6 tips on making your emails sound more professional

Real estate professional are salespeople – not necessarily writers or detail people. As a rule, a real estate agent is highly gifted at putting together a transaction and knows the subtle nuances of dealing with people. That same person is not so focused on the minutiae associated with everyday tasks, such as email. However, as real estate professionals, we spend a pretty significant chunk of the day sending text messages and emails.

Instantly Improve Your Email Messages

There are so many things that need to be attended to in real estate, and many of those details are handled through email. So, it seems like it would be pretty important to make your emails work for you (not against you)… wouldn’t it?

Here are six ways to make your emails instantly look more professional:

1. Fix your signature line. Your signature line does not need to include every one of the awards you won since you graduated from sixth grade. It only needs to include the information that the recipient needs in order to get in touch with you. (This means that you do not need to repeat your email address in your signature line since the recipient already knows your email address.) If you are interested in professional and branded signature lines and don’t know how to create one yourself, consider Wisestamp or Email Signature Rescue. And, don’t forget to create a professional signature line across all of your devices.

2. Get rid of your high school email address. Were you partyguru on AOL or surfbabe at Yahoo? It’s time to get professional folks. Create an email address that speaks to you as a professional—not as a partying babe. Then, edit your email settings on those retired accounts so that any emails from old friends will be forwarded automatically to your new email address.

3. Consider a custom domain. Perhaps you already own a custom domain, or maybe you are considering purchasing one. Now may be the time. Companies such as Godaddy (and even Google) sell domains cheap. Once you you’re your domain name, you can create an email address associated with that domain.

4. Turn off auto responders. When turned on, the auto or vacation responder sends an automated email to everyone who sends an email message to your account. For real estate professionals, these seem to be a bad idea. First off, if you are on vacation, you probably do not want to announce it to every prospect, vendor, affiliate, buyer, or seller who sends you an email. Instead, if you are not going to be able to check email for a significant period of time, consider alerting appropriate parties as to how they can get in touch with you in an emergency.

5. Don’t cc everyone and his mother. If at all possible, stay away from the “reply all” I’ve seen group invites to events that include hundreds of people. Someone responds saying that they cannot go because junior has the flu, and now hundreds of people are hearing that junior has the flu. This is absolutely not necessary, and often very annoying. Only include the necessary recipients when sending a response.

6. Use applicable subject lines. This will not only be useful to you in the future but it is also useful to the recipient. Say that your broker emails you about your commission check and the subject line is “Commission Check.” In your response, you realize that you want to ask her about a potential land listing. When you hit reply, edit your subject line to say “potential land listing.” Months from the date of the email when you need to search for the response, it will be a lot easier to find if you have altered the subject line. Plus, it only takes about two seconds to do.

Consider doing any or all of these things to not only make your emails more efficient, but also to send a more clean, polished, and professional message to any prospective client that comes your way.