I spend a lot of time on real estate sites.
There is one thing that drives me bananas.
Is it…
- …a really awful agent photo from 20 years ago?
- …links that take you nowhere?
- …a tacky template?
Yes, all of these things.
However, the number one thing that drives me crazy is not being able to find your email address.
- Not your phone number.
- Not your Facebook page.
- Not your “contact me” form.
Just your email.
If I want to get a hold of you and I don’t know you – I’m not going to call.
Let me say that again – I am NOT going to call you.
Blame it on the fact that I am a Gen X-er. I hate calling people out of the blue. I’d rather poke myself in the eye!
I may tweet you, unless the last time your tweeted was in 2009.
I may or may not leave a message on your Facebook page.
If I want to reach you, and I’ve never met you – I want to send you a quick email.
I don’t want to fill out a form.
Why?
Sending someone a contact request on a form is like sending something into a black hole.
Who knows where the form goes to and who knows how long it could take before someone gets back to me.
Also, it is a bit off-putting that you wouldn’t put your email address out there – yet you are asking me for my name, phone number, email, etc.
I am willing to bet that if real estate agents stopped hiding their email address that they would start getting more leads off of their site.
In this age of transparency where people can find you just about anywhere at anytime, why in the world would you hide your email?
Many of you have the phone number in the upper-right hand corner of your site. I suggest right below that you list your email. Don’t want spammers to spam you? Then instead of katie@inman.com put katie (at) inman (dot) com.
Two Big Takeaways
- Your email should be on every page of your website. (Tweet This)
- You are losing business by not displaying your email. (Tweet This)
Does most of your business come from people you know?
95% of agents I talk to say “yes.”
Even MORE reason to not hide your email. If your past clients want to reach you quickly or refer a friend, then there is even more reason to prominently display your email on your site.
Can You Have Both?
Can you have a lead generation form and display your email address? Yes, absolutely. In fact, you can have a number of them throughout your site.
Now is the time to be creative.
Promote a drawing for a gift card or a dinner out.
Give away a free market report.
Enter to win a drawing for a free home inspection.
Get creative, but also stop hiding your email.
Five Examples of Agents Doing This Right
Jay Thompson - www.phoenixrealestateguy.com
Krisstina Wise – www.goodlifeteam.com
Janie Coffey – www.janiecoffey.com
Elizabeth Enea – www.elizabethenea.com
Nicole Beauchamp – www.nicolebeauchamp.com
One More Secret
Keep it simple. If you are going to have a form keep it to five fields or less. Don’t make it complicated and don’t ask for more than people are willing to give.
Give them a reason to give you their info on a contact form. (Tweet This)
So please, if you have a site you can edit yourself like a WordPress site – add in your email – make it blatantly obvious. If you don’t have a site you can edit, call (or email 
) your Webmaster and ask him/her to add your email to the upper right hand corner of your site!
Bonus Tip
Since you are going to start promoting your email address on your website, now is the time to get rid of the AOL account or Hotmail or Yahoo for your business email.
I have argued with agents for years on this point, but please listen and heed my advice!
What does an AOL or Yahoo or Hotmail address say to a potential consumer? It’s unprofessional. You wouldn’t expect your financial advisor or attorney to have an AOL email, right?
I’d love your feedback on this post. Leave me a comment below and if this resonates with you, please share or “like” it!
November 7, 2011 at 10:54 am
Hi Katie,
Great summary of the point – and I like the gallery that you’ve assembled. The number-one argument that I’ve heard from folks who don’t want to put their email address on their site is that it results in increased spam (because now the spammers can just “scrape” that address off the webpage).
Wondering if you have some ideas for how to handle that concern?
November 7, 2011 at 2:53 pm
Dave – my email is ALL over the internet, not encrypted, and I get very little spam in my actual inbox. I use Gmail for an email client and it does a very good job filtering spam so I never see it.
There are was to encrypt an email address so it can be scrapped, but honestly having an email client with a good spam filter takes care of the vast majority of email spam issues.
Personally, I’d rather deal with the occasional spam than miss a contact with a potential client…
November 7, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Thank you Dave – I think the easiest thing is to not put your entire email but to put name (at) email (dot) com – but at the end of the day I would personally rather deal with spammers (and mark them as spam in my inbox) then miss out on a lead. Just my 2 cents. Thanks for commenting!
Katie
November 7, 2011 at 10:54 am
Great post Katie – gosh I detest, “form only” access for email. The big thing for me also is a “selectable / copy and pastable” email – or one I can click. It drives me batty when I have to bust out my bionic eyes to transcribe an email in a photo on a website and/or in an e-signature attachment. ~ Thanks for helping the “just say no to yahoo and aol” agent email fight!
November 7, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Hi Heather!
Thanks for commenting! I agree, the clickable email is great too. And thank you for being onboard my “just say no” campaign! Spread the word!
Katie
November 7, 2011 at 11:56 am
Could NOT agree MORE!!! (Tweet this! bahaha) Seriously …WHY would you make it difficult for someone to reach you. Give them every opportunity to connect in the manner that the consumer is comfortable! Brilliant Katie!!
November 7, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Thank you Teri!! I completely agree. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and for tweeting/sharing it out!
Katie
November 7, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Great post!
I am not in the real estate industry but I have experienced frustration with the increasing lack of an email address(or any contact info at all) shown on business websites these days. A contact form is not a substitute for giving clients information on how to contact you!
November 7, 2011 at 4:21 pm
Thank you Daniel. It’s great to see an “outside” perspective! I agree, a contact form is not a substitute! In a perfect world you can have both – multiple ways people can contact you via a form, direct email, social media, phone, etc. Thanks for stopping by InmanNext and for commenting!
Katie
November 7, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Just once I hope you can catch Jay Thompson doing something wrong!
November 7, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Talk to my wife Doug. I’m wrong more often than not…
November 7, 2011 at 2:11 pm
The easier you can make it for potential customers to contact you, the easier it is for potential customers to contact you… lol
This seems like such an obvious thing to make easy to find, but I have come across A LOT sites that hide this valuable information.
November 7, 2011 at 4:19 pm
That bears repeating Chris: “The easier you can make it for potential customers to contact you, the easier it is for potential customers to contact you” – I could not agree more! Thanks for taking the time to comment. It’s great to see you on here – I know you were a longtime reader of FOREM, and really appreciate your support!
Katie
P.S. Will we see you in NYC this Jan. for Connect?? Hoping so!
November 7, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Love this post … 100% in agreement. I recently wanted to send a referral to an agent – could find their web site but had to fill out a form to email them (and … to date, still have not rec’d a response). Obviously, I moved on to someone else!
November 7, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Thank you Kathie – your comment is a prime example of what happens when you make it difficult for people to find your email information. I am sure this happens all the time. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Katie
November 7, 2011 at 2:44 pm
Katie — You are right on here! Excellent post and sound advice for all!
November 7, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Thanks Krisstina – I really appreciate that. Keep up the great work!
November 7, 2011 at 2:57 pm
SImple, yet solid advice Katie. I see a *remarkable* number of agent sites where I can’t easily find ANY contact info — no name, number, email address. I also see sites where it takes way too long to even figure out what part of the country the agent sells in.
One of the primary purposes of a real estate is to get people to contact you. You *have* to make that easy to do…
November 7, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Thanks Jay – much appreciated. This is one of those SO simple things that it literally drives me crazy to have to even talk about it! LOL
And yes, the country and city/state is huge. When you say “Tri-State” or “South Bay” that means NOTHING to me if I don’t know what area of the country you are in.
Thanks for continuing to raise the bar!
Katie
November 7, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Great post! I firmly believe every agent out there should be asking themselves: “how do I make this easier for my clients?” You should ask yourself that questions before every decision you make.
November 7, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Dave -
I love that and I completely agree. I think sometimes we get caught up in our own “world” that we forget our our clients and consumers view our site. Thanks for the comment!
Katie
November 7, 2011 at 3:22 pm
We hear ya, Katie. When we built Mountain of Agents, one of our main objectives was to provide consumers with a quick way to contact an agent in their area: via email, phone, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. We wanted it to be super easy for home buyers/sellers to get in touch with an agent in our directory at any time without jumping through hoops.
November 7, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Thank you Michael – that is exactly my point. Why make people jump through hoops. Thanks for commenting!
Katie
November 8, 2011 at 10:25 am
I agree with all your comments. However, what are some of the business email options I should be choosing from as opposed to using “Yahoo” for business (as I have for the past 27 years). I always appreciate your advice…Thank you!
November 8, 2011 at 10:48 am
Hello. I do love your post. However there are some key issues you do not cover and I’m not sure if you are aware of certain Internet laws regarding email address and ip addresses. Some websites are set up with the “form” because even though you may contact us off our website sites via our email, if we want to make you part of our email list, we can’t do so without your agreement. Alot of Realtors have gone to companies such as Constent Contact or Simply Cast for marketing mailing and both companies require you to “prove” your relationship with that email address. Hence “the form”!!! So it’s not as cut and dry as you would like it to be in this world of “Laws” today. Where everyone wants the right to contact whoever they want to when they need or want something but forbid the roles be reversed and anyone contact them providing them a service or offering a service. If anyone can remember the “Don Henlly” (Do Not Call Registery” …Well now we have the “Black List” (ip address ) to prevent you from emailing. SPAM!!! If you get classified as a spammer, you are fined $25,000 for each occurrance. So as frustrating as the “form” may be for some, it is for the protection of others. We as consumers honestly did this to ourselves. If we want the right to email someone at whim off their website, then we should be able to email them off a whim from a list we buy.
November 8, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Natalie – with all due respect, I have little to no desire to add everyone that contacts me to a mailing list. And I would hazard a guess that many people that complete a contact form have no idea they are agreeing to be added to a mailing list. I’d guess again that MANY who fill out a contact form don’t want to be added to a list, they just want and answer or some help.
I have seen a LOT of website contact forms in my day and *very* few disclose that by completing one, you are agreeing to be added to a mailing list.
And you probably don’t want to get me started on using purchased email address lists for prospecting.
November 9, 2011 at 7:42 am
Great post, I completely agree, what about the agents that use multiple email addresses. You will start a transaction using their business email, then in the middle of it they start emailing you from their hotmail account. Your email should be an extention of your name and company, if your name is John Smith but your email is Dreamcatcher@hotmail.com, how professional is that, plus as an agent it is hard to remember. Anyway, great post.
November 9, 2011 at 10:44 am
Great post Katie. Any information on contact rates between custom forms or having your email on the webpage? I guess both would be good so customers have a a couple options.
November 9, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Great post and this is definitely something our company has noticed. In our processes we set up a large # of agent accounts that sometimes come to us through a videographer without an email address. It has been surprising how hard it is to locate many of those agents email addresses.
I personally dislike web based forms in industries where I expect to communicate with a specific person. If your website sells me on you or your team then I want to know that I am communicating directly with you or a member of your team that I see pictured on your site….not tossed into a lead routing system.
November 9, 2011 at 11:28 pm
Excellent post! We list all our agents contact info and give them all the options of contacting us.
November 12, 2011 at 6:15 am
Great post, I learn so much from InmanNext! I immediately contacted my webmaster and had my email address added to my header. Thanks for the tip!
November 12, 2011 at 6:19 am
Great information. Will be sharing with our office so everyone can take a look at their websites and update where needed.
November 12, 2011 at 6:30 am
This is one of my great frustrations. I have not read all the comments but I would also add that the hidden email /form conundrum is also a spam magnet. I get a ton of spam through my contact forms.
I dislike trying to email a colleague and feeling that I am just going to be “lead” because I am forced to fill in a form.
November 13, 2011 at 9:20 am
I think you make a good point there, J. Phillip. The contact form makes the person feel like a lead/commodity–like they are setting a process in motion that they may not be ready for. Maybe they are just looking for info on a listing or are in the early stages of buying and aren’t ready for the full court press yet. Email feels lower impact, like a relationship between two humans rather than entry into a whole system.
November 13, 2011 at 11:55 am
Contact forms have a 100% delivery rate.
Many ISP’s are very aggressive with spam filtering. If the sender happens to belong to one of those ISP’s that are temporarily on a black hole list, and you have an aggressive ISP you’ll never get that request. I can’t begin to tell you how many wasted hours I’ve spent with clients explaining and proving this one point.
Your point is worth considering, however I personally recommend to err on the side of getting the request. Certainly not every one of our clients take this recommendation.
November 23, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Katie, as someone who has been on thousands of websites, I must tell you that you are 100% right on every point. Usability and convenience are the number one issues for website success and you’ve hit the nail on the head.
November 26, 2011 at 4:35 am
Katie I could not agree with you more about giving me the address. Why do people worry so much about spam. I have a delete button.
Maybe it is the boomer in me but a phone number will work for me . Often that is just as hard to find as an email address.
What is wrong with my Yahoo email? It works fine I have had it for ten years and if I change servers or employers, I will still have it.
January 9, 2012 at 8:42 am
Great examples! Based on your recommendations, I just went ahead and updated our website’s contact page