Innovations are a mixed blessing. Because new developments offer the potential to improve personal or work lives, many people welcome the latest advances. Conversely, the newest way of doing things also carries the potential to annoy many people.

Take for example, current technology that simplifies how we can communicate with others. Using hard copy format (aka paper), we can send messages by hand, regular mail, courier and various print media such as newspapers, magazines and books.

Electronically, there is a wide range of telecommunications including wireless and Internet-based formats.  As a person interested in marketing, I understand and value the contribution that today’s technologies make to marketing communications. However, as a consumer, the misuse of these technologies drives me crazy.

Newsletters are one of the most popular and potentially effective of all marketing communications. Suitable for distribution in hard copy or electronically, they are ideal vehicles for keeping in touch with prospects, clients and network contacts. Properly used, they can enhance agents’ credibility as knowledgeable real estate authorities. 

Inappropriately used, they have the opposite effect: instead of reinforcing credibility, they can raise questions about an agents’ basic competence. 

Through membership in the same organization, my wife and I have become acquainted with a real estate agent who is building his business.  One component of his business development plan is the use of printed newsletters and Christmas cards. In building his list of contacts, he has taken our names from the membership list of the organization to which we all belong. And with list assembled, he has started regular mailings to his contacts, including us. 

I am less concerned that he is mailing to us without our consent than I am puzzled by why he considers us prospects. We have never discussed either real estate in general or our housing preferences in particular. I am no more sure that if I were looking for an agent he would be the right one for me than I would be a suitable client for him.

Unfortunately the mailings confirm this uncertainty. With content apparently mass produced by a third party, the newsletters are very generic and contain little information that is relevant or of interest to me.  In creating the image of a dream home for last year’s Christmas card, the agent described a scenario that is about as far from my ideal home as it’s possible to be.  It may well have been his vision of a dream home; it certainly wasn’t mine.

In the overall scheme of things, receiving several mailings a year from this agent is not a big deal. These mailings do however illustrate the down side of the ease of communicating, especially sending newsletters. Certainly it’s easy to assemble a list of people to whom newsletters can be sent. But just because you have some one’s name and address, does that automatically mean that person is interested in hearing from you, let alone choosing you as their real estate agent? It’s also very simple to purchase pre-packaged newsletter content for distribution to your contacts, but how effectively does this satisfy their need for useful information? 

Undoubtedly, like many marketing programs, the agent’s newsletter initiative was undertaken with the best of intentions and with no desire to annoy anyone. Ironically, in attempting to build or perhaps enhance a relationship with us, he has inadvertently caused me to question his skills as a real estate agent. Why did he not pre-qualify us as people who would be interested in receiving his newsletters? Why did he send us information without knowing whether or not it was relevant to us and our situation? And why did he think my idea of a dream home is the same as his?

Again, in the overall scheme of things, these issues are insignificant. However, in a competitive industry like real estate, they become relevant factors in the decision-making process. When and if it comes to pass that I am looking for an agent for my own needs or to refer to some one else, who will appeal most to me? The agent who doesn’t know much about me and continues to demonstrate this though his mailings? Or am I likely to be more attracted to another agent who is prepared to take the time to get to know my preferences, needs and wants?

Certainly today’s user-friendly communication tools can improve the effectiveness of marketing communications. And just as surely, these same tools can bite the unwary agent who misuses them. User beware.