The question you should be asking is, how many of those people are they making meaningful contacts with? In my opinion when your database gets to 15,000 people, I don't see how you can continue to be personal.

Example, you have 15,000 people receiving daily listings emailed to them. Every so often you should be calling them to see if things have changed in their timeline to purchase. Do you really think those agents have that many buyers in their local area? Most people wish they had a tenth of of a tenth of that number of buyers. 15,000 phone calls would make a virtual assistant very happy, that's for sure, because if the agent is that busy, there's no way anyone can make that many contacts and still be productive all by themselves.

I remember someone here saying they made 450 phone calls after New Years. That is a lot of phone calls.

that is true, but it's all a numbers game.   I have read that 73% of people prefer email contact over voice contact.  I myself do, that's for sure, it's so much more efficient.

Each day, I usually get at least one person I havn't heard from in months send me an email and ask a quick question.  I promptly respond, eventually these turn into valid clients.  

It is true, I can't make 15,000 phone calls, that's what I like email automation until they are ready to raise their hand further up and say they are ready to proceed forward.   

 Some of my email automation is so good I get responses from people I havnt' heard from in 6-8 months that respond to the email like it was a personal email to them, I love that.  One key is to put their name in the email message in different points, including on the subject line.  Most don't realize there is automated ways to drop the contacts first name, last name, other info directly in without doing the work...I bet most agents don't even know that!

I would guess that the person with 15,000 names in his database imported more than a few of them from a zip code or census tract "farm". 

And the fellow who made 450 calls on New Years, I wonder how many folks receiving those calls on a Holiday were ~thrilled~ to have their day interupted by a salesman?

 When I hear this kind of nonsense, I realize why I am sometimes embarassed to tell people I'm a real estate broker.  

Cheryl, he meant after New Years Day. Here's a link to the blog post.

Craig, I guess if you're looking at it that way, then yea, a good amount of people will call. I'm just worried about the ones who get lost in the shuffle and go elsewhere. 

Databases of 5,000 and more usually include a geographic farm. Our team has a database of about 4,000 past clients, but that has been built over 20 years. We also have a direct-mail program that goes to 15,000+, so you could say our total database is 20,000+.