If so you could be loosing out on important emails without even knowing. Just think - what if buyers are contacting you about a listing and you never receive that email? Chances are the buyer won't contact you a second time and probably won't call you. They will be under the assumption that you don't care and will move on to the next Agent. Free email providers such as Yahoo, Comcast, AOL and others will block email at their discretion and you won't ever know that the email was blocked. See http://www.ahfx.net/weblog.php?article=107 for a post about this. As you can see from reading this post, people have been having these issues with Yahoo since 2006.
Does Yahoo have the right to block your emails? Yes - it is their servers and they are offering the service for free. So when I hear people complain about not receiving emails in their Yahoo (or other free) email account, I simply say "You get what you pay for". I suggest purchasing your own domain name for $9.99 per year from GoDaddy or other domain provider and setup your own email accounts under your own domain. GoDaddy allows you to register a domain for $9.99 and setup 1 email account on that domain for another $9.99 per year. That's a total cost of $19.98 per year. Heck just imagine how much business and $$ you are loosing by staying with a free email provider that may be blocking your important emails. The way I see it is you can't afford not to do this. Plus it looks more professional when you send email from your own domain.
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Go Smart Solutions, LLC |
Misty - the other side of the coin is the people we are communicating with. If someone has one of these free email sites (or any site for that matter) we always tell them to add our address to the email they want to receive - and also to check their spam, though that doesn't help if our email to them is blocked at the server level.
Trevor - thanks for your feedback. Yeah, we use GoGaddy for all our domain registrations.
"free comes with a price" - you nailed it.
Misty, I use 1&1.com for all of my domain purchases. GoDaddy is good also, but 1&1 less money and I can keep track of my stats.........no yahoo.com for me. No freebies for me..........
I send out a email to a very large group of partners every Sunday. Two weeks ago I had an unusual number of returns. I found out later that Yahoo "tuned up" their spam filters leaving a big number of folks around the country unable with others they way they have for years.
Tony
I learned from Day 1 that branding is of the utmost importance and having your email address as SuzieQRealtor@yahoo.comor any of the free providers really does not speak to the level of professionalism that most agents would hope to achieve. In the beginning of your career, "the fake it until you make it" method is all you have when competing against a top producer in the industry. I can promise you that the top producer has a branded web site and email and the public will take notice.
So everyone, go out there on Go Daddy and brand, brand, brand.
www.ChristiBorden.com
GoDaddy - affordable and reliable. I still keep my old original free Yahoo account for junk mail and it is great to send myself test messages when experimenting with different html or file formats. Also I think Yahoo has the best default page for news and updates.