For those professionals like yourself who are successfully growing their online business, handling e-mail leads effectively and efficiently can be a major issue.   Fortunately however, there is a way to send the perfect response for most e-mail situations with a simple click of the mouse!
(NOTE: the following discussion assumes you are using Outlook 2000 or similar professional e-mail software that allows you to use multiple e-mail signatures.)

The Magic Of E-Mail "Templates"

When you think about the types of e-mail you receive, chances are most of it will fit into one of several categories of inquiries.  Now imagine the time you would save if you had a specific e-mail response or "template" prepared and ready to be used for each type of inquiry.  

For example, when a visitor to your Web site sends an initial message requesting more information about a particular property, you could use a special "first response" template as a reply.  (NOTE: an example of this was shown in the June 2000 issue of "Ask Mr. Internet!").  

Here are examples of some e-mail templates you may be able to use in your own business:

The secret to creating powerful and effective e-mail templates begins with the "end" in mind...

Creating Your "Killer" E-Mail Templates

Choose a situation (perhaps from the list above) that represents a category of e-mail inquiries you receive on a regular basis �the more specific the better.  Now using a word processor (like Word�) write an appropriate general response where you would only have to change a couple of details like the recipient's name, etc.  For any variable information that needs to be changed depending upon circumstances you might consider using square brackets (i.e. [NAME], [PROPERTY ADDRESS], and so on) so you can readily identify what needs to be personalized when you first bring up the template.

To format your message to be easily readable by most e-mail users, set your font to Courier or Courier New (which are mono-spaced fonts) at 10pt size and margins so that you have 5.5" line length.  These settings will ensure that your e-mail message line length will not exceed 65 characters, thus avoiding the problem of recipients receiving your message with unintended line breaks.

Once you've completed the template message, have someone else review and edit it for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style issues.  Then be sure to include your full e-mail contact and signature information at the bottom (for a complete discussion of e-mail signatures see the September 1998 issue of "Ask Mr. Internet").  Now you are ready to save your masterpiece �in a way that will make it magically appear with the simple click of your mouse!

How To Make Your E-Mail Templates Appear Instantly

There are several important things to keep in mind as you save your newly created template to your hard disk:

1. Name It Descriptively - so you instantly know its purpose;
     
2. Save As A Text File - that's with a .txt file extension and with "line breaks" so the message will always look the way it should to recipients;
     
3. Save It To Your Signatures Folder - which is the special folder where all your e-mail signature files are stored.  (If you don't know where this is, check your e-mail software help files.)

Using this method you are essentially saving your templates as e-mail "signatures", which means they are instantly accessible with the click of a button on the message window (at least for Outlook 2000 - see figure below).

Once you have crafted, edited, and proofed an e-mail template and saved it as a signature, it becomes a consistent and powerful tool for the situation it was intended.  Ideally, you would then create a template for every conceivable e-mail message category.  In fact, some Net-savvy professionals like Chris Newell of RE/MAX Blue Springs in Milton, ON (www.new-all.com) use over 30 e-mail templates (as signatures) to help them respond quickly, consistently, and with powerful results.

Receiving a lot of leads online doesn't mean you have to be "buried" by the process of responding to them �not if you set up systems like templates to do most of the work for you!

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Having broken links on your site is, at best, a professional embarrassment and could mean potential lost business. However, the process of finding them yourself (before your visitors do) can be very tedious, especially if you have a large site.

The fastest, easiest, most comprehensive tool I've found to handle this task is call Xenu Link Sleuth� and can be found at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html.

Amazingly, this powerful utility is free and downloads / installs in just minutes. It will even work on database driven sites (i.e. template sites) --which was confirmed when I ran it on my main (ColdFusion driven) www.russer.com site and found more bad links than I care to admit.

Now you have no excuse to check your site's link integrity.
JFDI (Just Focus and Do It!)