Dear real estate agent,
I was reading your blog and wanted to send you a personal note. I couldn’t find your email address, though. I followed the link to your Web site and your email wasn’t there, either. Then, I Googled you.
No dice.
As a last-ditch effort, I tracked down your broker’s Web site and clicked 12 times to find your agent profile. I hoped your email address would be published. It wasn’t.
I eventually picked up the phone to call you. I asked your assistant for your email address.
Next time, don’t make me jump through hoops to do business with you.
Sincerely,
The guy who was reading your blog
Tim Theiss says:
I have had similar experiences with a few web sites in general and I am baffled by a “marketing” vehicle that does not have a clear path of communication. I mean,really! Is the content so much more important than gaining direct communication with the inquiring public (who may have disposable income)?
May 5, 2008 — 10:25 am
Dan Green says:
There was an old story about UPS in the 1980s. It wasn’t gaining market share as fast as expected and they brought in a consulting firm.
Millions of dollars later, the answer: Put the UPS phone number on your trucks.
Voila.
May 5, 2008 — 10:31 am
Dave Smith says:
Dan,
Putting your email address on a blog or website is an invitation to more spam than you can ever imagine or want.
However, every blog or website should have a contact form which is easily located and can be used for personal communication. It works the same way, but without opening you up to spam bots scraping your email address from your site.
If you don’t want to have a contact form and you want to display your email address then do it as a graphic and not as text. They can still read it but spam bots can’t crawl it. Works the same as a captcha on comment forms.
Thought this might be helpful before a bunch of RE bloggers go adding their email address to blogs and websites.
May 5, 2008 — 11:29 am
Todd says:
Putting plain text or image of your email on your blog is suicide. As soon as the bots get it, they’ll use it send junk mail on your behalf, then you get blacklisted by all the ISPs, then all your legit mail goes straight to people’s junk mail folder, never to be read.
I have heard email referred to as “E Fail”, half kidding, half serious.
Use the RECAPTCHA plug-in on your blog, then let them write a message in a text box. You can tie messages received inside your blog to your external email, have it ding your mobile phone with a text message.
Above all, and possibly the easiest, I would just put your Twitter URL in clear view on your blog. Twitter is SPAM bot immune and gives humans direct access to your mobile phone. Bloodhound, RETS and Inman already there:
http://twitter.com/gswann
http://twitter.com/mwurzer
http://twitter.com/InmanNews
May 5, 2008 — 11:43 am
Dan Green says:
Yeah, I know. There are some tricks, though. Maybe Greg will turn this into a full-fledged post sometime soon.
Anyway, here’s how I hide my email address from the bots on my Web sites.
First, I include this custom HTML somewhere near the top of a page. It really doesn’t matter where, so long as it is closer to the top of the HTML code than where I want my email address to appear:
function email(email,domain) {
document.write(“<A HREF = mailto:” + email + “@” + domain + “>” + email +”@” + domain + “</A>”);
}
Then, where I want my email address to appear, I put this text:
email(“dan”,”dangreenteam.com”)
You would want to (1) Replace “dan” with your email that appears before the “@”, and (2) Replace “dangreenteam.com” with your own domain name.
There are hundreds of ways to hide your email address in plain sight. This is just how I choose to do it.
May 5, 2008 — 1:38 pm
Greg Swann says:
I’m pretty sure that will still be scrapable, Dan, but I don’t have time to check. I think spam paranoia is overblown, anyway. If you write for Bloodhound, you’re using a live email address that gets echoed on thousands of pages.
May 5, 2008 — 1:45 pm
Dan Green says:
You’d be surprised. I’ve been using the code since 1996 and am pretty well-protected.
I also use variations for linking to email from an image on my Web site. Click the big “orphaned mortgage” image at the bottom of my current post’s body.
Happy to share if anyone is interested.
May 5, 2008 — 4:28 pm
Thomas Johnson says:
Oh, the problems that fame and Google PR brings. If only the rest of us could be pursued by the ‘botarazzi’ like Paris Hilton is chased by the paparazzi!
May 5, 2008 — 6:28 pm
Dave Barnes says:
OK. I am the consumer (and a web nerd) here.
1. Contact info–postal, physical, email, phone, fax–should be easy to find. Remember, the goal is take money from the consumer.
2. Email address invites spam. Yes, it does. Deal with it. That is why ISPs offer filtering. That is why you can buy an email filter for your email program.
3. A simple barrier to spam scrapers is better than none. If it makes you feel more comfortable, then use some simple technique. Do not obsess about this. See point 2 above.
I have my email address plastered across the web. My ISP filters out about 100+ emails a day and then my email junk filter traps about 30-50 a day that I have to deal with. This does not take more than 3 minutes a day.
May 5, 2008 — 8:57 pm
Greg Cremia says:
I have had my email address on my website since the mid 90’s. Every now and then it gets used by the spammers but no damage done. It has been a couple of years since the last time so I guess the spammers have a new system. Why use my email address when they have thousands of robot computers in their system.
Most of my emails go through, except some to the freebie emails addresses every now and then. A lot of emails get sent using some version of this email address.
The fear of spammers using your email has been blown way out of proportion.
May 6, 2008 — 7:03 am
Brian Brady says:
“Remember, the goal is take money from the consumer.”
I’m inclined to agree with Dave’s observations although I might replace “take with “earn”. He’s got the right idea.
May 6, 2008 — 7:30 am
G. Dewald says:
Hivelogic’s email enkoder is a great way to deal with the spam problem if anyone has one. He used to have a web form (took it down last week, hopefully it will be back soon). Meanwhile there’s an ugly command line tool for the brave:
http://hivelogic.com/enkoder/plugin
If I notice him putting the web form back up I’ll post back here.
May 6, 2008 — 10:03 am
Todd Carpenter says:
my email is todd@mariah.com. I do nothing to protect it. Spam goes to my spam filter so it’s not a problem for me. I’d rather deal with some additional spam than to make even one possible client to be the slightest bit inconvenienced.
May 6, 2008 — 11:45 am
Robert D. Ashby says:
I would also add that you should have a media relations page if you want news sources to be able to easily contact you. I may be getting a television appearance from my media link in the near future.
May 6, 2008 — 2:20 pm
Rick Belben says:
I would rather deal with the spam then lose the possible customer who could not get a hold of you.
I find it extremely irritating when it is hard to find contact info for a person or a company that is doing business on the web.
June 16, 2008 — 4:27 pm