VisualTour


	Issue #9 February 13, 2001

	Contents: * New Virus Alert * VisualTour® of the Week * Permission Marketing - Is it right for my business? * Customer Success Story of the Week

NEW VIRUS ALERT!!!

	A new virus is making its rounds today that's not recognized yet by many of the virus protecion programs. The subject of the message is "Here you have, ;o)", and the body of the message contains the attachment AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs. Delete the email and attachment immediately. DO NOT open the .vbs file. We recommend that you never, under any circumstances, open any attachment that contains a .vbs (Visual Basic Script aka "Very Bad Stuff") or .exe (Executable) extension, even if it's from your most trusted friend, and even if your virus protection software says it's virus free. These viruses spread by attacking the address books of the email programs and sending themselves cloaked as a trusted email message. In almost all cases they'll come from someone that you've had contact with before.

VisualTour® OF THE WEEK

	Click the link to view the tour (AOL users can copy and paste this link into their browser): http://www.visualtour.com/show.asp?t=12622 We ran into Tommy Thompson at the Keller Williams national convention last week in Las Vegas. No, we didn't lose a bet with Tommy, we just thought that he did an excellent job creating this VisualTour®! You'll like how he starts his tour with a fast loading still shot, then moves quickly to eye grabbing panoramic views! He includes a great voice narration and excellent text descriptions too! He's got some great community photos included and one on the local safety watch program. Read about other uses Tommy has for his VisualTours® in the Customer Success Story of the Week below.

PERMISSION MARKETING - IS IT RIGHT FOR MY BUSINESS?

	You may have heard about Permission Marketing , one of this millennium's buzzwords. But is it more than a fad or gimmick? Is Permission Marketing something that you can use to sell real estate more effectively? Much of traditional real estate marketing is considered to be the exact opposite of Permission Marketing, so what is this phenomenon and how can it work for me? Simply defined, Permission Marketing is providing a prospect with the opportunity to let you know that they are interested in your product or service and they want to stay in control of the marketing communication between you and them. Oh yeah, and they're free to change their minds in the future! The underlying assumption of successful Permission Marketing is that a customer who deals with you in this way feels like more than just a transaction and will bring you a much more profitable, long term relationship (directly and through referrals) than the next "warm body" who calls you because they saw your billboard, newspaper ad, flyer in their mailbox, etc. We all love to get client referrals. Referrals are a great example of Permission Marketing. When someone has sought you out based on the referral of a happy client, they are granting you permission to market to them because they value their friend's trust in your service and ability to satisfy them. They've singled you out for their real estate business. You're instantly credible and they are a more qualified prospect (your client probably doesn't want their friend to waste your time either!). Then consider an anonymous prospect who found you while web surfing and sends you a note via email. As you reply in hopes of starting a more meaningful dialogue, this prospect is granting you more in-depth levels of permissiveness with each renewed contact. You may not even get their name on the first contact. But by the third contact, they may ask you to call them at home and they provide you with their phone number. By the sixth contact, they may be referring their friends to you! Why? Because you didn't make them fill out a lengthy form or get too nosy too quickly, and you provided them with more information than they gave you. And if they don't answer your email a second time and you never hear from them again, did you really lose anything? Did you "give away the farm" only to wonder if they did business with another Realtor in town? Isn't this scenario possible no matter how the contact was made originally? You can always continue the relationship by mailing your flyer or relocation package to them. You can schedule an appointment to meet when you're both ready for that step, but if you're really good at what you do, your time is very valuable. Spending a small amount of time early on to allow your prospects to "permit your marketing" can set the hook much more securely than pushing yourself at every lead from your mass marketing efforts. And you'll wind up with a customer that knows you're much better qualified to handle their next move or that of their friends and co-workers! By the way, our e-marketing newsletter is an example of Permission Marketing. Notice the easy way we let you unsubscribe from this newsletter if you tire of it. We don't want to take up your valuable time if this information isn't of use to you. If this were a printed newsletter, it would be more difficult for you to ask us to leave you alone and much more expensive for us to print and deliver it to the people who are interested. Credit for the term "Permission Marketing" is often attributed to Seth Godin, a marketing executive at Yahoo. He co-authored a book which provides a much deeper perspective on this topic and is a great read: "Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, and Friends into Customers" by Seth Godin and Don Peppers, 1999 - about $25.00.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY OF THE WEEK - Use VisualTours® on CDs in Prelisting packages!

	Tommy Thompson, CRS, GRI Keller Williams Realty, Plano, TX http://www.tommythompson.com "We discovered that if you have a CD burner you can use the diskette tour feature to put your VisualTours® on CDs with longer voice overs, tons of pictures and panoramics and leave it in the homes of your listings or mail to prospects. We are including the CDs with our Prelisting packets and winning!!!. We used to use the 3.5 inch diskettes but the space was limiting for some of our VisualTours®. Our next project is a tour of our city to post on our site. Thanks for a great product!" See Tommy's dynamic inventory list of VisualTours® at http://www.visualtour.com/inventory.asp?u=2484.

	Subscribers to this VisualTour® online newsletter are automatically entered into our free monthly drawing for a Palm III. Winners are notified via email and will be announced in this newsletter. The winner for January's drawing was Ms. Becca Mackintosh of Mansell and Associates in Orem, UT. See http://www.visualtour.com/subscribe.asp for complete details.



	Copyright 2001 by VisualTour.com®. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be used or reproduced without prior written permission. If you have comments, have suggestions for future articles, or would like to submit a tour for consideration to be the tour of the week, please contact us via email at newsletter@visualtour.com.