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What You Should Know About Email
Matt Browne, Z57 REALTOR® Resource
Promptness
The first fundamental rule of email follow up is promptness. There are two types of people in the world, those who sit in front of a computer screen with their email open and those who don’t. Therefore, you are always fighting a loosing battle when it comes to promptness. You can NEVER respond too quickly via email.
But reality dedicates that we have appointments and meetings and we can’t be in front of our computers ALL the time, so what’s one to do? Sometimes responding to each and every email can be time consuming, especially when most people like to save email follow up until the evening (off peak hours).
My advice is to read each email throughout the day and respond with a confirmation or questions. That way the person sending the message knows it wasn’t caught up in the spam filter and they have an expectation as to when their email will be answered.
Simple techniques such as confirming message reception will go along way towards prompt returns. Last tip: closure is key. Responding to emails with “Done” or “Thanks” is actually very helpful. A quick reply will let others know they can stop worrying about whether the job was done.
Professionalism
Professionalism is just as important for email as it is in person. Simple greetings and personalized salutations go a long way in the business of automated signatures. Start by improving your email letterhead and signature line. Your emails should communicate your brand identity to your audience. Every email sent is an impressions opportunity; you’ll want to make sure you use yours wisely.
Having email at your own domain is an excellent way to convey a professional image. This means having something like YourName@YourWebsite.com. Many people are afraid to change their email from the AOL address because that’s what clients are used to. The great thing about having your website is that your can direct your professional looking email address to your AOL email just like Call Forwarding. This way you add the professionalism and you get to keep your AOL address.
A good signature line is not too long (more than 7 lines) and has all your contact information including website, fax, address, name, and title. A trend among signature lines is to include a “Call to Action” or motivating verbiage to get people to visit your website. A few examples are found below:
| Matt Browne REALTOR ® Coldwell Banker Advantage http://www.cbadvantage.com browne@cbadvantage.com 800.899.8148 x 228 Visit our website for over 1,000 listings updated daily! |
Matt Browne Coldwell Banker Advantage http://www.cbadvantage.com browne@cbadvantage.com 800.899.8148 x 228 Our website now has over 20,000 property photos and state of the art virtual tours! |
################# Matt Browne Contributing Writer Z57, Inc. http://www.z57.com 800.899.8148 x 228 “View our new Agent Blogs on CBAdvantage.com” ################# |
If you have a smaller or mid size company, your signature line should be consistent with every member of the team. Occasionally it’s appropriate to use product promotion or announcements in your email signature line, but this can get overdone and abused very quickly.
Ending an email is your opportunity to have classy follow up. Quite often people end with an automated signature line, forgetting to personalize the ending. Even if you use an automated signature line, you should still end every email with a personal salutation. You will be surprised how far a “Have a nice day” will go.
Subject Lines
Subject lines are a very important part of email. They are analogous to a title of your book. Use your subject lines wisely by including keywords relevant to the subject matter. Never respond to emails off subject. It's much easier to create a new discussion than to have an off topic email trail.
Attachments
Remember how important visual aids were in speech class? Well, that is AS important in email, only they go by the name of “Attachment.” Attachments are your props; they assist in communicating your message and they can be used to communicate very important pieces of information. Be sure to always reference that you have included an attachment for the receiver.
The Do’s
Always make links clickable by adding “ http://www. and .com “ before and after the website respectively. When using a really long link, it's good to use a free service like http://www.TinyURL.com to make your website address smaller and easier to send over email.
Group multiple thoughts together clearly. If you are sending an email that has more than two action items, be sure to group your thoughts line by line use (1) and (2) and separators.
Use an email with a spell check program. If you are using convenient web-based mail, then write your email in WORD and copy and paste them into your email after your have written it.
When sending important emails don’t be afraid to save a draft and come back to it later. This works especially well if it’s a heated email.
If you are sending any email over a page long, please write it in WORD first and copy it over.
The Don’ts
No music, no animation, ever - no exceptions!
Don’t send forwards to your clients. You might think its a good idea at the time, but you don’t ever want to be accused of spamming your clients with unwanted not-so-funny forwards.
Don’t “Reply to All” unless you know you want to email EVERYONE originally addressed.
Don’t send a message to all your friends or associates addressed to each person individually. Send the email to yourself and BCC to everyone else. That way you keep private who you are sending the message to and if people choose to reply to all, you won’t start a massive discussion.
Matt Browne is a contributing writer for Z57 and manages a marketing firm integralimpressions.com
Points of Interest:
- Agent Excellence Plus Custom Email Templates Package
- Z-Mailer Newsletter Tool
- March 2005 Z-News newsletter
