How do you use e-mail? Do you only use it to communicate with clients or do you use it to prospect to the masses? How many e-mailings do you send a day and do you know your rate of responses? How easy is it to reach you via e-mail? Do inquiries to your e-mail address get a quick response? The answers to these questions can make all the difference in the effectiveness of your e-mail outreach.

If you run your business like some of the companies that were recently featured in a New York Times article, you have a lot to learn about e-commerce. One company admitted that its e-mail effectiveness (measured in terms of customer service inquiries) is less than 10%, compared to a close rate of 85% over the telephone. Another customer service site responded to only 70% of e-mails it received to customers, regardless of whether the inquiries were complaints, orders, or questions. The reporter then e-mailed over two dozen well-known consumer-focused corporations and received replies from only seven in 24 hours. Five companies never bothered to reply.

The reporter's conclusion was that unless a company is Web-based originally, it is unlikely to have the tools and commitment in place to service customers via e-mail. Which begs the question - why is e-mail treated as such second-class communication?

The truth is, it isn't. E-mail, like any other form of communication has a time and a place. Using e-mail appropriately as a tool for commerce and communication can be very effective if you consider the following points:

E-mail is first and foremost a time-saving means of personal and professional contact. If you plan on employing e-mail as a commercial tool, it is in your interest to put your e-mail address on every piece of your literature from business cards to postcards to billboards. By doing so, you are announcing your willingness to communicate with others electronically. But the covenant that you make when you advertise your e-mail address is that you understand and respect the protocols of e-mail usage, which include respecting your contacts' time, watching your spelling, grammar and typing errors, and responding within 48 hours or less. The more immediate your response, the better.

E-mail is an alternative means of communication - not a substitute for phoning, writing or face-to-face communication. The real estate industry is still a people-oriented business, so you must choose your method of communication to suit each situation. E-mail is arguably among the least sensitive means of transmission and not an appropriate choice for some types of messages, especially bad or inflammatory news. Position e-mail as a supplement to other forms of communication. Also, don't use e-mail to return a phone call. If you were called, your party is expecting a personal call back. If you were e-mailed, your party is probably looking for a response via the same communication tool.

E-mail is a customer service tool. When you are dealing with clients, make a note on how they prefer to be contacted. If e-mail is an option, find out how often your contact checks his or her e-mail and make a note of it. be prepared to check your e-mail as frequently as you do your voice mail. If you have a Web site, make sure your e-mail address is available in two forms - as a hot link and clearly written out. Your contact may want to add your e-mail to an address book without contacting you immediately.

Make your information request form easy to use. Make it easy for people to contact you via e-mail when they visit your site. Be careful about qualifying your contacts too much with too many questions before they are allowed to e-mail you. If they are interested in buying or selling a home they will say so, but often, a contact will have some other kind of business to transact with you besides buying or selling a home. Your contact could easily be an agent trying to get in touch with you about a listing or to give you a referral from another state. In that case a question form with queries such as "Are You Buying or Selling a Home?" and "What price home are your seeking? are annoying and frustrating.

Make your e-mail address professional and easy to remember. The early boomtown days of the Internet are over and it is slowly organizing itself into a respectable community. Gone also are cutesy or renegade types of handles, which do nothing for your image as a businessperson. Not to say you can't have some fun, but do you really want to be known to clients as HairyDog, SweetSister or Upchuck? You want an e-mail address that makes sense and is easy to remember. For that reason alone, it may be worth it to you to have your own domain name with your name or your company's name. One Houston Realtor, Dave Lockwood, has made it easy. Although we have never met and I haven't talked to Dave but once or twice, I can easily recall his e-mail address without looking it up. It's dave@davelockwood.com.

How could you forget?

Published: July 10, 1998

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