Email communication is one of the easiest ways to follow up with online real estate leads and clients - but emails don’t always go as planned.
There’s nothing more alarming than composing an email only to realize you’ve misspelled a word after it’s been sent or, even worse, sent it to the wrong person. Sometimes you think you’ve proofread your email, but notice an undeniable grammatical error; or, sometimes group emails can go awry when one person mistakenly clicks on ‘reply-all’ to gripe about a colleague instead of ‘reply’.
Over the years, we’ve come across some tragic email horror stories, which we hope to never see again. So we thought we’d share some to help you avoid them as well.
Don’t repeat these shocking email disasters:
It’s Not Me, It’s You:
“A few months ago my friend was working with a new client who was, let’s say, a bit needy. While she had worked with difficult real estate clients in the past, this one was an entirely new adventure. My friend typically tries to find a silver lining to every negative situation she encounters by turning them into positive learning experiences - so I knew she was trying really hard to keep her cool and create the best real estate client experience she could.
After a few months of back and forth emails, text messages and several failed showings my friend was just about ready to fire her real estate client. Apparently this situation took care of itself when my friend accidentally sent an email ranting about how awful the whole thing was to the client instead of me.”
-Charlene, North Dakota
Pro tip: If you use gmail as your email service provider, enable the 'Undo Send' option in your inbox settings. This allows you to "un-send" an email for the first 30 seconds after it's sent.
We Cordially Invite You:
“My Real Estate Broker sometimes sends around group emails to update the office on new policies and team get togethers to keep everyone in the loop. I had assumed that as professionals we all knew when to hit ‘reply all’ and when not to, but I was sadly mistaken.
An email was sent out to the entire office to remind everyone of the upcoming real estate networking mixer our office was hosting that Friday. We quickly found out that our Broker was strongly hoping our office manager wouldn’t attend when he replied to everyone instead of only his assistant… Thank goodness we could use the networking event to explore other brokerage options.”
-Doug, Pennsylvania
He said she said:
“Sometimes there are disagreements among real estate agents about best practices or even day to day tasks. Most of the time I don’t mind - constructive conflict can be healthy from time to time and allow us to grow as real estate professionals. Unfortunately, not all agents on my team see it this way.
An email thread was floating around the office regarding what I thought was a friendly debate about how to handle a disgruntled client. I later found out that the thread had broken off between two employees, who thought my input was less than favorable, when someone who was Bcc’d (blind carbon copied) replied all. Obviously I no longer recommend ever using the Bcc option.”
-Anonymous, California
Needless to say, email communication can sometimes unintentionally go horribly wrong. Always check the content of your real estate emails and who you’re sending to before you click that ‘Send’ button. More importantly though, don’t send anything you wouldn’t want others to see if exposed. While these stories are all fictional, these situations do occur - so make sure you don’t repeat them.
How do you resolve email conflict? Share in the comments below.
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