Did you hear about the agent who said, "I didn't understand that I was supposed to connect to the Internet to check my e-mail!" By the time someone helped her open her e-mail she had 269 messages, including one from last Christmas, saying, "We are transferring there next month and would like your help."

E-mail - use it or lose it . . . (the prospect, that is!!)

Have you also heard about the agent who has installed an auto-responder on her website to send an instant memo to each inquiry? It announces, "Thank you for your e-mail contact. As soon as I finish my current appointment, it will be my pleasure to help you. Thank you for waiting . . . you won't be disappointed."

Waiting? Unless the public expects instant help, then waiting until the end of the day would have lost this prospect to any of the other agents they contacted. Her auto-responder kept her ahead of the pack. E-mail - use it or lose it . . . (the competitive advantage, that is!!)

So how do you use e-mail? Better yet, how can you use e-mail to make money and improve your business? The following are a few reasons why e-mail has improved my bottom line:

Answer your e-mail- respect these contacts as being worthy of a response. The informality of email makes it so easy to simply hit the Reply button and type "thank you" or "I’ll get right on it" There are no envelopes to type, no addresses to look up . . . and no expectations of a grammatically correct business format. And most programs have a spell-checker.

Time is of the essence - e-mail saves time. I compose e-mail more quickly than handwritten memos. If I am answering your previous comment, the program will copy your comments so that we are reminded exactly what is the topic. And, of course, no letter or fax arrives as quickly as e-mail.

Any time will do - I like to work late (ok, I admit, I sleep late, too). I can send e-mail to clients at midnight without disturbing them, unlike voicemails that set off beepers, or faxes that ring the phone. My overseas clients do not have to worry about time zones. And if you have an e-mail link on a website, you are open for business 24 hrs. a day.

Network with agents - I send out a quarterly newsletter to agents around the country. Surely you understand that mailing out postcards is a great way to stay in touch with agents who will remember you with referrals? With e-mail there is no postage cost (did I forget that my #1 fondness for e-mail is because it is FREE!), and after you have set up your mailing list, group mailings take 2 seconds to send.

Network with relocation counselors - most are getting online these days. They crave information & marketing reports from their agents, and e-mail allows you to say less, more often. Think about how you hate those lengthy reports which generally don't fit the real picture of the local market. If the relo counselor receives frequent short memos regarding your efforts, recent showings, etc., I find that they don't require the report. By the way, it takes me no time to compose those memos, because I start with information logged into my daily contact management program, (Online Agent, Top Producer, Prep, etc. I cut & pasted this into an e-mail to my seller, and "CC" the relo company. This stuff doesn't make work for me - it saves time.

Stay in touch with your clients - isn't that important? I create a separate mailbox in Eudora Pro for each of my active sellers/buyers who have e-mail My clients are more likely to have a home computer with AOL than have a home fax machine. And let's talk about risk reduction and record keeping. Your e-mail program keeps a copy of everything you successfully send, and notifies you if the recipient's address no longer exists. Why, your fax cover sheet doesn't prove exactly what you faxed me . . . you could have faxed 3 pages of blank paper! E-mail - use it or lose it . . . (the chance to avoid a lawsuit).

Conduct your business while out of town. Maybe you won't even mention that you are gone. I took my notebook computer to the Keller Williams National Convention, and logged onto my e-mail It took only 3 minutes of long distance to get my messages, disconnect, scan them for the urgent ones, compose replies, reconnect for 1 minute and send. E-mail helped me close the deal when Mark Heinrich of Kingwood, TX gave me a referral at the convention. I called the buyer and learned that he was talking to other agents. Because he had e-mail I composed a letter about real estate in Mandeville, and typed in several hyperlinks for websites about the metro New Orleans area, including schools, cost of living differences, maps, etc. I added links to my own listings at Realtor.com and viola!! He got my relocation package before anyone could FedEx something, this impressed him, and I got the sale.

Share information (okay, I admit . . . it is soooo easy to forward those great jokes that make the rounds on the Internet). But e-mail also makes it possible to share serious information via "virtual meetings" Set up a group e-mail of the participants, and use the Reply All button to allow everyone to receive everyone else's comments. We don't have to agree on a meeting time. Again, I can do my e-mail at 1 am, and you can do yours at 7am.

I would love to see Keller Williams offices become the first to conduct sales meetings via e-mail Please do not confuse this with Internet "chat rooms" If we are all too busy to schedule meetings in person, then we certainly don't want to require you to be at the computer at a given time. "Virtual meetings" allow a forum of discussion to take place over the course of several days, with members adding their comments whenever they log on to check their e-mail.

Farm corporations. The same ease of use that makes it so convenient to forward jokes to all your friends, makes it easy for prospects (who are subject-to-transfer) to share your updates with other employees, thus expanding your mailing list. Make your e-mails brief, informative, and full of facts about property values that the public craves. Encourage them to forward the information. My farming e-mails start out, "If forwarded in its entirety, you may share this with others."

Farm neighborhoods - advertise that you offer market reports via e-mail If someone regularly receives information from you, but forgets your name when they are ready to sell, it is far more likely that they can pull up an old e-mail in order to find you, than it would be for them to find a postcard or postal newsletter that they filed away somewhere. Think about it - do You file your junk mail in an orderly way?

And there is so much more. We didn't get to talk about sending photos of "Just Listed" properties via e-mail or setting up filters to automatically sort your incoming mail, or using "pseudo" e-mail addresses on your website to test what is getting the best response, or my favorite NetMailer, which lets you personalize e-mail to hundreds of people at once.

E-mail - don't lose it . . . get with it!