Get Connected with Your Form Manager

Your Forms Manager in your Classic Package 3.0 is located under the 'Contact Info' button on the Main Menu. The Forms Manager allows you to edit all of the 'standard' forms that are included in your Advanced Access website.   In previous versions of our Virtual Office, you were unable to edit your forms.  Now, in our Classic 3.0 Virtual Office, you have the ability to edit all of your standard forms such as your guestbook, free reports, and regular contact forms.

In the new Classic Package 3.0, the Forms Manager allows you to change the email address to which your form will be sent. You can also add auto-responses, select the IntelliC@rd address book to which you want your contacts to be added, and decide where your form will be redirected. 

We would like to draw your attention to the bottom of the page in the Forms Manager.  A new link has been added here, entitled "Click here to enable VCards on forms". 

What is a VCard?

A VCard is an electronic business card and is a standard for storing information about individuals or businesses.

You might notice in your own emails that certain people will have VCards attached that they send you so you can save their information in your address book or contacts section.

When you choose to enable VCards on your forms that come from your Advanced Access website, the form will come through to your email as usual, but it will also have a VCard attached with the information.  If you are using an email program that supports VCards (which most do as it seems to be the standard) then your VCard will automatically input the information into your address book.

This is also great news for AgentOffice® users, the contact management system created by FNIS.  We are pleased to announce that the VCard is now FNIS compatible. Last August when we announced that our websites and Intellicards were compatible with Top Producer we had requests to be compatible with AgentOffice® as well. With VCards, you should be compatible with many different contact management systems.

Great Articles about VCards:

How Web Site Visitors Can INSTANTLY Save All Your Contact Information! - By Michael Russer (a.k.a. Mr. Internet®)

Mr. Internet's® Tip O' The Month - (Scroll down to read the Tip of the Month once you visit the link!)

Note: This article is a continuation from last week's Marketing Tip. 

Use Several Simple Tricks
To Make Your E-Mails Zing.

In the early days, there was little option for making some parts of an email message stand out. Today, however, there are many ways and it takes only minutes to learn.  Here’s how you do it. 

By Bill Koelzer 

Make Your Text Bolder 

• Now, highlight a word.  Go click on the “B” on the toolbar above where you’re typing.
• Notice how the font became instantly bolder.
• The B stands for BOLD.  It makes text stand out more…makes it more noticeable.
• If you bolded something and want to Un-bold it, just highlight the same text and click on the B again.  Try it.
   

  ---

Italicize
 

• Highlight some text. 
• Click on the slanted I in the tool bar. 
• See how the text becomes italicized
• Click on the I again to remove the italicization.

Insert a Straight Line
 

This is an incredibly easy way to separate segments of your email with a single horizontal line.  

• Look at the toolbar just above where you type your email and find the button with the little ----- solid horizontal bar. 
• Click it and see the horizontal line get inserted, running from the left to the right margin. 
• This is a perfect way to separate one section of your pasted in pictures, or paragraphs, or discussion points, one from another.
   

Pasting Pictures into Emails

I love this part.  It’s so much fun to send pictures to your friends and family, and clients love it when you can send them several digital photos of a property they’re interested in.  Just be sure that you have reduced the SIZE of any photo that you send so that it is not much bigger than a 3” x 4” size, because reducing picture size reduces the time a picture takes to be up or down loaded.

• To begin, place the curser inside the email box. 
• Now, click on the little square landscape icon (Tiny picture of a mountain and a sun) on the toolbar above the email box. 
• You next see a small window and a button saying “Browse.” Click on it.
• What you see next is the contents of your computer.  If you store your photos in “My Pictures,” first click on “My Documents,” then drill down to “My Pictures.”
• Click on “My Pictures.” 
• Isolate, by clicking on, a single picture, and then click on “Open.”
• (Or, go to a floppy disk or CD and click on a picture you select from there)

Doing so takes you back to the window with Browse on it.  But now, the formerly empty field is filled in with the location of the picture that you chose to paste in.

• Click on OK, and viola, there is a picture pasted into your email box.
• Go ahead and address this email to yourself (Yes, you CAN do that).
• Go to your main email window and click the big Send/Receive button at the top.
• When the email you just sent comes in, click on it and, Yippee! See the photo you inserted.
   

Inserting Links
 

• Type the word “Google.” 
• Now, highlight that word. 
• On the toolbar directly above, click on the little icon showing an Earth with the link of a chain in front of it.  A little window opens that has a box that says “URL” with “http://” already filled in the field. 
• Right immediately after “http://” type in “www.google.com” so the whole line reads: www.google.com (with no quote marks.)
• Click OK
• Now, address that email to yourself. 
• Go download your emails. 
• Notice when you get that email.
• Open it and click on the word Google that you highlighted.
• When you do, you are taken by a hyperlink directly to the home page of Google.

Few know that you can also highlight an inserted picture and then make it hyperlink to a particular page or to an image on the Web in just the same way that you highlighted text.

Dear Lorraine:

It was such a pleasure showing you and Fred the homes and neighborhoods of Dana Point, California once again.  I was thrilled to see how your two, well-behaved kids loved our new Dana Point Ocean Institute.  When you move here, you will find that the Institute has many programs to teach kids about the beauty and treasures of the sea and seafloor. 

Great News!
Your Cottage is
Available Again!!

Getting down to business---after I dropped you at the airport, the listing agent called me back and said that the cottage that you liked so much is available again, after falling out of escrow.  So, if we proceed with an offer posthaste, you have a chance to secure your choice after all. 

I am preparing the basics of your offer now, based on our discussions today, and will call you tonight or tomorrow to discuss final price and contingencies with you.

Your Cottage Choice Turned
Out to Be the Best Deal, Too!

I found that the one with the big lawn that was just to the right, next door, costs  $150,000 more, which is way over what the comparables are for such a home that size on a lake.  So the one that you selected was best, by far, for the money.

I have emailed you, separately, all of the particulars about the big cottage, plus I put a dozen additional pictures of it, inside and out, that I took this afternoon, on an album in www.ofoto.com. Moreover, I have sent you an email with a link that lets you access that web-based album at any time.

This is getting …..  Exciting!!!!  

Please call me at any time, day or night. 

Jack Benimble, e-PRO, CRS
CandleStick Realty
Dana Point, CA
Cell:  949-555-5555
BigHotRealtyFirm.com

Now, imagine that I had even more different colors for the headlines, actually inserted the pictures directly into the email box, even putting informative captions under each one.

You can see how such exciting news as the above is enhanced by the addition of different sized headlines, hyperlinks, and color.

Now, if you are a “nay-sayer,” here is where you’d say to all your friends, “Well, that certainly isn’t very professional to mess up an email with all that junk!”

My answer to you is:  “YOU need to think a lot more OUT OF that little box of standardization you’re in, and be willing to try something NEW.” 

Then, I would tell you that I agree that such enhancements are NOT appropriate in many situations.  But bolding and italicizing words, inserting lines, adding color to subheads and the like can often enhance even some formal emails…(“formal emails?”  Now there’s an oxymoron, right?) 

The key here is to practice and learn these techniques so you CAN use them, even if it’s only to entertain and dazzle your “still stuck in text” friends and relatives.

Also, since few agents even know HOW to do this, emails from you in this vein will make a most favorable impression on your prospects and clients, branding you as perhaps even more of a web aficionado than you really are.

Baby Steps.  Try it.  Keep this window on your screen, or print it out, for reference as you try enhancing your emails with these great HTML approaches.

These tools are just sitting on your computer unused, wasted, until you take the time to put them to work.  But once you do, you will swiftly distinguish yourself far above those other agents in your office and city who haven’t the good sense to read the incredibly useful and valuable columns that I write for you like this one.

Bill Koelzer is a Web marketing consultant to Web-proficient agents nationwide. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the Prentice-Hall books, "Internet Marketing in Real Estate" and Internet Marketing. Koelzer is also webmaster of Orange County Real Estate - Search MLS, among the most-awarded known Realtor® sites. Contact info: www.koelzer.com or e-mail him at Bill@Koelzer.com

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