WEB REVIEW

Web Review: Technology
Throw Out the Old Envelopes, Stamps

Say goodbye to snail mail—Evite lets you send online invitations for all your events.

REVIEWED BY CHRISTOPHER M. LEPORINI

Web Site: Evite
URL: www.evite.com

What the Site Offers

Sending snail-mail invitations for open houses, first-time buyer seminars, past client get-togethers, or office parties consumes time and energy, and incurs postage and printing costs. Evite eliminates these hassles, allowing you to generate customizable e-mail invitations and manage RSVPs online. The service is free; however, you must register on the site—providing your name, e-mail address, and zip code—to distribute invitations. (The site states that it won’t share this information without consent.)

The service e-mails invited guests a link where they can view their invitation online. This customizable page functions as your event home page; guests can access it to double-check location, time, and address information, or to browse other guests’ comments. You can control additional options that allow guests to be able to view the complete guest list and invite more people. You also can include itemized checklists—for instance, to hand out food assignments—and solicit feedback on invitees’ favorite appetizers, drinks, and music.

Guests can RSVP with a click of a button and add comments. Evite will e-mail you updates when a guest responds to the invitation. Also, you can check your event account page on the site at any time to monitor responses and guests’ comments. Another handy tool offered by Evite, is an online tally of guests’ RSVPs, showing you the number of guests who will be attending, who won’t be attending, and how many haven’t responded yet.

Evite, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, was founded in 1998. It was acquired in 2001 by Ticketmaster, an international live-event ticketing company.

Editor’s Note: In order to view some of the Evite options listed below in this review, you need to register on the site.

Valuable Site Features for Real Estate Professionals

• Create an Evite. The site makes creating and managing online invitations a snap. Evite provides customizable options to personalize your invitation, including features such as background colors, fonts, clip-art graphics, sound, and directions from MapQuest.com. You also can easily upload images or photographs. There are dozens of templates to choose from, or you can create invitations from scratch.
  
  Evite’s “Address Book” allows you to import contact information from other contact management programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and even your Palm Pilot. Once you import your contacts, you can create different groups of guests in the Evite address book for different types of events.
  
  If you want a little more help in creating your invitations, you can use the Evite Wizard, which walks you through creating an electronic invitation for an invitation-only event.
  
• My Evite. This section functions as your address book, social calendar, and management system for Evite events. You can use this feature to send e-mail reminders about upcoming events to your invitees and view a calendar displaying your upcoming events. You can even create an online album to post pictures for your guests to view after the event.
  
  Valuable Site Features for Your Customers
  
• Post an Activity Listing. Your relocating customers can use the “Public Events Directory” to feel more at home in their new city. They can post an activity listing to find people with common interests, such as sports and recreation; these listings expire after 60 days. To use this feature, your customers will be required to fill out Evite’s “About Me” page, accessed through the link above. Filling out the “About Me” page will create an Evite Inbox so that other users can contact your customer.
  
  
• Find Get Togethers. Do you want to help your clients get acclimated to their new communities? You can inform them about this Evite feature, which allows users to search out local events in categories (such as community, leisure, and lifestyle) and also by date, keyword, and zip code. One limitation of this feature is that your clients’ search results may vary depending on their neighborhood. Some areas turn up more listings than others.

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Suggest a Site For Review
Every week, REALTOR® Magazine Online's Web review editor surfs the Internet to find sites useful to your business and off-hours lives. Have a favorite real estate Web site that you would like to see reviewed? Send your suggestions to Chris Leporini at mediatech@realtors.org. All decisions on which sites will be reviewed are completely at the discretion of REALTOR® Magazine Online's editorial staff. Please note: this column does not review individual practitioner or brokerage sites.

The column's focus includes free sites, as well as sites that charge for goods and services, but which still offer a free component of practical, sustained value to real estate practitioners, such as a free newsletter or regular news information.
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REALTOR® Magazine Online's "Web Review" summarizes the content of Web sites that may be of interest to members. NAR and REALTOR® Magazine Online are not responsible for, and nothing in the Web site profile shall constitute NAR's or REALTOR® Magazine Online's endorsement of, the web site, its content, products and services, or its provider. NAR and REALTOR® Magazine Online believe the information contained in this profile was correct and accurate as of the time it was prepared, but do not warrant or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of that information and are not responsible for changes in the Web site. Members should conduct their own independent review of the Web site prior to any use of Web site, its content, products, or services to determine their suitability for the member's intended purpose.

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