The 15 Minute Rule

« Buying PC Gear | Home | Big Announcement »

By HHI Golf Guy | October 12, 2006

OK - so now you have your fancy web site up and running and developing web traffic through PPC or search engine rankings. You get a decent amount of email requests for information, but rarely convert those contacts to prospects and buyers. Why?

Think about your own web surfing habits. When you’re looking to buy something in particular you probably hit your favorite search engine then bop around from site to site. Internet homebuyers do exactly the same thing.

Now you might check your email 5 or 6 times a day, but chances are by the time you respond to the email request for information you received that same web surfer has visited 4 or 5 sites of your competitors before you have the time you respond. There’s even a good chance that web surfer has already hooked up with another agent in your market.

If you want to convert more of your email contacts to prospects and buyers you must make it a point to contact them within 15 minutes of receiving their email.

But how can you do that when you’re out of the office networking, showing a home, or out on the golf course? The answer is easier than you think.

You can set up your email system to send a duplicate email to your PDA or cell phone as well as your primary email account. You can accomplish this task by either having your email form handler send the email to both addresses or set an email rule on your web hosting account to forward the email to your cell phone or PDA.

One word of caution, though. Your cell phone provider will charge you extra for bandwidth, so you [b]do not[/b] want to set up an email rule that forwards all of your primary email account emails to your cell phone. You need to set up an individual email account for all of your form submissions (i.e. requests@yourdomain.com instead of yourname@yourdomain.com).

Setting up a special email account for your forms is also a good practice in case that form/account is ever comprimised by spammers. If that ever happens you can just delete the old account, set up a new one, and update your form handler. You won’t have to worry about having to reprint stationary and collateral material with your new email address.

Remember - you have 15 minutes to respond or potentially lose that homebuyer to a competitor.