by Allen F. Hainge
Today's technology enables you to form relationships with more prospects than ever before, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do so. Sending spam is definitely the wrong way.
Spamming is simply the sending of unsolicited email, so the best way to avoid it is to never send unsolicited email. The answer is to collect email addresses in any way you can, then start a personalized email newsletter. Among the better ways used by top sales associates nationwide are:
From your Web site. This is the #1 method, and it presumes you have a good, deep Web site with a lot of request forms for "good stuff" that the consumer responds to. (If you'd like to see some of the highest moneymaking sites on the Web, look at my CyberStars'(tm) sites at
http://www.afhseminars.com/cyber.htm. Spend time studying them, and you'll see a number of ways in which these top sales associates attract business from their sites.)
Ask everyone you know for their email address. Put a little sign on your phone: "By the way, do you have email?"
If you want to get email addresses in a specific neighborhood, go door-to-door, have something of value to give them, and ask each person for his/her email address so that you can put them on your email newsletter list. That way, you've got their email addresses and you've also had a face-to-face contact with them.
Do a traditional "snail mailing" to your farm area offering something they can get only by emailing you.
Try something different with your Homes Magazine ads and any other printed advertising: offer something of value which can be obtained only via email. No phone number anywhere in the ad.
Does your voice mail message ask for the person's email address, as well as asking them to visit your Web site?
Put your email address on everything you send out in print form.
These and other ideas allow you to build up a large email list in a short time, and don't forget: the purpose of such a list is to send everyone on it a personalized email communication at least once a month, something they find of value.
Also See:
How Virtual Agents Use E-mail
E-mail Newsletters, Your E-Ticket To Greater Online Profits
How to Leverage Your Real Estate Update Newsletter
How To Super-Charge Your Operations Using The Net
Published: October 6, 1999
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