Biggest Email Mistake Realtors Make

Do you recognize this?

Incredimail Message Footer

It’s Tuesday and I’ve just finished reading through my morning emails where I saw at least 3 of these – it’s the hallmark footer included in every email message sent from free email client, Incredimail. There are lots of free email tools like this to use, but believe me, they come at a huge cost. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Emails sent from Incredimail/Hotmail/YahooMail are often considered spam

That little image in the footer of your message might seem innocuous, but many email servers automatically flag it as spam. Not only that, emails sent from Incredimail are dramatically larger in size because they need to include that image as part of the message.

Sending from Hotmail or YahooMail are not much better – remember that at the bottom of each message you send from those mail clients there’s a plug for each service.

How much does it cost you if you lose 1 lead/year because an email gets blocked by a spam filter?

2. Emails sent from free services show customers you’re not serious about your business

Well, not exactly, but imagine getting an email from Telus or Verizon with those little smiley faces at the bottom? What would you think? Personally I’d think that the company is completely unprofessional. People spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on real estate are going to think the same thing.

If you’re using these services, I bet you’re losing at least $5k in commissions each and every year.

So what should you do?

Simple. There are two fantastic, free tools you can use that won’t damage your ability to do business:

1. GMail

Gmail is a great way to keep track of correspondence with customers, as well as administer your email from anywhere. You can also combine it with Google Calendar and move over to an entirely web-based email/calendar system.

2. Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird is free and installs on your computer (Mac and PC) just like Outlook. You can also install a calendar into  Thunderbird by downloading Mozilla Lightning. All employees at RealPageMaker use this setup, and we highly recommend it if you want to keep your email on your personal computer.

Hopefully I’ve seen my last email from a Realtor using Incredimail…