How quickly are you responding to emails?

After a busy morning, you finally sit down to eat your lunch when you receive an email from a client requesting some new information on a home they have looked at.

Do you reply to them before you leave for the day? Or do you wait a few days because, in the meantime, you are still replying to emails from last week?

By no means do you have to reply to emails immediately, but your response time could be helping–or hurting–your business.

According to a recent national survey, 19 percent of people expect you to respond to a business email in 12 hours, with 52 percent of people expecting you to respond in at least 24 hours. Waiting a week to reply? Only three percent of responders thought that response time was acceptable.

If you struggle with replying to emails in a reasonable time, a new and free app may be the answer for you. MailTime makes emails on your smart phone more convenient to read and respond to. The app reformats and summarizes your email in a similar view to a text message. It omits all unnecessary information that is attached to the email, such as copies, signatures and meta data.

“You can lose your deal if you don’t reply promptly to an email,” said MailTime Co-Founder Charlie Sheng. “As a Realtor®, you are always on the go, and constantly getting new emails that you should be replying to in a timely fashion.”

The app also warns you if your response is too wordy in your replies.

“The new polite is being efficient. In the past, writing long emails was seen as being polite, but now being polite is being specific and to the point. It saves the time of writer and the sender,” added Sheng.