Agents Spamming Each Other

Thank goodness for VCRs/Tivo/etc.!  Why?  …because I rarely have to waste my time watching commercials anymore.  No one pays me to watch commercials and no one pays me to open and read spam e-mail, so what makes real estate agents believe I would do anything other than delete their spam e-flyers?

This is a trend that started a few years ago and has grown exponentially since the South Florida real estate market reversed itself and turned into a strong buyer’s market.  For some reason, real estate agents throughout Florida seem to think that every agent with an e-mail address wants to receive an e-flyer from them touting their listings.  Of course, the number of companies offering this spamming service has also grown as they all jumped on the bandwagon and decided they, too, wanted to reach into Florida real estate agent’s pockets for a piece of the action.  Few, if any, of these e-flyer companies provide a true unsubscribe option which makes receiving these e-flyers all the more irritating.

Fact is, any Realtor who values their time is not going to waste their time by opening spam e-mail.   Professional real estate agents go directly to the source… the MLS.  Savvy real estate agents who know how to properly market their listings take full advantage of all the South Florida MLS offers them.  Nowadays, we can not only upload up to 16 photos of a property, we can also include a link to a virtual tour, tweak the remarks section of a listing, and upload various documents and addendums, including a floor plan to the listing. 

I, for one, delete every listing e-flyer I receive… and I receive dozens of them every day in my e-mail inbox.  In fact, in an effort to reduce the amount of time I waste deleting these e-flyers manually, I ocassionally tweak my e-mail program message rules to automatically move these e-mails with certain names, companies or words in the from/to/subject lines to a special spam folder I have.  If I have time, I’ll take a look at what got dumped in the folder to see if any “good” e-mail got there by accident (so far, none has), otherwise, the contents of the folder gets deleted without opening a single one. 

I simply don’t have the time to look at each one and most don’t even apply to any of the customers I happen to be working with at the time and oftentimes they are located in areas outside of South Florida.  Just look at some of the subject lines of recent e-flyers, and you’ll understand why they are of no use to me:

• North Naples Golf Condo
• Fully Rented and Renovated Apt. Complex
• Cape Coral Waterfront Home
• Sanibel Harbour (this is in Ft. Myers)
• 3 Jacksonville Properties

I also get e-flyers for local listings that attempt to inform me of changes… changes that I can easily and readily find out about on the MLS without even lifting a finger because I’ve already programmed the MLS to notify me by e-mail of any properties that fall within my customer’s criteria.

• Davie New Home Price Reduced
• Cooper City – Reduced for  Quick Sale!
• Coral Ridge Townhome Price Reduced
• Weston 3/2 Back on Market!

If you are considering hiring a real estate agent, there are many more effective ways to market your home than via e-flyers, so please do not hire one because they claim this method is valuable and/or can do anything other than annoy their fellow agents.

Bottom line: we already get enough spam from “long-lost” relatives in Africa and bank/credit card/ebay/paypal pretend-to-be’s… we don’t need no stinkin’ spam from our colleagues!

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