Real Estate Agent Email Marketing Gone Wrong
I’m as big a fan of email communications as the next guy, but emails must be sent with my permission. Or I have to know the person emailing me. Or heard their name from someone at least. Or be able to find out how I know them online. Or they have a service/product that I’m LOOKING for.
The other day, I received the following email in my inbox that satisfied none of those filters with the title Opt-In for emails from CENTURY 21 Premier Group:
Your Email address, [removed] has been added into the email address book of:
Kari Olson
CENTURY 21 Premier Group
1660 S. Highway 100, Suite #578
St. Louis Park MN 55416-1566
651-235-1181Periodically you’ll receive important or informational email messages from us – in response to your requests of us and our relationship. These email messages are written expressly for you. We do not rent, sell, or buy our client’s email addresses, and your email address will not be used to sell you unrelated products or services.
In order to ensure receipt of the email messages we send you, please browse to the address below to approve your email address inclusion in our client address book:
http://www.salesaspects.com/public/mailings.aspx?optin=1&id=[idnumberremoved]
If you do not wish to receive email from us, please browse to the address below:
http://www.salesaspects.com/public/mailings.aspx?optout=1&id=[idnumberremoved]
Thank you for taking the time to verify your wish to be contacted. If you have any questions about this email, its origin or the nature of the email you’ll receive, feel free to reply to this email or call at the number above.
E-mail ID: 483d37e5-dad7-456b-a66a-62c8604e6b05
Where do I even start on this? This is about as impersonal as you get with email — not even a “Dear [Insert Name]” welcome for me. NOW, I’m not feeling the love 🙁
The following thoughts raced across my mind as I scrambled to figure out the root cause for receiving the email:
- Who is Kari Olson?
- I do NOT live in Minnesota
- I do not remember registering, or even searching, on a Minnesota real estate website
- I don’t remember being on Century 21 corporate site recently either
- Which website did I register on recently that might have sold my contact info?
- What is Salesaspects.com?
- How the hell did Kari get my email address?
Now, I’m sure Kari is a great lady and maybe even an awesome real estate agent, but, I’m sorry, this is not how to go about email marketing. Not even in the slightest. It’s either a case where she purchased an email list from a 3rd party (and somehow I got on that list) and started an automated campaign. Or it’s a case where Century 21 (either her broker or corporate) purchased a list FOR their agents in an effort to drive more leads and put that list on some sort of automated campaign on behalf of their agents. Or I guess she could have randomly found my email address on the web (it’s on the sidebar of my personal blog) and added it to her address book, but that’s highly unlikely.
Not sure which of those three things happened — but, regardless, it’s still a lesson on how not to build a list. I suspect only if someone knows Kari really really well AND is in the market to buy or sell a home in the next 12 months would they opt-in after receiving the email above. All of a sudden, the pool of potential signups just shrunk to near zero. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this email didn’t produce any opt-ins whatsoever.
The sad thing?
She likely has no idea this conversation is taking place. I Googled her name and can’t find much of anything other than a directory listing on a Century21 site . No Zillow profile. No Twitter. No agent website.
Lesson: Don’t put a blogger on an automated email campaign without knowing them.
Geordie Romer
Posted at 17:20h, 16 FebruaryMaybe there should be a follow up post about reputation management. I wonder if she has Google alerts set up for her name. I guess we’ll find out soon.
drewmeyers
Posted at 17:20h, 16 FebruaryYea, I would guess not. Just a hunch.
cbass
Posted at 17:27h, 16 Februaryu know, u might want to redact the opt in/out tracking urls in the post, they are specific to ur email, people can f with you if they wanted
drewmeyers
Posted at 17:29h, 16 Februarythanks cbass. My email is kinda already out there in the public domain, but
I just removed them nonetheless.
Jim Duncan
Posted at 18:14h, 16 February“Lesson: Don’t put a (prominent) blogger on an automated email campaign without knowing them.”
An enterprising person would contact this person’s broker and sell them “Reputation Management” tools (Google alerts) for $19.95/month. 🙂
drewmeyers
Posted at 18:19h, 16 FebruaryYea, you’re probably right. Wonder how long until she or her broker gets a call from a reputation management consulting company? I give it 48 hours.
Anthony
Posted at 19:51h, 16 FebruaryThat’s the thing about email marketing, it’s all about the relationship more than anything. If you don’t get that right then it’s really just all wrong.
Christab
Posted at 20:45h, 16 FebruaryWow too funny!! Why in the world would anyone pay for email addresses? As it is people that know me (my SOI) don’t always open the newsletters I send. Thanks for sharing!! I got a good laugh = )
N-Touch
Posted at 01:19h, 18 FebruaryI agree, this is an example of how not to handle your email marketing. I can not believe that a broker would allow this to go on in their office. I work with a few realtors and I forwarded this to them, and a they have gotten a few laughs. Thanks for the info.
Ereic
Posted at 16:39h, 24 FebruaryThis is what happens when the market is sour.
Eric
Posted at 16:40h, 24 FebruaryThis is what happens when the market is sour. I see lots of this coming through in my inbox and spam.
Eric
Posted at 16:41h, 24 FebruaryThis is pretty much par for the course when the market is sour.
Email Marketing Services
Posted at 18:43h, 03 MarchList building is probably the most important aspect email marketing if you want to use best practices. Most email marketing services and email marketing solutions have tools that allow you and teach you how to gain permission based lists.