I was on a couple websites recently that I found interesting and wanted to subscribe to their RSS feed.

Unfortunately, I discovered that they didn’t have a subscription option.  If I wanted to get their information automatically, I’d have to view it in an RSS reader.

I do have an RSS reader set up.  I don’t like it.  I never look at it.

So, I decided that maybe I was just missing something.  At least, that’s what I told one of the support reps using their contact form.  Surely there was a subscription option, I just didn’t see it, right?

Ah, no.  There really was no way to subscribe.  But, the support rep did help me out by mentioning FeedMyInbox.com.

Maybe I’m the only person who’d never heard of it, but in case you’ve found yourself in this situation, you can schedule up to five websites using the Free version.   So, I did.   The feed comes right to my inbox.  Works out quite well.

This is a guest post contributed by Ben Fisher, a real estate agent
at Summit Sotheby’s International Realty in Park City, UT.  Ben’s service area
includes Park City Real Estate & Deer Valley Real Estate.

Keeping in Touch

If you’re a real estate agent like myself, you more than likely have a few different types of client lists that you stay in contact with.

Some of you do newsletters, foreclosure reports, or random property alerts for select leads who sign up for this information. In the past I have always done these things using either Gmail or Outlook and this worked just fine. Make a group, save them all together, and blast out an email when the time comes.

Well, I decided it was time to join the rest of you in 2012 and actually implement an email marketing service to gauge my results and gather further statistical information. I found out that a number of my emails were not getting to some of the recipients and some were going straight to the junk folder.

Enter MailChimp….

For some reason the first time I tried out this product, which was a year or two ago, I did not fully utilize its features to see how powerful it actually was.

This time, I went from being in the dark about my email lists, to being able to see every single statistic I could imagine. Whether I am looking to see how many people opened an email, how many times it had been forwarded, or even seeing which links were clicked on, the information was all there.

Now when I send out a property alert, I can see who opened that particular email, and how much interest it actually received. From this I can optimize future emails accordingly. Another feature I really enjoy is the email templates that are already geared towards the real estate industry. They have designs for Open Houses, Featured Properties, and templates for sending multiple listings to a client.

MailChimp has not only been a time saver for me, but it has increased my productivity and response rates significantly.

I highly recommend using this if you are in need of sending out emails to leads and clients on a regular basis in the real estate industry.

I must say I had to laugh at the post on Active Rain by Kristine Ginsberg, a New Jersey home stager.

But, her post did raise an interesting question.

And, it illustrated another annoying seller perspective.  I hope this seller didn’t also want to list the house for 2X the market value!

If you want a chuckle, or if you haven’t considered whether ghosts are material facts, take a run over to Kristine’s blog.

If you’re not a member of Active Rain, you may not be able to access the post(s) mentioned above.  So sign up for Active Rain now.  If you’re not a member of Active  Rain, you should be anyway.

Do you get tired of telemarketers?  I do.  And, I’m on the Do Not Call list, but I still get calls from charities, my bank (or telemarketers trying to sell me some bank service), and so forth.

I had to laugh when I read the blog post on Active Rain written by Jane Peters.  Jane talks about her experience with a caller from Active Rain.  The caller made the mistake of opening the conversation with “Hello, this is Stacy Smith, how are you?”

I don’t know about you, but whenever someone I don’t know says “how are you”, it is always a telemarketer.  I think in this case, Stacy probably felt like she knew Jane from her ActiveRain participation.  You’ll have to read the post to figure out what happened in that situation.

The reason I found the post funny, and an excellent reminder, was a recent experience I had on the telephone.

Another sure way to tell if a telemarketer is calling:  if it takes several seconds for someone to come on the line.  You know how that goes.  The computer dials the number and if someone answers, the call is transferred to a telemarketer.

That’s true, right?  Well, not always.  I have a client in an area where the telephone company moves a bit slowly.  The other day, I hung up on him twice before I realized what I was doing and called him back.  Luckily, it was someone I knew well and we had a good laugh over it.

If it had been a prospect?  Well, it wouldn’t have been a prospect after that!

So, OK, I need to rethink.  Maybe I’ll wait a few more seconds the next time there’s a delay on my phone.  And, maybe I won’t hang up when someone introduces themselves and asks how I’m doing.

As Jane said, it might be a pleasant surprise.