What used to be "nice" services in our industry such as automated emailing of listings, has quickly become standard practice. Consumers have voiced their wanting of this type of convenient and easy notification service when shopping for a property. As most know, you can't send this type of information driectly from your own computer and most of us don't have our own personal servers (well, maybe some of those gamers out there that are Realtors by day and Halo'ers by night). But are your customers getting their requests? Not always.
Here's the issue. Since these automated listings are being sent from the MLS company's servers (most often) and set to show that they are coming from you (the obvious preferred method), ISP's are beginning to block these messages more and more regularly because they appear mismatched and along the lines of spam. So the fix should be easy by just having the emails go out with the MLS company's server address only and your contact information right? Wrong. The problem then becomes that these MLS servers are often sending out thousands of emails daily which again puts them on the spam list which can get them "blacklisted". How do you know if this is happening? One way is that the customer may tell you that they aren't receiving anything. Second is that you will most likely be receiving multiple email messages showing "Mail Undeliverable".
Is this a huge issue? Yes. "E-Listing" services is a very valuable service that consumers want. And it is a very valuable service for sellers to know that their property will be delivered to potential buyers who have a criteria matching their property. I understand all the issues regarding spam and measures that have had to be taken, but this would be along the lines of the U.S. Post Office only delivering coorespondence they deem ok to send. That if they perceive the item to be advertising, then they don't have an obligation to deliver it. Many may make the argument concerning virus protection, and I 100% agree that viruses are a very real issue especially because of growing dependency on computers and data. Precautionary meausures should always be taken such as always updated virus protection software, discretionary email opening and clicking on links, so forth and so on.
This is (and going to be a growing issue) in our industry if we can not provide services to consumers that they are asking for. Email is not a "nice" thing to have anymore. The "Pony Express" days of email being a novelty are over. It is almost as common as the front lawn mailbox with Americans today. It has great functionality by allowing enhanced levels of communication and greatly improved services. If you are experiencing this same issue please let me know what actions you've taken to correct this to reduce any disruption of service to your customers since this is becoming more and more prevalent recently and hasn't been an issue for me previously.
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