What’s Wrong With Retailers: The Real Estate Edition
In my latest segment of What’s Wrong With Retailers (WWWR) I decided to tackle a different kind of retailer, the real estate retailer. Specifically I want to provide a tip to the real estate agents and companies of the world. One of the worst things you can do for your business and your commission is to restrict potential customers from viewing your listings. Many real estate agents keep the listings behind a email required form. This practice does nothing to assist your sales.
If you have a form one of several things happens.
- The individual simply leaves the site rather than be pestered with your spam.
- The individual enters someone else’s email address to get to your listings.
- Defying logic, an individual enters their email address and is subsequently spammed by you and not doing business with you.
Putting your items for sale behind any kind of form does nothing to aid your business. If you have quality homes, in prime locations people interested in your “product” will get in touch with you, provided you have a page of contact info.
One final not about what’s wrong with real estate agents and companies is a trend in not identifying where houses are located. This appears to be less of an issue with many realtors however when you do run into this problem it is enough to make you leave the site.
As I have a rather common email address at gmail I receive loads of “spam” from retail agents who keep their listing behind spam thus requiring frustrated users to enter my email address to avoid divulging their own. I plan on posting the emails I receive from these realtors in the comments as well as sending them an email with this post. I encourage you to do the same.
Stay tuned for more WWWR segments coming soon. Next up I will cover a problem with online retailers which is a personal pet peeve.
Josh Smith is a blogger, database manager and adjunct professor of business and technology. 
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