Let's say you've made the jump from fax to email with your homebuyer communications. Let's also say you've upgraded your emailing technology from Microsoft Outlook or Act! to a professional email software. As a real estate professional now using the Internet to increase your client base and your home selling efficiently, what should be your next step?

Answer: you're ready to give your email messaging a tune up. This is a critical point in your email communications. The same attention to detail home sellers should be using to show their houses should also be applied to your email messaging. Let's go over some of the most important characteristics of successful business to client email messages.

Your first order of business

The "voice" of your email message -- the one that speaks directly to your prospective clients -- is of such importance that it is worth your time to find the person on your staff who can write a great-sounding letter, if that person is not you. Technical email solutions can almost always be worked out using available tech support, but what you won't find easily is an email voice that truly speaks to your clients in a personalized way.

You probably already know who this person is: He or she is the one who writes the correspondence you probably haven't paid much attention to in the past. So, your first order of business is to recruit and train this special person to start composing your extremely important client email correspondence.

Importance of the 'From' field

Did you know that you have a spam filter inside your head? It kicks in whenever you're scanning your own email inbox and, by reviewing the "From" fields and subject lines of your inbound emails, the filter inside your head identifies the email you've received as either something you want to read, or something you're going to trash.

Compose your email message with these subconscious filters in mind. In other words, the "From" field has incredible importance, not only with the effectiveness of your email campaigns, but with your product branding and personal reputation as well. It's the first thing your clients will see when they get their first email from you. And you only get one first impression, right?

The "From" field should either be your name, the name of your company, the name of your newsletter, or the name of your product or service. It should be immediately recognizable by your clients. It should not be a name or word they wouldn't recognize, nor should it be in all capital letters. It also should not say "free" or "mortgage," nor should it change with each issue. If you need any more pointers on what not to do with your "From" field, look over the email messages you've received this week that you've thrown in the recycle bin.

Subject line as second priority

The importance of the subject line is second only to the "From" field. Technically, it should be treated with the same reverence. Some quick rules of thumb: Don't make the subject line text so long that it runs out of the visible display area. Also, if possible, the subject line should state the nature of the message and/or who it's from, if this is not apparent in the "From" field.

For readability purposes, the subject line should be no longer than 40 characters long, give or take a few spaces. "New home listing from your first and last name" is 38 characters long, for example.

Personalize for deliverability

If possible, your email message should contain a personalized first name salutation. This is accomplished by inserting a merge field in your email message that will automatically insert the first names of your customers from your database as the emails are being sent.

A personalized salutation in your email messaging is critical. It helps recipients separate requested emails from unsolicited spam email, increasing deliverability. Personalized messages also serve as reminders to clients that they have indeed requested your important email messages. Most email marketers agree that addressing customers on a first-name basis is the best way to build interactive relationships via email.

These same marketers also agree that it's a good idea to approach message personalization slowly, at first. As you grow more proficient in email message composition, and your company's written voice grows stronger from experience, you can then slowly introduce more merge fields which increase the personal experience of your email messaging. It's referred to as a "crawl, walk, run" approach to email marketing.

Message testing

Here's something you may not have been aware of: Emailing a draft message to yourself isn't a test. The message doesn't even leave your provider's system, and such a test won't tell you much. You'll need to test your message with email addresses outside of your Internet Provider's (IP) address in order to determine how the message will look when customers get it. When you do start testing your messages with outside email providers, look for stray marks, gaps in the text, gaps around your merge fields, or whether your images are rendering in the email. See "Images and emailing" for more notes on using images in your campaigns.

Also, when testing messages, make whatever corrections are needed in the original email message and send again. Even though your email marketing software may have a built-in HTML editor using WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) layout technology, unintentional spacing within sentences and between paragraphs can still go unseen by the HTML editor, yet appear in the final message. You can't find these small edits without testing your message thoroughly first. Any change to the email message should be reason for another test.

Email frequency effect

When emailing clients, ensure that you are sending your email campaigns at the frequency promised. Your weekly emails should be going out once a week, your monthly emails going once a month, etc. Take care not to over email your customers, unless you are intentionally looking to thin your email subscriber list, or reduce the impact of your email campaigns.

One of the goals of your email marketing campaigns should be to identify and secure a faithful core of customers who will repeat business with you, or forward your emails to friends needing your services.

The old adage is that it's easier to sell to an existing customer than find a new one. You should keep this in mind when you are giving the green light to the number of emails being sent to the same client list from your company.

Again, you need to make sure you are delivering emails at the same frequency promised at the point of permission. If you have to increase or decrease this frequency, you should keep your clients advised. Make your frequency too high, and you're liable to see a significant drop in subscribers. Decrease your frequency too much, and your audience is likely to forget you and the fact that they subscribed to your messages, giving you the same result as the over-emailing.

Images and emailing

If you use images such as logos in your email message, you typically have two choices: you can embed them in the outbound email itself, or you can post the image on your web server that renders when the email message is received and opened.

The recommended method by most email marketing specialists is posting the image on your server with a hyperlink that renders the image in the email when opened. Although this is the more technically challenging method, the WYSIWYG function on your email software's HTML editor should allow you to easily insert a web-based image in your email, and ask for a pathway hyperlink back to your website. This method keeps your email lighter in size and easier to send.

The easier method is to embed the image directly into the email, similar to an attachment. While easier to construct, messages with embedded images are frequently flagged as spam by weary Internet service providers trying to keep foul material from their users' inboxes.

Conclusion

Attention to detail is the key to effective email messaging to clients and prospective clients. The importance of sending clean, professional email messages cannot be overstated. Don't forget these important points:

• Find a consistent and reliable "voice" for your messages

• Use the "From" field for branding and deliverability

• Make the subject line concise and recognizable

• Personalize your emails for increased effectiveness

• Use web-based images in your emails if possible

• Test your messages before sending and watch your email frequency