Are you building a list?

Here's an area where many businesses let themselves down BIG TIME.  They don't capture email addresses.

Email addresses are priceless!  Why?

Firstly, if you're used to having a decent level of traffic from the search engines and one day they change their algorithm (as often happens) you can all of a sudden lose it all overnight, through no fault of your own.   If you have a database of email addresses this can save you as you can mail them to drive traffic back to your site.

Secondly, not everyone buys a property straight out.  Most people will check out various websites about the area, check out properties for sale on different sites, etc.  If you can capture that traffic in terms of their email addresses then you've got one up on your competition.

Thridly, people LOVE free information. If you send out quality information on a regular basis to your email subscribers then they'll appreciate your efforts to keep them informed and it's going to help you generate sales which may happen further down the line.  Give first!  It's known as information marketing.

So what should you email people about?

If they've subscribed to your list then they'll probably have an interest in the surrounding area.  Don't send send people lists of latest properties.  Send them "what's on" information.  Review local restaurants.  Send articles about local areas of interests.  There's just so much to do here.  Make them get to know who your are, start building that relationship up from the moment they find your site.

EVERY website I have or work on has a facility to capture emails and then send out periodic newsletters, at least once every two weeks, although weekly is better.

If tomorrow Google decides to chuck all my sites out I don't really care.  I have thousands of newsletter subscribers that I can work on to whom I've been sending quality information on a weekly basis.

If you're not doing this yet then DO IT NOW!  I use a facility such as www.aweber.com which is excellent.  It allows you to create the forms which you then place on your website and you can set up an autoresponder and use it to send your newsletters too.

I'm going to be writing more about this topic soon because understanding how to work an autoresponder is key here.  But it's a big topic so this is just the first part.

Hope you find this useful.