In my Four Seasons Virtual Assistance incarnation I am often asked by real estate agents to send out advertising email to their clients or to other real estate agents.

Four Seasons Real Estate is doing a real estate auction in May. This isn't a foreclosure auction, but the sale of homes and lots that the owners have agreed to put up at auction. California realtors have been doing this for years, but this will be the first time in Northwest Indiana. Buyers who want to participate in the auction have to pre-register and submit loan pre-approvals. The owners will have designated a minimum price that they will accept; but it isn't disclosed to the buyers. If the home doesn't sell, there is a small "no sale" fee to the seller to cover the cost of the auctioneer.

I bring this up because the broker of Four Seasons Real Estate wanted to send an announcement to all the real estate agents in Northwest Indiana to inform them of the sale because a regular commission will be paid to buyers' agents who bring their clients to the auction. There are approximately 2240 agents in Northwest Indiana. Printing and postage would be astronomical - not to mention the time needed to fold, stuff and stamp the envelopes.

Email seemed like the way to go. The two options I first came up with were Constant Contact and Campaign Monitor. These are websites where you can create an email flyer, upload your list of prospects, and send out the flyer as email.

Constant Contact requires that you register and pay a monthly fee. The fee is determined by how many emails you send per month. My client would have had to pay about $30.00 per month for the 2240 names. He could have registered, used it one month, and then quit.

Campaign Monitor charges only when you send out an email campaign, and the cost is, again, determined by how many you send out. The cost is $5.00 plus one cent per name, so this would have been $27.40.

One problem is that both ask that you only use email addresses you have obtained from people who agree to let you send them email, or "opt in." Otherwise, the email is SPAM. With Constant Contact, if you check off the boxes solemnly swearing that you have gotten permission from everyone, they take your word for it. Campaign Monitor actually looks at the list and has to approve it - and they might think that 2240 people might not all have given their permission.

Number two, my client didn't have the names and email addresses in an immediately usable form. It would have taken at least eight hours to make the list downloadable to one of the email services.

Sunday while I was surfing around on Active Rain, I noticed an ad for company a company called EmailAgentFlyers. Like the other two companies, they offer to send eflyers to real estate agents. Unlike the others, they already have the names and email addresses of most of the real estate agents in the country. They have templates you can use to make up a flyer or you can download a pdf of your own.

In less than 15 minutes I sent eflyers to 2240 real estate agents in Northwest Indiana for $17.95. Since I am an affiliate member of the Greater Northwest Indiana Association of Realtors, I received the email and I was very happy with the way it turned out. One possible drawback, depending on the client - EmailAgentFlyers does put their ad at the bottom of the flyer.

For virtual tour providers (like Four Seasons Virtual Tours) and virtual assistants, the application to our business is obvious. Sending out periodical flyers to and for real estate agents just got a whole lot easier!

And best of all - you can attach a virtual tour to the flyers!