Have you ever wondered how Market Action, the monthly statistics newsletter from RMLS™, gets produced each month?
Gerry, one of the RMLS™ training staff, often tells tales to his classes of a lone staff person who holes herself up for a week to produce Market Action. He reports that REALTORS® in his classes will often gasp at the fact that just one person is responsible for putting the thing together.
It’s not quite that bad, but we wanted to share an overview with subscribers about how Market Action gets put together each month.
Day 1
I spend the whole day pulling data from RMLSweb, generating/updating charts with the data, and then inserting those charts into layout documents for all 14 editions of Market Action—that’s 69 pages in all! Generally speaking I do nothing else the entire eight hour day—that includes checking email or answering phone calls. Distraction can cause errors. Fortunately, as I’ve now been doing this for several months
One
Day 2
In the morning, Christina Smestad verifies that the charts are correct and that no errors have been made. This includes verifying data that was pulled
The RMLS™ Data Accuracy team has noticed an upswing in reports about personal promotion on RMLSweb—particularly on video tours—the past several weeks.
What the Rules Say
Here’s what the RMLS™ Rules and Regulations say about personal promotion on RMLSweb: 3.24 Personal Promotion and Contact Information in Public Remarks and on Photos Prohibited Listings submitted to RMLS™ may be used to provide information pertinent to the listed properly only and may not be used to provide broker, seller, or lessor contact information, or to advertise a subscriber’s services to the public by way of direct or indirect advertising or “branding” of the listing data (through linking or otherwise), including photograph(s). This rule does not prohibit the accidental inclusion of yard signs in photographs. “Virtual tours” and “video tours” may not include “branding” or personal advertising in the body of the tour. RMLS™ may remove personal promotion from public remarks or photo(s) with personal promotion.
In other words, only a description of the property is permitted in public remarks, and only imagery of the property is permitted in photos or videos.
Examples of Personal Promotion in a Listing:
Examples of Acceptable Listing:
According to the RMLS™ Board of Directors “personal promotion” on your RMLSweb listing includes (but is not limited to) the name of the listing broker/agent, any contact phone numbers, website links (if that website provides any information other than a description of the property), and 1-800 numbers with recorded messages that “capture” information from the caller. Virtual and video tours must be unbranded and contain only images of the property.
We don’t want to remove your hard work from RMLSweb, but our job ensures listing data quality on RMLSweb and beyond, as well as fairness to all our subscribers. Contact the RMLS™ Data Accuracy Department at (503) 236-7657 if you want to discuss your listings with us.
Each year on the RMLS™ Subscriber Satisfaction Survey, we ask how our members receive news from RMLS™. This year, 54.2% of respondents said they get news through the RMLS™ Weekly Report. We’d love to see a higher number here, because the RMLS™ Weekly Report is one of our few ways to keep subscribers regularly updated about RMLS™ news, new features we’ll be releasing, and events we may be holding in your area.
Have you been missing the RMLS™ Weekly Report? Here are a few reasons we may be missing your mailbox.
Issue #1: Incorrect/Missing Contact Email on RMLSweb
We update the send list for the RMLS™ Weekly Report every few weeks directly from RMLSweb. Check your user preferences (Document #1756 can help) to make sure the address in the “RMLSweb Contact Email” field is current.
Issue #2: You’ve Opted Out of Constant Contact Emails
RMLS™ uses Constant Contact to send the RMLS™ Weekly Report each week. We also use the service to send Market Action to subscribers each month as well as periodically sending other important messages.
Perhaps there is another business who also uses Constant Contact, and you clicked the “SafeUnsubscribe” link at the bottom of their email. That actually unsubscribes you from ALL Constant Contact mailings, including those from RMLS™.
Issue #3: The Dreaded Spam Filter
RMLS™ employees have the ability to see certain types of interaction with each email we send through Constant Contact. Periodically a subscriber will contact us saying they’re not receiving the RMLS™ Weekly Report, and we can see the email was indeed sent to them and did not bounce back. This is the toughest issue to solve because it requires that the subscriber do some detective work on their end, as it’s likely that the messages are being caught in some sort of spam filter along the way.
If we see that we have sent emails to you with no bounces, we will first ask you to check out any spam filters you may have on your email program, on your email server, or anywhere else on your side of the process. It’s tough to tell you where to look because everyone’s email is set up differently. For example, Mary may use a web-based email service like Gmail or Hotmail, while Elizabeth may have a custom domain (betsy@betsysellshouses.com) that auto-forwards to her Comcast address. Meanwhile, Fred may work for a company with an IT staff that control their mail servers, and he views everything using Outlook.
Mary, Elizabeth, and Fred will each need to do a different type of detective work.
Mary’s web-based email may have one or more spam folders to look in. Elizabeth may need to search for emails through her domain host (whoever she pays for betsysellshouses.com) and through Comcast, her internet service provider (ISP). Fred will have to look in his Outlook spam folder(s) but he’ll also have the help of his coworkers in IT to help.
Often that will solve the problem, but if it doesn’t, the next step is determining whether Constant Contact has been blacklisted at a subscriber’s email provider.
Issue #4: Blacklisting
If RMLS™ staff determines emails to a subscriber are being sent successfully but the subscriber can’t find them in various spam filters, it may be because Constant Contact servers have been blacklisted by your ISP. If Server A has been blacklisted by Server B, it means that no email from Server A will be accepted by Server B and it will never get to the subscriber.
Coming
soon to RMLSweb will be the ability
to see and track the listing reports that you send to us using the “Report
Issue” button found on listings within RMLSweb.
We
will be adding a new column in the Back Office dropdown at the top of the
page. The new column will be called
Listing Issue. In the new column will be
up to 4 new options depending on the access level of your account. The new buttons will be:
Reported By Me
This will allow you to see the status of issues
that you have reported.
My violations
This will allow you to see all of the issues
that have been reported on your listings.
If you are the Participant broker for your firm
this will allow you to see all the issues that have been reported for your firm.
Both listing violations and courtesy notices
will be shown here.
My Open Violations
This will allow you to see only the issues that
are currently unresolved
My Notifications
This will allow you to see and read any of the
notifications that were sent to you.
This should list only the notifications on one
of your own listings regardless of your status in the firm.
We recently made a change that some of you may have noticed. We have updated the way the Report Issue button works. The reason for this change is that we have recently upgraded our data review and correction processes with a new suite of software called Listing Data Checker. This new software allows us to review listings more efficiently and to notify our subscribers of any corrections that need to be made to keep the data accurate. A part of this new software suite is improved reporting functions for you. The new interface is streamlined and all that is needed is a brief description of the issue that you are alerting us to. That is all. Since the report goes directly into the new software we can match it up to specific issues and send out notices to get the data updated. We are also able to group reports together if we receive multiple notifications for the same listing. This will allow us to track the issues that our subscribers are reporting and make changes to the system as they are needed. Thank you for your patience as we continue to improve the quality of the data you rely on. Remember, all you need to do is give us a brief description of the issue and we will take care of the rest.
