HomeGauge News Alert (April, 2006)
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Contest Winners!
HG wants to thank all of you who participated in our website updates for "Why Get a Home Inspection". While we think all the responses were good, we chose the ones listed at this link: http://www.homegauge.com/buyerseller/index.html . One month of free gold service will go to all entries that we used at the above link. Thanks for making the HomeGauge website even better!
HomeGauge email changes and fighting SPAM!
Spam!!! Don’t you just hate all those emails about "Viagra", "mortgages" and "increasing your manhood" (that manhood stuff doesn’t work by the way). Companies such as AOL, Comcast, Hotmail and more have given their customer (your buyer) power to filter out SPAM and junk mail. The problem can be when the buyer sets the filter so high that only their circle of friends get in and they forget that they have set their filters so high. What happens to your email? Occasionally it gets placed in their junk mail folder, and many buyers don’t even know they have a junk mail folder. So they call you up and say they didn’t get the email link. HG offers the following tips to help you.
Your notification email leaves the HG mail server and goes to the buyer's, or agent's, email server (AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) and the two mail servers communicate. The Buyer or agent's email server tells the HG server that it has your email and it will take it from there. From that point on, HG is out of the loop. The buyer or agent's email server places the email either in the inbox, junk mail folder or returns the email back to the sender (HG). If we get a return email, we send it on to you. This means that you spelled the email address wrong or you were given the email address incorrectly. A bounce back is not always guaranteed for a wrong email address either. If you sent the email to jon@aol.com and it should have been john@aol.com, then the correct person will not get it and you will not get a bounce back message. So it is always important to check the "Report Viewed" field in My Reports so that you will know when they view a report.
HG has changed our email server for returned emails, so it will make them come back to you as soon as we get them. It does not take care of spam filtering, and I must say right now, that if you think sending a PDF would be easier - you would be mistaken. A PDF is an attachment and attachments are known to carry viruses. Consequently, you will not have anywhere near the success rate of the lightweight link email letter we send out. Here comes the nerdy part that you don’t have to understand….So, in order to send the email back to you instantly, we had to identify your email by an ID that we assigned to each inspector. Those inspectors who want to tell their agent or buyer, who is having trouble getting the notification emails, to set their filter to include homegauge.com, will now need to tell them instead, to include inspector+(your ID number)@homegauge.com To find out what your ID number is, click on the 3rd party email link on your list of uploaded reports, and you will see it in the “From” area. If you are confused at this nerd part, don’t worry about it.
If the customer or agent didn’t get their email, and they have never signed in, you can look it up for them by signing in to your home page at the HG website and click on MY AGENTS or MY CUSTOMERS. From there you can see their password and username and then tell them over the phone to go to www.HomeGauge.com and put in their user name and password on the home page to view their report.
Give your customers and agents a professional newsletter!
John Onofrey from Texas has been a HomeGauge customer for several years and has launched the best marketing newsletter for your buyers and agents, that is sure to keep them your customer. He is offering the newsletter as a marketing tool for you and your company, because it will be your name and company name that your buyers see when they get the newsletter. http://www.homehintsenews.com/ You can also see a sample http://www.homehintsenews.com/sample.html. If you like what you see, get the first month free by signing up through HomeGauge by signing up here.
West Coast Training for HomeGauge software customers!
More info: http://www.homegauge.com/inspector/training/westcoast.html
Office staff or multi-inspectors can save time and eliminate double entry of report info.
Your office manager takes the inspection order using the online calendar. The inspector can then download all the inspection info straight into HG software without typing in any info. The online calendar can be set to Private for those of you who do not want the public to use it. Only your office staff can see it. They schedule the inspection and it still can text message your phone out in the field. You can then open HG software and select Download online appointments (From the SHGI menu at top of HG). The report info will automatically go to your reports folder. You pull up into the driveway of the home and select "Open" from HG software and open the report. No double entry, no hassle and it is as accurate as the office person who filled it out. This integration works just the same when the Calendar is set to public and the agents or buyers use it. Set it to Private and only you and your staff have access. Either way, eliminate double entry by using the online Calendar. If you haven’t looked at it lately, take another look because we have made improvements and we want your feedback.
GET at least 5 more agents using you this year!
If you are uploading reports with our Gold service you can easily get at least 5 more agents using you regularly in a year's time or less. Here’s how: Next time you are at the inspection and the buyer and agent are together and discussing issues you found, ask the buyer’s agent if he or she would like you to send a copy of the report to the seller’s agent for him or her (with the buyer’s permission). This way the buyer’s agent only has to submit a list of item numbers as references as to what the buyer wishes the seller to address. You will find that most agents will happily agree. Now you get to call that seller’s agent up and say “Hi Cindy? I am Russell Buchanan with HomeBuyers inspection and I am at one of your listings 23 Chestnut Drive. The Buyer’s agent, Jim, wants me to send a copy of the inspection report to you. What is your email address? Thanks, and if you or the seller has any questions, please call me.” Now you can market to two agents per inspection. Send the seller’s agent a 3rd party email link with an easy password. The selling agent will get the link, put in their password and “BOOM” there is the report. The agent will usually be at their office and frequently will call other agents over to look at the report. A common comment by the selling agent is…my inspector doesn’t do anything like this! This method works because links and passwords are friendly to the recipient.
Commercial or Multi Family inspections
The template "Multi-Plex" replaces the older Multi-Family template. This new template has been streamlined and is superior to the older multi-family template that required repetitious entry of styles and materials and excluding items on each unit duplicated.
Tip: steps on how to use it simplified.
1. Open the multi-plex commercial template.
2. Go FILE, SAVE TEMPLATE AS…and name it the buyer’s name. Say ok. Now you are in a duplicated template. This keeps the original multi-plex template unchanged and not used. After this inspection you can delete the template named after the buyer because it is only used to create this inspection report.
3. Inspect the first unit.
4. Now before you start duplicating the unit section, delete all inspection items not pertaining to this building. Now when you duplicate, you won’t need to exclude items that are not in each unit because you had deleted them after inspecting the first unit.
5. Styles/Materials are in their own section so you only have to do them once.
Another tip is to take a picture of each unit door before you go in so you can tell which pictures belong to which unit.
Real Estate company declares HomeGauge report upload number one! One of our HomeGauge inspectors, Don Jones from GA, said that the owner of a 116 person real estate company was so pleased with the Gold Service that she is going to require her agents to use inspectors that are uploading reports. The owner/agent explains that she loses time downloading a PDF report, and time re-sending the PDF report to other parties related in the transaction. She stated that she easily loses an hour shuffling around a PDF as well as receiving printed reports. With the HomeGauge Gold Service she said it took her 10 seconds for the report to appear (that’s the “BOOM” part) and a minute to forward the report. The owner/agent explained that if she multiplies that hour loss by the number of agents in her company who also loses time, she is losing opportunities to sell more homes. If your business needs a boost and you are NOT using our upload feature (Gold or Platinum service) then you should try it. Call us and tell us you want Gold Service and start making agents smile!
HomeGauge Gold service saves Gasoline…? Can you believe it? HG had a recent testimonial of an inspector who said, “Since I started using the Gold Service I have cut my gas bill in half because I no longer have to deliver the report by truck. I now send the report using HG Gold Service!” I know our Gold service is great, but wow, saving gasoline? No telling what else the Gold Service can do.
Russell Buchanan
HomeGauge, President
russell@HomeGauge.com
877 274 4299
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