How Shall I Engage Thee?
I recently wrote this post for the VAR Blog, but after hearing some of the responses, thought that getting some local input would be beneficial as well.
The Mission
Awhile ago fellow VARBuzz and AgentGenius contributors Jim Duncan and Daniel (The Zebra) Rothamel wrote articles regarding Paying NAR Dues and NAR Engaging it’s Members. They are great posts, with tons of interactions from members who support and unfortunately some of those who don’t support the Association. The entire mission of the Association is to be a relevant factor of support and advocacy for the REALTOR member. A great deal of work goes into carrying out the directives to fulfill these missions, from both REALTORS and staff. Having now been both a practicing Realtor and most recently a staff member, I am seeing that a vast number of the tools, initiatives and resources created to enhance the agent’s success have been underutilized. I feel that the Associations are answering your call, but you can’t hear us.
What Is The Barrier
As a staff member of FAAR, I’ve received countless calls and e-mails asking for a wide variety of assistance, and I always have resources from our local association, VAR or NAR to give to the member. The members frequently ask why they didn’t know about these tools in the first place - good question.
Recently our Association had a meeting planned for Brokers, so that they could come provide open-forum feedback in preparation for our Strat Planning session. Four days before the meeting and after a ton of notices, e-mails and marketing we had two members registered. The workgroup decided to call the Brokers and in response we had almost 50 people attend the meeting.
What Works?
While pondering this post, I asked my friends on Twitter how they would like to be communicated with. Almost all of them said e-mail. However, one commented that e-mails have become so ubiquitous that they are almost irrelevant. There are so many people trying to e-mail you and get your attention that people are scanning them over without registering their importance.
This would explain why only about 20% of our e-mails, sent to members, are actually read. But it begs the question; why with so many agents asking for their Associations to provide services, are members not paying more attention to the primary resource for their business?
Call To Action
Most all Associations use e-mail, post cards, brochures, fliers, etc… Calling on the phone, for most Associations, isn’t an option because of the size of the organizations and lack of staff. So, what do you feel is the best way for your Association to keep you up to date and show you the plethora of tools that we’ve developed to help you with your business?
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Without question, email. Not the mundane type either. Things that are important should be sent as being important. Day-to-day mundane information could be mailed or distributed to the brokerages on a periodic (weekly or monthly) basis. There is so very much information being disseminated via the web/email that important things get caught up in the neverending and ubiquitous spam that inundates our inboxes hourly. Unfortunately, the availability of email permits small staff(s) to save their time by consolidating (and, subsequently disseminating) the plethora of information they assume is of prime importance to practitioners. Practitioners, on the other hand, spend their valuable time determining what is “need to know” (useful in getting a home to closing) and what is “nice to know” (like brochures on homes on the market as previously announced on the MLS).
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 am
Ed, I agree it needs to be meaningful. But, how do we decide what’s useful to each person? There are many who are interested in politics, some education, some current events, some social events….
It would great to have a service (like RSS) where the member could subscribe to certain series of updates that they wanted. Then staff maybe able to just blog about it and let the e-mail subscriptions do the rest. What say you?
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:06 am
Fiat Lux!
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Matthew - now that it’s built, I believe they will come. If they believe it is value added, that is. INMAN news is a good start. Any community of users will necessarily take advantage of beneficial information. E-mail? Sure, as long as it isn’t a nuisance, and instead is useful. RSS is a good example.
June 4th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Sometimes we just get lazy. I may get 50 real estate emails in one day and then I have to decide what is important and what’s not. Sometimes I miss something.
I actually think FAAR is going a pretty good job of seperating email types into catagories.
Education should be one email. But wait, if I’m a broker then I don’t need THOSE classes, so I may delete that email. Now I don’t know about the Broker class. Hmmmm..
Classes, Legislation, Events and Opportunities, Broker News. What else is there? I save the emails I need till I can check my schedule - maybe for a class that’s coming up. The rest I read, apply as necessary, and delete.
As FAAR tightens down on individuals that are not meeting their CE requirements or forget to RSVP, I’m sure more people will notice those deadlines.
Side note: I am thankful that most classes I don’t have to pre-register. I can show up the day of class and pay my fee. That’s a blessing to my schedule! Don’t get rid of that option if you can help it.
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:37 am
Thanks everyone for your feedback. We are going to be trying some new things in the future. If anything comes to you, feel free to let me know!