{"id":8972,"date":"2012-11-19T12:04:05","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T17:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/?p=8972"},"modified":"2012-11-19T12:04:05","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T17:04:05","slug":"amusing-internet-leads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/19\/amusing-internet-leads\/","title":{"rendered":"Amusing Internet Leads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/FunkyCowboy.jpg\" alt=\"FunkyCowboy1874@xyz.com\" title=\"FunkyCowboy1874@xyz.com\" width=\"358\" height=\"475\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-9017\" align=\"right\" haspace=\"10\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/FunkyCowboy.jpg 358w, https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/FunkyCowboy-226x300.jpg 226w, https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/FunkyCowboy-113x150.jpg 113w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 358px) 100vw, 358px\" \/>We advertise on the main national real estate websites that buyers use to look for homes.  This results in a steady stream of &#8220;leads&#8221; &#8230; potential buyer clients.  Although we&#8217;re happy to get clients from internet advertising, it is a small part of our business.  Our goal in responding to these leads is to provide good service by answering questions, and pointing people in the right direction.  We don&#8217;t give them the hard sell and try to convert them to clients.<\/p>\n<p>Email addresses are usually the only contact information that we have to work with &#8211; no name and no phone number.  You should see some of the strange addresses that people pick for their online presence!  Here are a few of my favorites themes, with an example of each (sightly modified, and stripped of the domain).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The Nickname<\/strong>: This may be the most popular since it&#8217;s a true part of someone&#8217;s identity.  Two of the best that I have seen come through my inbox are requests for information from izzythejoker@xyz.com and lilholla15@xyz.com.  I&#8217;m comfortable addressing a reply to Izzy, but what do I do about Lil Holla?<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Description<\/strong>: Others pick an address that describes them, like Sara did with her address &#8230; beautifullsara8@xyz.com.  I did not have an opportunity to confirm that the adjective is appropriate, but we&#8217;ll take her word for it.  And I guess &#8220;beautifulsara&#8221; must have already been taken!<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Random<\/strong>: Finally, there are addresses that have no obvious context, like bubble1234@xyz.com.  This one could be a nickname, but it&#8217;s not obvious.  Others addresses seem like they could be references to a business.  In some ways these are the most difficult of all because they create a puzzle that I want to try to solve &#8211; who are these people and why did they pick their email address?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Most of the time we never hear back from internet leads, so the mystery lives on forever.  Perhaps the real conclusion here is that in today&#8217;s age of mobile technology the email address doesn&#8217;t matter all that much to some people.  If you prefer text messaging, then maybe you don&#8217;t even need an email address.  But on the rare occasion when you do, the name you choose to use can make a lasting impression on the recipient.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Have you come across any crazy email addresses that you can share? (Please modify them slightly and substitute the xyz.com domain before posting)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We advertise on the main national real estate websites that buyers use to look for homes. This results in a steady stream of &#8220;leads&#8221; &#8230; potential buyer clients. Although we&#8217;re happy to get clients from internet advertising, it is a small part of our business. Our goal in responding to these leads is to provide good service by answering questions, and pointing people in the right direction. We don&#8217;t give them the hard sell and<\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a class=\"myButt three\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/19\/amusing-internet-leads\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1568,1575],"tags":[3614,1824,3224,3617,3616,3615],"class_list":["post-8972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buying","category-fun","tag-address","tag-buyers","tag-email","tag-internet","tag-leads","tag-odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8972"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9022,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972\/revisions\/9022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}