Web page, even if you use e-mailspecific tools rather than Web-specific tools to create the content. (I covered the tools and techniques in depth in Chapters 1 and 4.)

Although both can be based on HTML code, there is a big difference between the content of an e-mail message and a Web page: the level of complexity. The more features you add to an e-mail messagelots of images, for examplethe larger the e-mail file becomes, which will slow delivery and increase the time it takes for recipients to display the message, thus annoying your recipients. And you should never send attachments, because any attachment raises suspicions that there might be a virus lurking within. Attachments also increase the e-mail size. Also, don't use fancy Web features like cascading style sheets and Java Scripts in your e-mails, because your recipients' e-mail clients usually ignore these fancy features and often make the e-mails unreadable.

Also, avoid pasting images into your e-mails. Instead, include a link in the e-mail using HTML code that will call up the image when the recipient clicks the link. Specify the URL for the image in a dialog box or other interface element (typically accessed through a command such as Insert > Image, Insert > Picture, or File > Import Picture). Or, if you're working directly in the HTML code, use the tag <IMG SRC="filename"> (be sure to replace filename with the actual URL for the image).

Remember that an HTML-formatted e-mail can trigger spam filters and thus be blocked. Because so many of the unsolicited ads sent via e-mail are formatted in HTML, Web hosts or anti-spam programs installed by users block all messages that use HTML format unless the recipient has certified the sender's e-mail address as safe.

What About RSS?

A new way of distributing newsletter-type content has gained popularity in the last year, 2005. It's called Real Simple Syndication (RSS). With RSS, users click a button on your site that essentially causes your site to send them new content either when you post it or on a regular schedule. Users love this because they no longer have to go from site to site to see what's newit all comes to them in one RSS reader program, sort of like how a newspaper brings news from several sources into one place.

But using RSS today to distribute content requires some pretty technical knowledge. (To help you explore RSS, the accompanying CD includes some sample RSS code and links to RSS software.)

Although RSS is just a few years old and its tools are fairly primitive, you can expect that most Web creation, Web browser, and even e-mail client software will be RSS-savvy by 2008, if not sooner. Because RSS looks to be the wave of the future, you might want to start getting familiar with RSS so you can make your e-mail newsletter and/or Web content available via RSS when the time is right.

But you may not want to jump in right now and make your newsletters and Web site available via RSS. That's because users typically don't have to sign up for the service and provide you contact information such as their e-mail addresses. So you won't know who's reading your newsletters or be able to contact those readers directly. Is that a problem for you? The answer depends on the strategy behind your newsletter: to get information on potential clients (then RSS is not a good idea) or to provide general marketing of you (then RSS can be a good idea).

You can, of course, use your e-mail software to send a plain (often called text-only or unformatted) e-mail. Unfortunately, this means your formatting options are fewer than those offered on a typewriter.

Many bulk e-mail programs send their messages in both HTML and text-only formats to get around the antispam software, but the best solution is to encourage your newsletter subscribers to add you to their antispam software's list of safe e-mail addresses. You can do so on your sign-up forms.

An e-mail newsletter can be an effective way to stay in touch with former and prospective clients. I send out HTML newsletters using campaign management software, but you can also use regular e-mail clients to send them for you.

Tools for Creating HTML E-Mails

I recommend creating your newsletter content in a dedicated bulk e-mail campaign manager like G-Lock Software's EasyMail Pro. This way you'll have a consistent environment for working on your e-mails, whether they are full-fledged newsletters or quick postcard-type e-mails you send people regularly.

Some people, however, prefer to create their HTML e-mails in a Web creation program like Adobe's Macromedia Dreamweaver, so they create both their Web pages and e-mails using the same tool. That's fine. Just copy the HTML page into a program like EasyMail Pro, or copy it into a blank message in a standard e-mail client like Microsoft Outlook. Do note that some elements in your HTML page might not copy the way you expect, so review your e-mail and make adjustments to text size, colors, and so on. And always send yourself a test message to make sure everything is OK before you send your newsletter to your recipients.

CD Resources: For bulk e-mail software, links to AtomPark, G-Lock, and LmhSoft. For Web creation and editing software, links to Adobe and Microsoft. For RSS readers and creation software, links to NotePage, Pluck, RNSoft, and Tristana.

Working with Code and Design Views

Most Web creation programs and most bulk e-mail programs let you switch between a "design" mode where you can see how the page looks as you work on it and a "code" mode where you can see the underlying HTML code. When copying HTML code from a Web creation program into an e-mail program, be sure to copy from the source program's "code" mode into the destination program's "code" mode. The "code" mode could be labeled "Code," "HTML," or something similar.

If neither program or only one program has a "code" mode, be sure to copy the formatted content using the "design" modeswhich could be labeled "Design," "Preview," "Layout" or something similarin both programs. In some cases, there is only one modethe "design" modeso you just copy from or paste using the program's regular window. But whenever possible, I recommend copying the actual HTML code if you want to cut and paste content from one program to another rather than using the formatted content; you'll reduce the chances of formatting glitches caused by the copy and paste actions.

Dealing With Spam Filters

Because of the huge volume of junk e-mailspamthat clogs the Internet, many Web hosts and individual users install antispam software. This software can block legitimate e-mails as well. Worse, you as the sender might never know which e-mails are blocked, so the reality is that you might never know if your intended recipients ever see your e-mail newsletters and other mailings.

Therefore, you might want to reconfirm your subscriptions every six months or every year to reduce the number of unread messages you send out.

Spam filters do look for several things when determining what is spam: for example, certain words like "Free" and "Mortgage" or the use of $ and ! symbols. Using the HTML format, as well as including image files, can increase the chance your message might be filtered out. And messages sent to lots of recipients in the To, Cc, or Bcc lines of your e-mail program can also cause your message to be flagged as spam. (Bulk e-mail programs reduce this possibility by sending each recipient a separate copy of the message. If your mailing list is small and you have the time, you can manually send each recipient an individual message from your e-mail program. Otherwise, invest in a bulk e-mail program.)

Spam filters are constantly being updated to filter out the latest scams, and there are several filters in use, so there's no hard-and-fast rule as to what you should exclude from your e-mails to get past the filters. But the more your e-mail looks and sounds like an ad, the greater the chance it will be blocked.

Don't Limit Yourself to Newesletters

Whatever tools or format you use to create your newsletter files, be sure the information is useful and reflects your marketing mission and skills. After all, technology is only the delivery mechanism. What sets you apart is what you deliver.

And don't limit yourself to newsletters: Other handy content you can deliver via e-mail (in addition to or instead of regular postal mail) include holiday cards and useful short notes (such as a note to consider refinancing two mortgages into one after a client has owned the home for a year or a notice of your office's annual Toys for Tots drive). Just be sure to pace your e-mails' delivery schedule so you're not bugging your recipients.