Email is the ‘killer app’ of the internet, the most widely used tool available today. Here’s 4 great tips for making sure that you take advantage of this fabulous tool.

The result? A powerful marketing system that will save you lots of time and enable you to spend more time selling real estate.

1. Know the email program!

While all email programs exist for the same reason - to send and receive email - and while most of them work in roughly similar ways, it still pays you to spend 30-45 minutes with your email program to get to the nitty-gritty parts. The sort of parts that mastering will enable you to cut valuable minutes off your day dealing with your inbox.

Like how to set up an auto-reply, or a signature, or automatically save incoming and outgoing emails into different folders, like a well-organized filing cabinet.

Most email programs have very good ‘Help’ files - make use of them in your quest for more knowledge and more time.

2. Automation is vital!

You should aim to spend about 85-90% of your time promoting your business, NOT answering emails! If, like me, you get over a 100 emails a day, not automating your emails can be a real killer as far as your personal productivity goes.

Why should I waste precious time moving from subject to subject, looking at each incoming email in turn, when I can have my email program file my incoming emails automatically into subjects of my choosing. Subjects like each different house I’m working on, different clients, different business areas (marketing, sales, research, and so on).

With all of my incoming emails automatically placed into relevant folders, I can move from folder to folder, keeping my working memory focused on one area, with the result that I become more productive than if my attention was having to be spread across multiple areas.

With many email programs you can even set up automatic replies (known as autoresponders) for each folder - so that when a new email gets ‘dropped’ into that folder a reply is automatically generated to the sender, allowing you to acknowledge their email and promise them a response shortly. Without YOU having to lift a finger!

3. Set up your signature. NOW!

It really is a fundamental online marketing principle and if you don’t have a signature you are missing out on the chance to advertise your product or service to literally thousands of people.

Thousands? Yes, because everyday emails get forwarded on to friends and business colleagues. Jokes, sad stories, news items, useful tips… all these types of emails and more get forwarded on to people you probably don’t know.

As I mentioned above, I get around 100 emails a day. If I attach my signature to every reply, that’s 100 prospects a day who get my sales message!

Every email program worth its weight allows you to attach a signature. You don’t have any excuse. Start writing some email signatures today and test them out on your replies. Some will be better than others at getting a response - you’ll soon know.

4. Create templates to save even more time!

I get over 100 emails a day and some of them are from different people asking the same question. How time wasting to re-type exactly the same reply to each different email!

That’s why I have created template responses - I can call up a pre-written response and just cut and paste it into a reply, adding any personalizing features like the person’s name. Easy-peezy!

I have dozens of templates, each answering a specific frequent request or question. These save me heaps of time!

Each email program works slightly differently with template files, so I suggest you check out your email program’s ‘Help’ files for more information.

So, there we are. If you follow these four tips, you’ll find that you’re able to spend less time as a slave to your inbox and more time promoting your business.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.