E-Blast Broker Proactive Marketing Surges
A: Very interesting and a phenomenon that you will not hear about from brokers, on any listings site, or any news/media site. I am telling you that in the past 5-7 days the number of email blasts from the Manhattan brokerage community I am receiving has surged! I used to get about 4-5 a day and that to me was normal. However, over the past 5-7 days I have been receiving over 30+ email blasts a day from brokers trying to pro-actively market their sales/rental listings. While inventory is still very tight, and down about 15% since this time last year, its clear that sales activity is not; forcing brokers to reach out to each other to 'bring the listing details' to the community instead of waiting for the action to come to them.
E-blasts have been a special little trick that I used for my clients for years, and I spoke about them a few times here as tips for brokers and FSBO's. But fact is, its email spam on a mass level done by the firms that offer the brokerage community back end tools for searching, updating, and adding new sales listings to market. With the extensive database of broker emails, its a great little business to offer customized e-blasts to brokers as a proactive marketing tool. But it's getting to be real annoying and that will force many brokers to request removal from the database list and/or just deleting all the e-blasts altogether without looking at them.
Now, the fact that the number of e-blasts I received has surged suggests to me that the bonus season is starting out a bit slow, which is both fine and not unexpected. As I mentioned previously, I believe bonuses to be handed out this year (with 2009 the bonus season to worry about) but was more concerned with how they will be spent as confidence has dropped for the overall economy. Recall my 2008 predictions posted about two weeks ago:
"I expect a slower than normal wall street bonus season in the months of JAN - APRIL, in terms of buyer demand. As for bonuses, yes I think they will be given out (with some departments seeing drastic cuts in bonuses) but its HOW THEY ARE SPENT that I'm a bit concerned about."Because I love my readers and I believe in reporting on what is going on 'right now', I will share with you an image of what my inbox looks like without even having to remove any private emails because I got e-blasted so many times. Notice in the image below that there are 13 such emails from brokers across Manhattan since 4:11PM on Thursday. I am writing this post at 5:45PM Thursday so what you are looking at is 13 e-blasts in the past hour and a half only, I deleted about 20 already from earlier Thursday!
Interesting to say the least. While I do not think this is something that totally sums up the Manhattan housing marketplace, I do think it is indicative of the current environment that brokers are facing in trying to move properties for their sellers!
The bonus season usually lasts from January to about April or so, but the real action usually occurs in the beginning of February to about the end of March. Those eight weeks have been nutz for the past 3-4 years, with packed open houses and bidding wars. With inventory so tight and expected to build, at least by me, lets see how things pan out this year!
Posted by toes
Sun Jan 13th, 2008 10:29 PM
Hey Noah, I haven't really seen a surge in broker blasts in the past few days - at least nothing outside of what I think is the normal "the holidays are over and it's 2008 and new properties are on the market" emailing. I think people heard about UrbanDigs at the Inman Conference and they all added your email address to their address books:)
In all seriousness, though, the only surge I have noticed lately is on the RENTAL front. It seems that more landlords than normal are all offering OPs ("Owner Pays," which generally means that the owner pays a one month fee to the broker bringing a tenant). Feb 1 is usually a bad rental month, so maybe they are being proactive. But more likely, I think rents went up too quickly in the past 2-3 years and people are just not moving. They'd rather suck it up in too small of an apartment than pay the crazy increase they would need to pay in order to upgrade. OR, when they do move, rents are so high that the last thing they want to do is to pay a broker fee. So when one landlord starts paying the fee, it's tough for landlords with similar properties not to follow suit or they can't compete.
Thoughts?
Posted by Noah
Mon Jan 14th, 2008 12:01 PM
interesting but I have been getting hit hard from eblasts for over a week, even before the conference. 70% sales, 30% rentals. Over 30 a day now!
Still dont think this should be analyzed too deeply, I just found it interesting. Still tight inventory and prices for most part are still at high levels. Buyers seem to be patient and not chasing overpriced listings.
Posted by Sandy Mattingly
Mon Jan 14th, 2008 03:48 PM
Mr. Digs -- Why do you get so few?? I drive nearly all of these to a JUNK folder (so that they don't clog my In-box)that I look at not more than once a day. I think I get 50 on a slow day, sometimes 100, and notice many more on Fridays (about open houses, obviously); that was your Thursday sample, too, I bet.
If agents used the "re" line better, they would be even more useful, but I scan pretty quickly for listings of interest (rarely many).
Bottom line: I see no change in agent e-blasting.