Real Estate Agents warned against breaching Spam Act in Australia

We have long advocated the use of opt in only databases used for email marketing. You simply can get far too much negative feedback, poor publicity and can even get blacklisted if your email marketing becomes SPAM.

Regardless of how you built your database, you simply must always include the ability to unsubscribe or instructions on how to unsubscribe. This is simply good business practice, and in some countries, a legal requirement. In Australia it has been law for some years now to include the ability to unsubscribe from any bulk marketing email and it is not starting to be rigorously enforced.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has issued a formal warning to an Australian Real Estate Agency for breaching the Spam Act. Danielou Pty Ltd, trading as Elders Real Estate Wollongong, breached the Spam Act by sending emails without an unsubscribe facility.

The full press release is provided below:

“Real estate agency breaches the Spam Act

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has issued a formal warning to Danielou Pty Ltd, trading as Elders Real Estate Wollongong, following an investigation that found the real estate agency breached the Spam Act 2003 by sending commercial electronic messages without an unsubscribe facility.

‘This is the first enforcement measure taken against a real estate agent since an ACMA awareness campaign about unsolicited communications targeted at the real estate sector,’ said Chris Cheah, acting Chairman of the ACMA.

The campaign was held in response to the ACMA’s concerns about widespread non-compliance with marketing obligations by members of the real estate sector. The ACMA wrote to more than forty head offices of leading real estate franchisors and companies in 2009, informing them of key obligations and providing links to online training and resources to increase awareness of legal obligations and of the consequences of non-compliance.

‘It is disappointing that some real estate agents do not appear to have taken the opportunity to understand the requirements for complying with the Spam Act,’ Mr Cheah said.

The ACMA has a tiered approach to compliance and enforcement. While education is the first step, stronger enforcement action will be used if compliance is not achieved.

‘Real estate agents should consider themselves to be on notice,’ Mr Cheah added. ‘Members of the industry need to understand that, even when they are dealing with potential buyers on a one-to-one basis, these interactions are commercial and they need to comply with spam and telemarketing laws.’

Commercial electronic messages must be sent with the recipient’s consent and include a statement that the recipient can use an electronic address, provided in the message, to send an unsubscribe request. During the course of this investigation, the ACMA identified messages sent by Elders Real Estate Wollongong that did not contain unsubscribe wording to this effect.

The ACMA has taken a wide range of enforcement action against non-compliant ‘spammers’ in the last twelve months, including recent action in the Federal Court which resulted in significant penalties being imposed on both individuals and companies.

Under the Spam Act, potential penalties of up to $1.1 million per day may be imposed by the Federal Court for repeat offenders”

The simple rule is always include the following text or something to this effect:

Important Information: If you are not the intended recipient, please ignore this email. This communication has been prepared by . To unsubscribe from this email please reply with ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject line.

Tallest tower in the world opens today

The long-awaited opening of the Burj Dubai is scheduled to take place today.

Although the final height is not yet known, it is expected to be over 800 metres high and substantially the tallest building in the world.

It also seems that the opening may help the level of confidence in and about Dubai. Dubai has been hit incredibly hard by the GFC, and it badly needs a boost in confidence for its residents and the thousands of foreign investors who own property in Dubai. Perhaps the launch of Burj Dubai, coming at the start of a new year and as the GFC ends, heralds the start of a new era in Dubai’s growth. Lets hope so.

To tweet or not to tweet!

The property industry has been pondering for some time the importance of being active on twitter. I personally have equally been skeptical as to its benefits. I really question agents or consultants who think that there are a large pool of people who want to be bombarded with regular tweets on new listings, price changes etc. As a consumer, and a technically orientated one at that, I just can’t see how I benefit from that. Email alerts will do just fine and I get to read them when I want (the one exception I would make here is for rentals in particularly tight markets. In some cities I know of instances where people pretty much fall over themselves to find out about new rental properties when they come available. A tweet would be great for that).

However, as a technical company, we needed to give it a go so we set up a couple of Twitter Accounts a few months ago and got started.

Not much feedback and quite a few followers and then, out of the blue, a genuine enquiry! Yes that is right, a genuine enquiry from a real estate agency that had come across one of our tweets and then contacted us.

So I guess the proof is in the pudding as they say. Not a huge number of leads but certainly it is a start. So maybe my thinking on twitter and the value it offers is starting to change…..

By the way you can find us at @brightfoxhq

World’s Leading Property Software Now Available in Jordan

The World’s leading Property Software for Real Estate Agent’s and Developers is now available in Jordan!

Brightfox is proud to introduce their newest Brightfox Valued Partner, Buniahtech!

This is a very exciting development, not only for Brightfox, but for Real Estate Agents and Developer’s in Jordan as they now have local access to the world’s leading property software. Brightfox, the leading supplier of CRM and property management software to the global property industry, currently has 2 Valued Partner’s operating in the U.A.E and are excited about adding to their growing list of international Partner’s and clients.

Mr. Mohammad Al Saafeen, Managing Director of Buniahtech said “We are very pleased to bring Brightfox’s leading property solutions to Jordan. Our experience with their products in other Middle Eastern markets such as Dubai has shown the tremendous positive impact these systems can have and Jordan’s real estate agencies are in prime position to also reap benefits from these modern business solutions.” He added that “our first Amman based client is already seeing great successes. Edraj has been using foxEnterprise, Brightfox’s premiere platform since emerging onto the Jordan real estate market in 2007. Both the internal business systems and the integrated website content management have proved highly effective in growing Edraj’s business and providing first rate services to their entrusted clientele.”

Michael Bucknell, Regional Manager for Brightfox Middle East was in Amman, Jordan, this past week for the contract signing. “I am very happy to have forged this new relationship with Buniahtech” he stated, continuing “Brightfox is expanding our presence across the Middle East and we see Jordan as a key market in this region.

We look forward to working with Buniahtech to provide cutting edge solutions to real estate agents and property developers in Jordan and to growing our relationship to incorporate other projects over the coming years.”

If you are targeting Asia, you need Brightfox!

A recent article in Real Estate Business (see it here) interestingly talks about the amount of business Victorian agencies are doing with Chinese buyers at present.

Brightfox has been doing business in Asia for over 9 years, and we can successfully market properties and projects to Asia.

One of the suprising facts that most people wouldn’t appreciate until they start marketing to Asia is the fact that most languages require the PC to be Unicode  compliant. This requires the CRM software and the website to be similarly Unicode compliant.

Both foxAdvantage and foxEnterprise meet these requirements and can market your properties and projects in the native language of your target audience – a key requirement to successfully penetrate these markets.

 

Brightfox Client is CNBC Arabian Property Award Winner Again

Brightfox would like to congratulate all winners of the 2009 CNBC Arabian Property Awards Once again, the CNBC Property Awards have highlighted the depth of talent in the Arabian property sector. Each year the awards go from strength to strength and the level of competition has been raised yet again in 2009. Our congratulations go out to all the category winners from this years awards and a special congratulations to our triple award winning client, The Oryx Corporation, who have once again led the way in terms of marketing and website presence.

Brightfox, one of the worlds leading property software companies, is proud to have achieved the “Best Real Estate Agency Website Arabia” award for Oryx for the second year in succession and would revel in the opportunity to work with and secure similar brand recognition for your business.

To find out more about our award winning product portfolio of property software systems, websites and client/broker portals, or to avail of our consultancy services in real estate e-sales & e-marketing, CRM and business process automation, please contact your nearest Brightfox representative today for a free in house appointment.

Bing taking market share from Google

A recent article in The Australian Newspaper commented on the sucess of Bing and Yahoo in taking market share from Google. Now in Australia that isn’t going to be hard initially, as Google has around 90% of all search engine traffic. Making a significant dint will be much harder however.

You can see the full article here.

There is no doubt Bing is a good search engine – far far better than Live and a real potential threat to Google. In a recent interview by Tech Crunch with Steve Ballmer, Ballmer commented that they have over 5000 people working on search. A pretty extraordinary number but it shows how serious Microsoft is about competing with Google.

You can see the full interview with Ballmer here.

A suit the provides protection to Swine Flu! Just what every busy real estate agent needs.

Not the usual content that I blog about, but I thought this was great (in a funny way). A Japanese company has produced a suit that supposedly protects against the HIN1 (swine flu).

A lot of agents might think that they need some form of protection from difficult customers, well now they have it! In the form of a swine flu resistant suit! Well at least protection from the customers sick children.

All they need to do now is build in an I-Phone with a microphone and ear piece on the collar and maybe your own QR Code on the sleeve so anyone can quickly scan and get your details – then you have the complete mobile package!

Visit here for the full story

Cityscape Dubai 2009

Cityscape Dubai 2009 launched today and I was in attendance. Numbers are vastly down on last year – I would guess about 75% down. Having said that it was still busy, which says a lot about how crazily busy it used to be!

This is the first time in 4 years that we have not had a booth at Cityscape Dubai, primarily because we choose the exhibit at Cityscape Abu Dhabi earlier in the year.

It will no doubt be a more subdued year in terms of visitor numbers and deals done, but I am sure it will come back stronger next year, and we will be there again.

Even though we are not exhibiting at Cityscape this year we are running some great Cityscape specials, so if you are looking to purchase a new software solution for your business, I encourage you to contact us asap.

Launch of R.E.Mobile making it easier for property buyers to find property online

 ACCESS TO PROPERTY INFORMATION JUST GOT MOBILE!

Brightfox is proud to announce the launch of R.E.Mobile, a world first product that takes an existing website and optimises it for viewing over any smart phone in the world.

Over 140 Million ’smart phones’ were sold in 2008 and with 87.1% of all property buyers researching property online, the smart phone will become more and more prevalent in today’s market.

Instant access to property information is becoming extremely important, but the ability to view this information in an easy to view format has been somewhat difficult.

Enter R.E.Mobile.

R.E.Mobile, or Real Estate Mobile, is designed to enable any real estate agency or developer to instantly establish contact with consumers and provide them with essential property information via a smart phone.

An R.E.Mobile site takes a companies existing website content and transforms it into an easy to read format ready for any multimedia phone allowing buyers to research whilst on the run.

R.E.Mobile can display listings, projects, rentals, staff profiles, latest news and more, all updated instantly from the companies own website (which also eliminates the need for manual updating).

“RE Mobile allows buyer’s to research property information whilst on location via their smart phone. It can provide them with all the information they need instantly, in an easy to read format to make a calculated decision”, said Brightfox Managing Director, Cameron Black.

“With people now viewing less homes per purchase thanks to the Internet, and with RE Mobile, buying property has now become a lot easier”.

An R.E.Mobile website is a fully customizable and can be setup and running in under 3 weeks and for as little as $25 per week*.

For more information on R.E.Mobile and its innovative technology, contact Brightfox.