Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – December 14, 2004

 Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – December 14, 2004

A New Toy

Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – December 14, 2004 – Last week I was contacting real estate agents who had shown a loft I have listed for sale. I sent out a standard E-Mail follow-up and received a message back from an agent who had shown the property.

His message was in a nice colourful format with pictures, graphics and a border. It looked terrific and is just the kind of thing I’ve been wanting to do with E-Mail templates and real estate newsletters. I sent him another message asking if he was using specialized software, and if so, could he let me know what company provided it. The information I’ve received from Web-Site designers has led me to believe that it’s “furiously” expensive to do this type of work. Within half an hour I had another message letting me know how to contact the company that has the software.

Today I tracked down Jeff in Vancouver. He works for a company called AddBranding Inc. I had about a hundred and sixty-three questions for him, and he laughed and said that he sells his software all over the world. People say “great product – here’s my credit card number” and they buy the software. It’s only Canadians who ask dozens of questions to make sure they are spending their money wisely. I must have set a record in the question department, because I called him back twice more for additional information.

By five o’clock I had paid the princely sum of $39.00 for the coming year. I can now customize my E-Mail messages and create templates for various and sundry real estate related topics- such as thank you notes, welcome to your new home, happy holidays, general information, mortgage rate updates, market updates and so on and so forth. I was absolutely over the moon. Once again I am the “Wizard Woman of Techno City” – a one person marketing company with genius written all over it. Okay, perhaps I’m getting a little carried away here, but I’m really excited about this unexpected little development.

I created a “Thank You For The Referral” template – complete with colour picture, text, border, signature and header. It looked amazing I forwarded it to myself and then saved it in a template file – clever me. Now the big test – I forwarded it to myself again – perfection! What about the really big serious make it or break it challenge. I forwarded it to Sima, Big and Dorothy. I was greeted with abject failure.

In all three cases, the picture was replaced with a big, red “X”. I am not to be deterred. I do need to send a thank you note tomorrow to one of my clients – so I’m going to use her as a test case and then send her a follow-up message to see if the first one came through as designed – picture and all. I’m always delighted when I find a new marketing tool I can employ. It’s even better when it’s effective, inexpensive, colourful and easy to use. It makes all the difference in the appearance of my marketing materials and helps me to look like a real “professional”.

I’m back. I just had to pop off to my Outlook Express to create a new “Congratulations” template. When inspirations strikes a true “artiste” – she must respond. And not a moment to soon. Ideas flowed and my nimble fingers flew over the keyboard and “Voila”. However the acid test is still to come. The templates without the photos are much less effective. For some unknown reason I seem to be tending (perhaps I should say flying) towards a bird motif. First a humming bird on the thank you template and now love birds on the congratulations template.

My fine feathered friends look very appealing, but I can always branch out to other pictures and graphics. Houses , flowers, trees, winter, spring, summer and fall shots are all possibilities. I’m amazed at the cost of this product and very happy that it appears to be so easy to learn.

Standing out from the competition is essential in business today. Good marketing doesn’t need to be elaborate, but it should be well thought out, well written, and professionally presented with a consistent message. I’m well on my way to making a significant change in the appearance of the correspondence that I send to my clients. For twenty cents a day – wow!

P.S. 2014 – wasn’t I just full of enthusiasm?