Matthew Ferrara is Banker & Tradesman’s real estate technology writer. He is the founder of Matthew Ferrara Seminars (mfseminars.com), a Boston-area company that provides technology training to real estate professionals nationwide.
When it comes to technology trends in the real estate industry, sometimes the most important changes are the least visible. As sales agents adopt the tools of e-commerce at breakneck speeds, brokerages can find themselves left behind, in more ways than one. Whether it’s knowing how agents are using technology or which vendors they purchase services from, real estate firms today need to conduct a usage survey in their offices and use the results to add a technology component to their office policies.
Take a simple example: e-mail. Sales agents use e-mail for everything from personal marketing and listing promotion to documentation transmission and lead generation. Sounds like something every broker would want their agents to do, right? Maybe not, if brokers understood just what was happening with much of their agents’ transmissions. For example, many agents use e-mail to conduct company business using e-mail addresses that are at best personal, and at worst linked to a third-party company. If Sally Agent uses an e-mail address like sally@sallysmith.com, well, that’s not terrible, but it’s certainly not doing anything to reinforce the name of the company or brand in the mind of the consumer. Even if brokers allow for the “personal promotion” aspect of agents using their own domain names (sallysmith.com), what about all those agents doing company business using domains like “aol.com” or “yahoo.com” or “whoknowswhat.com?” Why would a broker (or an agent, for that matter) desire the use of e-mail domains that promote someone else’s company? E-mail messages aren’t just “communications” – they are also marketing opportunities. Wouldn’t a broker want to leverage dozens of e-mails by dozens of agents every day as a way to promote the brokerage rather than promoting an Internet service provider?
The wasted opportunity is significant, especially when seen in light of e-mail surveys that indicate that 64 percent of consumers say they would not open an advertising e-mail from a domain they did not recognize. So, it’s unlikely that e-mail farming from sally_73@yahoo.com will be as “readable” as an e-mail from a recognizable real estate company, such as “sally.smith@realestateadvantage.com.” Yet most brokers have no idea what e-mail addresses their agents are using and whether their e-mail activities are doing any harm – or any good – for their company’s market presence.
This is where the broker’s company policy comes into play. Having a clear, outlined section of the company policy regarding technology usage, privacy requirements and acceptable practices is vital. The e-mail example is just one area – the impact of technology on company marketing efforts – that brokers need to address in their company policies. And that is the least of their worries. In an age of consumer privacy regulations, anti-spam laws and telemarketing restrictions, every facet of an agent’s technology usage should be enumerated in and guided by company policy. Independent contractor claims aside, with an $11,000 fine for every “Do Not Call” regulation infringement, no broker-owner should take a lackadaisical approach to technology compliance in his or her company.
Returning to e-mail for a moment, recent surveys in technology seminars nationwide show that less than 2 percent of sales agents have any idea that a federal anti-spam law applies to their business – and has applied since January of this year. Besides using a proper e-mail name, brokers need to update their company guidelines to account for e-mail content construction as well. Requirements such as including an “opt out” procedure for consumers or indicating the “message is an advertisement” are specifically mandated in the “CAN-SPAM” Act but rarely found in agent messages today. The broker’s company policy can guide agents to proper construction under the law, the primary stage of risk reduction for a real estate office.
Crashing the Party
Beyond e-mail, technology guidance in the company policy should reflect more than just Internet tools. Web site design is a key area for both legal and marketing guidance for agents. The proper use of Web site names, trademarks, logos, appropriate content, third-party links and even maintenance (insuring content freshness) impact a company’s mandatory disclosure risks and consumer image, even though the agent is conducting the activity. While many brokers have policies around traditional activities like using a company logo on a printed postcard or disclaimers required on listing sheets, few have taken the time to list similar requirements for agent Web sites (such as displaying the Equal Housing Opportunity logo from the Department of Housing and Urban Development).
More dangerously, many brokers take no interest in the third-party Web vendors their agents purchase Web sites from – many of whom feature competing mortgage, warranty or ancillary service vendors on banner ads surrounding the agent’s (really, the broker’s) listing inventory. Agents who believe they are getting a good deal on a cheap Web site may actually be doing more harm to themselves and their company by allowing their inventory to be used to lure consumers and who are then shifted away from the site to third-party vendors. Of course, the deadliest technology partnerships come in the form of those “lead generating” services that charge agents sign-up fees, monthly fees and then bind the broker to a referral commission on leads that close. Aside from additional costs to the broker (usually a surprise to the broker), agents patronizing these services are essentially funding their own market disintermediation. Lead-generating sites can only attract leads by putting their company in between the broker and the consumer, definitely damaging the broker’s marketing efforts, undermining their brand recognition efforts and training consumers to rely on the disintermediary company rather than the Realtor when seeking real estate help. The irony, of course, is that except for the fact that real estate agents agree to go along with these companies in exchange for a lead, the entire scheme would collapse if agents were guided by company policies discouraging partnerships with technologies that funnel consumers anywhere other than their own company’s Web site and services.
From e-mail and lead generation to personal promotion and Web site disclosures, technology usage unguided by company policy can do more harm than good to both agents and broker-owners. In a highly automated industry, knowing how to use a technology tool has become less important than how to use it well. For brokers who have yet to evaluate their risks and provide their sales staffs with oversight, the time may come that the damage done to company and consumer will outweigh the cost of acting early to add technology risk reduction to the office policy. To adapt an old adage: a click in time could surely save nine.
