Wow, this discussion has been going on for over a year! Way to keep it rolling! I do send electronic flyers out to agents and clients in my local community in Auburn, CA and surrounding areas. Those who receive them seem to be receptive, and those who don't opt out (they are sent through Top Producer which has an opt out feature.) Most of the responses I receive is from agents who want to know how I create the e-flyers, which I gladly share. The key for those of you who aren't familiar is to insert the flyer in the body of the email as you would a photo, in jpeg format. If you need more information on how to do that, let me know.

Hi Frank,

They are forwarded to other local area KW offices through my office manager (we have an agreement with these offices) and to my personal database. I understand what you mean about the spam flyers...pretty ridiculous to get emails about opportunities in other states. We have enough inventory to worry about selling in our own areas!

I have to agree with Matthew Rathbun and Frank.  If I want information on your listing I expect to find it in MLS, not on an emailed flyer.  I do not mind agents sending me notices about Broker's Opens, but I could care less about your Open Houses and your Bonuses.  The information should be in MLS.  As a consumer I have notified several Realtors in my area to take me off their lists, because I do what they do.  They have complied and been very gracious about it.  All in all, I would appreciate it if you would stop Spamming me to death.  I shouldn't have to hire an assistant to weed thru all of the crap.  I should be hiring an assistant to help me run my business.  I don't consider your Spam my business. 

Hey Frank,

I'ld like to know if your passion for this subject can somehow be turned arround to something more positive.  The Andy Griffith show was one of my favorites as a child and I can still visualize Barney Fife fighting "fire with fire".  We all know Andy was the smart one - right?

Yes it would be out of this world to assume that a flyer you recieve from across the nation would suddenly find itself in your hands and be a perfect match for one of your clients or personal friends.  But what if you did this - what if you opted-in to flyers from Counties where most of your population relocates too?  (NAR has these statistics) What if you asked permission from the sender of a flyer  for you to forward it to your customer base (with their logo and your contact info in large bold letters) with verbage like:

Attached is a brochure I received from a fellow Realtor® from Charlotte.  When you get a chance please use your networking power to forward it to your sphere of influence.  As Mr. Karinthy would surmise - you are less than six degrees of separation from the right buyer for this opportunity.

As you know I network with Realtors® from coast to coast for consideration on buyer and seller referrals.  Be sure to let me know of anyone who is relocating; I will make sure they are serviced by a licensed professional Realtor® in their choice of communities.

It will not get any farther than that because there is no further motivation for your contacts to push it forward.  But you have put your name in front of them and opened yourself up to an opportunity for a referral for anyone across the nation.  How often do you remind your clients that your success is not based on comissions - it is based on referrals.

You don't have to forward everything but you have turned a pet peeve into an opportunity.

As for the bulk of the problem and non-flyer e-mail - most of those do have the choice of opting-out.  Although I have heard that "opting-out"makes it worse because now you have validated your e-mail.  I have never opted-out (just auto filter and bulk delete) and yet I have seen a very sharp decline in the past six months - especially e-flyers.

If that is a sign of the times than I look forward to getting more very soon.

 

I have talked to the San Diego Association of Realtors on several occasions about their members' email addresses (I am a long time member too) and asked five different ways to one if they sell the list. They do not. But there is a woman in San Marcos (north San Diego County) who is a contact of my title rep at Chicago Title. This woman does these wonderful HTML flyers out of her house and then emails them to every agent in the county for you! For like $20 but that's not the point...where does she get the list? I think from SDAR somehow but am not sure. It's a mind bender.  Where the list comes from is the point. Of course she won't say and Chicago Title doesn't have every agent's email in town. We have 19,200+/- agents in San Diego County.  Since she's also a busy mom, it takes her two weeks to do one flyer.  Oh my!  She sends it to look like it's from you and the returns come directly to your box and people can hit reply and it goes to you. Freaking cool but mysterious.

But as to the main topic, I actually like getting the flyers a whole lot because it tells me who the great agents are. They're willing to go above and beyond the MLS and actually spend money (horrors!) to get you to possibly maybe go to their property.  All the services have easy opt out buttons. All told, I get about 15 a week.

If I could buy the list, believe me I would.  Who wouldn't want the email address of every colleague in town?

I use EmailFlyerAds.com and like it pretty well. 

I get flyers from agents.  I have them all filtered into a "Real Estate Ads" folder.  (Takes a while to get them ALL set up to filter, and a new one pops up periodically, but I do the best I can.) 

I can easily get 200 of these things in a day or so (easy to tell because of how many "unread" ones show up in that period of time). How many do you think I have time to actually read?  Many of them are for properties several states away, too, by the way.

For the people upthread who said that you can just opt out, opt out is spam.  Spam is unsolicited commercial email.  The only way for you to solicit commercial email is to do business with the company (just like the Do Not Call list) or to opt in BEFORE they send you anything.

Opt out is spam, pure and simple.  

 

Yes, spam is often a curse.  A pain in my gazoo.  But, I see a bit of a difference between true, irritating spam versus "unsolicited" junk email - technical definitions aside.   Real spam is always useless.  It's that same old common stuff that arrives in my inbox every day - cialis, viagra, penis enlargement, weight loss, lower rates, and the most recent irritant - consolidating debt.  It all has the EXACT same format and wording, from a ridiculous email address, a totally de-motivating subject line,  and an equally stupid link that I'm supposed to click.  I would never consider clicking on it.  Thank goodness for the preview pane.

But over the years, I have received a ton of useful, intelligently written, unsolicited "junk" email and I have been grateful I opened it.  I am okay with junk email that has helpful, interesting content and hasn't been sent to the masses.  Otherwise I just lump the spam together, hit the delete key and it vanishes.

As someone mentioned above, never opt out to true spam or block the email address of a spammer.  This just relays back to the spammer that your address is live and well and you might receive even more spam.  Just delete it.  But do real spammers ever have an opt-out option in their email?  I don't think so.  A moot point I guess. 

Frank, I don't know what you meant by that comment about ME sending spam about mortgage rates, but I will respond just in case.  My remarks were clear.  I said I have learned something from READING junk mail.

Why you would write a comment in this blog about me sending spam - or making such an implication, I do not know.   If meant as a joke, not funny at all.

I am going to remain professional and not send back a snide, insulting remark.

Life is too short to attack strangers in a blog.

For goodness sakes, lighten up Frank.

I love hearing my colleagues rationalize why THEIR spam is not spam. I filter it all, so I don't waste much time dealing with it.  I do wonder where realtors and even FSBOs get all those email addresses if they are not getting them through the local associations.

Interesting that AR edited your post to protect an advertiser.