Making Your Auto Responder Your Assistant While You’re Away Part 2

December 25, 2009

What if a listing prospect was contacting you and they saw this message?  If I were them, I’d be thinking, “this person surely can take a few minutes every 2 days to return voice mails or emails while on vacation.  This is bad service, and I don’t like their attitude.  I’m not going to consider working with them any longer”.

When you’re on vacation or otherwise indisposed, unless you’re very sick in the hospital or in the deepest, darkest jungles of Africa, you can return a call.  You should have your auto responder say that you’re on vacation but you do check emails and voice mails at least once every 24 hours and will respond within that time frame.  If you’re presently in an area (or will be) where cell phones (and therefore Blackberrys) don’t work, let people know this and when you expect to have access again in your auto responder message.  You could also ask the person sending the email to email you again and state the purpose of their email and their expectations of you if they haven’t done so already.  You could ask them to use specific words in the subject line of the subsequent email to indicate who they are.  For instance, they could use the following keyword phrases in the subject line:

“CURRENT SELLER” – a current seller from one of your listings
“CURRENT BUYER” – buyer interested in one of your current listings
“REFERRAL SELLER” – someone who’s been referred to you who’s interested in selling their home
“REFERRAL BUYER” – someone who’s been referred to you who’s interested in one of your listings
“PAST SELLER” – someone you’ve worked with in the past who’s interested in having you list their home
“PAST BUYER” – someone you’ve worked with in the past who’s interested in having you list their home
“FUTURE SELLER” – someone interested in selling their home in the near future who wants to get added to your mailing list
“FUTURE BUYER” – someone interested in buying a home in the near future who wants to get added to your mailing list
“ARTICLE COMMENT” – someone who has read something on your website and is commenting on it

Obviously the first 6 of the above categories would warrant a personal response within 24 hours.  With the Outlook wizard, you could have individual folders setup for each of these subject lines.  When an email comes in from a PAST SELLER, it automatically gets routed into your Past Seller Emails folder.

Filed under: Using Email For Attracting Buyers/Sellers

Tags: email inquiries, email newsletter, email prospects, email subject line, email training tips, prospect, prospecting, qualifying, real estate email newsletter, real estate internet marketing tips