Entries Tagged 'email' ↓
December 12th, 2007 — email
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Missy Caulk had asked me about my Email Signature block the other day, so I had promised her that I would write up a quick blog about how to make hers look like mine. I add the Feedburner to help promote my blog subscriptions.
Few logistics first. I use Outlook 2003 as my mail client. I have only two email address accounts on it. Bob.Carney(at)LongandFoster.com and Bob(at)gotbob4homes.com. One is my companies Microsoft Exchange server and the other is my email service on my Domain from Godaddy. I have multiple other email addresses associated with my other websites, but they are set up on Bluehost to forward to my main email address.
The next item you will need is a Feedburner subscription. You probably have seen them around. They allow your readers to subscribe to your blog feed. I have added to my signature block a Feed Headliner. This little gizmo rotates through your most recent post in a an attractive block. (this can be used anywhere, not just in your email)
Now that you have both of them, you can proceed to the next step.
On your feedburner account, click on “my feeds” and then click on the blog you want to showcase. On the next screen you will see a series of tabs. Click on the Publicize tab and then click “Headliner Animator”
? Grab this Headline Animator
Create the Headliner that you want. You can adjust size, color and layout.
You will have multiple ways to post this bugger on different blogging and socail platforms. I just picked the “Other Code” and pasted it in the HTML tab of the AR editor.
But that’s not why we are here. Under the Headline Animator, I selected the “email signature” choice and followed the direction in the drop down box for Outlook 2003.
You can check out my other post on the email signatures if you need any ideas on what to put in your Outlook signature block.
Sorry for the delay Missy…hope this helps!
September 3rd, 2007 — email
Got you to look anyways!!! Here’s the deal. Chris Elizabeth Griffith was blowing up my Q with her signature block. She came up with a great idea to help solve that issue. No lie I am on my 3rd Motorola Q. It seems they haven’t worked out all the issues with this one yet. Maybe the next generation will be better. Don’t get me wrong I do like it…just can be a pain in the butt.
Anyways back on topic…showing you mine. Related to her post, I am talking about my Signature Block. What do you have in your signature block. Do you use it as a marketing tool? Chris’ idea is a great one even before she trimmed it down to a http://www.tinyurl.com/ (by the way, that’s a great way to send long links…try it) She didn’t use that site but she did manage to link to a very useful landing page. Everyone has websites. People can get lost in there or bored to death. But if you have a great page with tons of local information, buyer info or seller information, why not just send that page? I am going to take her idea one step further. With most of your domains you can have what’s called a 3rd level domain. They are free and they are basically an extension of your website. Here is an example; http://gotbob4homes.com/ is my domain. Now here it is with a unique third level domain; http://sold.gotbob4homes.com/ The sold is the third level. In your domain console (I use godaddy for my domains) you can forward that third level domain to anything you want. (EDIT: my website is having issues) Don’t Follow this to the next page http://queenoflocalism.gotbob4homes.com/ It is much shorter than http://activerain.com/blogsview/192320/My-Email-Signature-Links But you get the idea!!
OK still not on topic…Here is my signatures that I use on my emails.
New Email:
When I Reply to your emails;
And for my Motorola Q;
Regards,
Bob Carney
Cell: 240-285-4918
Off: 301-831-7500
—– Sent from my Motorola Q ——
Why that? I want you to know it came from my PDA and it might not be as professional as you would expect. Maybe a misspelled word or not capitalized or maybe very brief.
So…What does yours look like? Why?
EDIT: I removed the shadow screen captures.
April 3rd, 2007 — Techno Mumbo Jumbo, email
Ok, you have all these names in your contact database in Outlook. What can you do with them? Did you know you can send out form letters to all of them? Put them on Mailing Labels? Below are a few steps to make this happen. Practice makes perfect, just try this and some different things with the Mail Merge function…It could eventually save you some time…
These steps are only to show you where to find everything. You will have to cancel the menu to go back to make some choices that I mention below.
- Open up your Contacts
- Click “Tools” in top toolbar.
- In the drop down you will see “Mail merge”
This will have your options on what you want to do next. Do you want labels or letters? I am going to explain labels. You can play with creating letters on your own. You can see you have a few choices in your Contact section. Do you want to create labels for everyone in your database or did you only have a few in mind? Document file? That’s for letters for the most part. (If you typed up a fabulous letter to one client and would like it to sent it others in your database, you would find and select it here)
Contact data file. Did you want to keep this group of contact, grouped together to use again? You will need to give it a name and a location to save. This does not remove them from your database, only makes a copy.
Merge options. This is where you make the choice of labels or letters. (envelopes or catalogs) Envelopes are similar to labels, but it prints right on the envelope. Merge to… New document. If you save to a new document you can retrieve the document later and print more labels. The other options are printer and email. They go straight to the printer or email, as they suggest.
OK, cancel out of this. Now you know what you questions to ask yourself… What am I doing and who am I sending it to?
You can see I categorize my contacts. (a little OCD) I think it makes it easier to view. In this case I want to send something to all of the Home Inspectors in my Contact database. I click on the first one in the list and then hold the SHIFT button and click the bottom one. That selects the whole list. You can sporadically select contacts by holding the CTRL button while clicking the contact. Now you have them selected go back to the Tools>Mail merge menu. You then need to select “Only selected Contacts” and all fields. Drop down to the bottom and select Mailing Labels. Click OK and then it will open up Microsoft Word. You will have a pop up telling you select “Setup” on the next window. When you select “Set up” it will be looking for what type of labels will you be printing to. Most common is Avery 5160. This in the 3 wide and 10 high sheets of labels. Now click “Close” at the bottom.
Next, you can start making the labels look like you want. You should now be looking at a blank sheet with the cursor blinking in the upper left hand side. This is label number one. This will be the only one you work on. Here you will set the Font, the color, the format for the rest of them. Make up your mind NOW before you proceed…It is much easier going thru this once than having to back and fix.
Above is the tool bars on your document. The bottom one should be used for your merged data. Hoover over top of each button. Here you should see one that says “Address Block” This is the quickest way to build the list. Otherwise click “Insert Merged Fields” and insert the data fields that you want to be on the mailing label. YOU WILL NEED TO FORMAT THE LABEL AS YOU WERE TYPING IT. Like spaces between first name and last name. Enter after the names and enter after the property address. Commas after the city and spaces after the State. The “Address Block” will show you this menu.
Pick and choose what fields you want on the address block. The example will show in the preview window. IF YOU DON’T WANT THE CUSTOMERS NAME, uncheck the block. But now you will have to type either… Current Resident, Neighbor or Friend etc. On the line above ((Address Block))
Now does it look like you want? If not, change it. Next find the button that says “propagate labels” Wahlah!!! If you click the “view merged data” button and you will see what your labels will look like. Next you will need to print. Click Merge to New Document button on the Mail Merge tool bar. It will create a document of labels with all of your data on it. It will give you the option to merge all of the data or certain number of labels. When you are done you can save this file and print again later.
Play around and see what you can create. This will not ruin your database in your Contact list.
March 28th, 2007 — email
Today’s real estate market, you need to watch your pennies. There is a lot of software out there to make your contact management much easier, but you will pay for it. Everyone in Long & Foster has free software that you are not even close to using to its fullest capabilities. I consider myself a power user and still have not captured all of the power it has to offer. You can have the best software or all the bells and whistles, but it’s no good unless you unleash the hounds (use it) I have gone over how to make labels with outlook, and form letters, now here are some more tips on getting the most out of FREE. 
Take a look at the actual contact information. Have you ever tried clicking the other tabs? Details; don’t you keep track of personal information on your clients? Isn’t that what our industry is about? Making contacts and keeping it personal! The more you know about someone and can work it into a conversation, doesn’t that build on your relationship? Activities; when was the last time you talked to them? What did they say in their last email? Here is a link to the Microsoft Tutorial http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC011036431033 You can use this at your own pace and in front of a computer for some hands on training. You can make your own categories. This is useful when you want to group contacts together based on how you know them, conducted business, hobbies or whatever… I use this extensively to track my business. Where did I get the lead? Go to my contacts and select Category view and wah lah… there they are all lined up in their cooresponding category. You can see where your business is coming from if you categorize it. They can have multiple categories.
The ACTION list is where everything happens. Look at the amount of items you can do with your contact. Make appointments, or follow up on you calendar for you. Messages, letters, Journal entries,.. Journal entries??!?! What’s that? Well you can log your conversations, activities that you have done for this contact, etc. It logs the time for you. Open one up and see what its all about. You put the information on starting and ending. Start and stop the timer for your work.. You know did you ever wonder how much time you are spending on working a project? This (if you use it properly) will do just that. Like I said before, you can have all the bells and whistles, but you gotta use them in order to benefit from it. Below and next page you will see the journal for the phone call.
Give it a try. Make sure to click create a journal entry. This will start tracking your time once the journal entry opens up. The journal is a great way to track time you spend on projects. You can go back and start the clock where you left off. It will let you track your progress and so forth. Don’t be afraid to look around on the menu drop downs. There is so much to offer… and to think you want to pay for software with all the bells and whistle and you haven’t even tapped the whole FREE product you already have!!! Have fun and remember practice makes perfect!
March 27th, 2007 — email
Rant disclaimer - when I say “I”, “Me” it really means “We” and “Us” and when I say “you” it means “you”
I can’t take it any more… EMAIL Etiquette… What is driving me to this, is the forwarded emails. In our office (and I am sure elsewhere), agents are asking staff (who are authorized to send to large distribution list) to send out an email to the masses… That’s fine. However, to make it easier on the masses… you should ALWAYS have a Descriptive SUBJECT LINE!!!! “Please forward” means “please delete” to me. I get a lot of emails and tons of junk mail (lately)… so it would definitely help me (and everyone else) if there was just a little time spent in utilizing the subject line properly. Now, while we are spending time on this subject, no pun intended, let’s move on to the rest of the etiquette. I am not going to write a whole article on it. Instead, I am going to send you to a site that has all the answers. Click Here.
A few key things that I do want to talk about… let’s start with “Reply to all” feature. Only use that when EVERYONE on the list needs to know your answer. Next, if you decide to physically to add everyone in the company directory to your email, do me one favor… add it to the BCC line. Why, you ask??? so when someone in Virginia is mad that you invited everyone in the company to your Broker’s Open in Baltimore and they decide to REPLY TO ALL, it will only go back to you. And another reason, so when I page down to read your email (cause it was missing a relevant topic in the subject line) I don’t have to page down past the hundreds of email addresses.
Next, for your safety and the integrity of your inbox, don’t reply to emails that look like spam, otherwise, you will just tell them that you really have a good email. You see, spammers, random generate email addresses by the thousands and hope that a few of them really work. Once, they confirm they have legitimate email address (cause you replied to them and told them to remove them from their list) they will sell their “new” confirmed email list to other spammers… and so on and so on… Just send them to the “Junk Folder” or flag as spam
Also, Bank of America, will not send you an email asking you to update your bank account in an email… nor paypal or any legitimate company. And one last thing about email, your long lost relative did not die in a plane crash in south Africa. So don’t send the attorney any information to help clear up the estate where you will get thousands even millions of dollars.
Surf safe… And thank you for helping manage my inbox.
