Do you have a friend who sends you truly fascinating-to-read e-mail messages, replete with imbedded hyperlinks? Now, you can do it, too!

Maybe you’ve marveled at how “alive” the friend’s e-mails are because they contain strategically placed links. Perhaps you even wanted to hide your head in shame thinking about the boring, gray looking, all-text e-mails that you send back to that friend. Do you worry that some of your other recipients might be thinking, “What a drag s/he must be.”

Maybe you’ve even wondered how to make a key technical word in a message “clickable” so that your recipient can just click on the word and then be taken directly to a wonderful, explanatory reference, such as Webopedia, about that word.

For example, what if you could create a hyperlink right in your e-mail text to the very example you want the recipient to see:

……….“And of course, Mr. and Mrs. Homeseller, we will show your home online to prospective buyers in a series of 360-degree virtual tours like this one that really have a powerful impact and portray your home just the way it really looks.”

Maybe, in a moment of introspection, (those happen all the time, right?) you’ve thought that you need to finally “get graphic.”

Well, for once you were right about e-mailing---doing content-rich e-mails will give you precedence over competitor agents who are still making old fashioned and boring e-mail presentations. Why? Because variety, color and rich poignant imagery combine to make your e-mails far more memorable. Best of all, it’s so easy.

How to easily insert links:

(Note: Instructions in this column cover only Outlook Express, version 6+, which most people use. To see what you have, go to “Help” atop your Outlook Express Window and click on “Help.” The version number will appear. If you do not have version the new 6.0, you should. Go to www.microsoft.com and download Internet Explorer 6.0. Outlook Express is a component of Internet Explorer 6.0. Then read the rest of this column. If you are on AOL, you should either quit AOL and get a professional ISP or quit real estate. AOL is a grown up’s toy and is almost as unprofessional to Web-savvy consumers as using free e-mail service from either Yahoo or Hotmail.)

To create a hyperlink in an e-mail address, you need to open up an e-mail box and be sure it is set for sending HTML e-mail. You do this by first having your e-mail window open. (The window where you can see the list of your inbox messages) Then, click at the top on Tools, then Options, and then Send. Find the “Mail Sending Format” section and click the hole that says: HTML.

Now, go back to the top of Microsoft Outlook Express and click on “Create Mail.” Notice when you do this that the blank e-mail box that opens up has a horizontal menu of many tools that you can use to make your e-mails more colorful and exciting. These include choice of font, type size, paragraph style, Bold, Italic, Underline, and a button whereby you can choose what color to make your type.

Next on the horizontal line are buttons to automatically add numbers or bullets to lists that you make, then a tool that can shift the position of objects, or text, in your e-mail box to the left, center, or right. Another button makes borders become justified.

The last three buttons to the right include one that you click to insert a nifty horizontal divider line (great for separating topics or sections of your e-mail).

Next is a button for inserting a hyperlink into text and to the right of that is a button you click to insert a picture or other image that is stored in your computer into an e-mail message.

How many of these tools that are always available to you have you ever taken the time to learn? Such tools help you make your e-mails far less boring… and you DO know that I am talking to you, right? All these incredible tools for customizing e-mails and virtually no one uses them. It boggles the mind how complacent we become about learning once we leave school.

To turn a word into a hyperlink that can be clicked upon to take a reader to a predictable Web page, do the following:

Type your e-mail message, then pass your curser over your choice of word or words or entire sentence or paragraph that you want to make clickable. Highlight the choice that you want to make into a hyperlink.

Then, while leaving the text highlighted inside the e-mail box, move your cursor up and click on the button located on the horizontal line, mentioned above, for inserting hyperlinks. The button is inactive until you highlight some text. Then, it comes alive and you can click on it.

Another way to create a hyperlink is to click on “Insert” atop the “New Message” blank e-mail box. On the drop down menu that appears, select “Hyperlink.” When you do, a little window opens up. (The same window opens up when you click on the little hyperlink button, which looks like a little blue world with a chain link in front of it.)

Next, no matter how you got to it, where the little window that opened up says URL: simply type in the URL of the Web page that you want the highlighted text to go to and click OK. (Be sure that you include the “http://” portion of the URL and do not just begin it solely with www.)

When you return to the text that you highlighted in the e-mail box you will see that the words or section that you chose is now a hyperlink---it’s underlined and turned blue.

But if you click on it now, you will not go to the URL that you typed. However, when the recipient gets the e-mail message and clicks on the hyperlink, it will take him straight to the URL that you gave it. You can insert hyperlinks jillions of times in the same e-mail message if you want.

To test if your hyperlinks are working, send the message to yourself (Yes, Virginia, you can send e-mails to yourself). Then, click on the links and see if they go where you wanted them to go. If they do, delete any unwanted address portion, re-address the e-mail, and send it to the originally intended recipient.

Part II - "How To Easily Insert Photos Into Your e-Mails" will post on tomorrow's Agent News.