As a real estate professional, one of your on-going tasks is self-promotion. You always want to make sure people know what you do and how to contact you if they ever want to buy or sell real estate.  On the one hand, you’re always looking for ways to circulate your business cards and keep your name and contact information in front of lots of people.  On the other hand, you—like all of us—want to discourage junk e-mail. These two goals, it seems, are mutually exclusive.

Most Internet security experts will tell you that the best way to minimize spam is to avoid the wide distribution of your e-mail address.  They say things like don’t post your business card in public places and don’t drop it in that fishbowl when you’re visiting a restaurant. To avoid getting unsolicited e-mail, they say, you’ve got to keep your e-mail address as private as possible and only share it with your closest friends and associates.   But people who are in business for themselves can’t really survive that way.

It’s a delicate balance, but there are things you can do:

• Have a separate e-mail address for business.  Never use your business e-mail to make Internet purchases or to participate in online forums or discussions.
• Consider having some business cards printed that don’t include your e-mail address.  These will be the ones you post in public places and distribute widely.  If someone in possession of one of these cards needs to reach you, he or she can always call you.
• If you have control over your website, make sure your e-mail address does not appear there for web bots to harvest.  Instead have your webmaster create a form that prospects can complete and send if they need to contact you.
• Also, find out from your webmaster what kind of spam filter you have and how to configure it so doesn’t inadvertently block e-mails you want to receive.
• Never reply to suspicious e-mails. Instead, mark them as spam or delete them.