Email stationery has been growing in popularity over the past few years. Real Estate agents like this particular technology because it allows them to brand each email with their photo, logo and website links to drive consumers back to key features on their website such as search the MLS and featured properties. Even prospecting features like newly listed homes by email, buyer/seller tips, ask the expert, etc. Think of email stationery as a simplistic form of viral marketing!
The email stationery technology became largely popular because of Microsoft Outlook support. However the challenge has always been that if you send emails from a blackberry, cell phone or other text email client you will not be able to take advantage of email stationery because of its HTML requirements. That is until now! inboxFX has created a very interesting web-based technology to tackle this very issue.
inboxFX, a Canadian company, has designed their technology to wrap their custom email stationery around your plain text email message after it’s been sent, but before it arrives in the recipients inbox. The inboxFX solution works in two ways. First you can choose to use the inboxFX SMTP mail server as your outgoing email server and it will automatically wrap your stationery immediately after you click the send button. However if you use Microsoft exchange technology, or would like to selectively choose who can see the email stationery, you may want to use their second option.
For this simplistic approach you can send to any email address and simply add “.inboxfx.com” to the end of the recipients email address. For example if I wanted to send my stationery to john@acme.com, I would send the email to john@acme.com.inboxfx.com and the template email stationery would be added before delivery. This solution will work with any email system…even from your MLS.
inboxFX pricing is volume-based, to see the pricing matrix click here. For a series of inboxFX email stationery examples, click here.
About Reggie
The only problem I have with this is its brings up the same problem as any other templated email with the files being hosted on a remote server. Many email clients will flag an email as spam if it contains to many links in it. And any file that is linked to a server to store the file is a link no matter what.
I use MLXjet to do the same thing. They market it for use with MLXChange, but it works the same way as inboxFX with no volume charges. http://www.MLXjet.com.
I've been creating eStationery for clients for the past 3 years and as long as the image isn't too large and you stick to 3 or 4 links, you shouldn't have a problem.
Hi Sara, I just took a look at MLXJet and their offering looks great! They have beautiful templates. Thanks for sharing. -Reggie
This looks like a great tool, and will definitely save me a lot of hassle.
Thanks for the review of http://www.inboxfx.com. We really appreciate it. I just want to make sure people know that we have volumes only to protect us if someone signs up and sends 100,000 emails in one. No one has ever come near the top end and it is discretionary.The big advantage of our system is that it works not only from any email software, but from a handheld such as a Blackberry, web-based email such as Hotmail and from any MLS for Realtors.We tried templates, but as soon as we took away the option of a customized look, everyone rebelled. People who see the value in email stationery want a custom look to match their branding.
This is a great concept. It reduces the file size of the email when it is sent, and it won't get blocked as often by automated anti-spam software.-4MySales
You may also want to consider http://www.emailStationery.com – There you will find custom designed email stationery at a one time cost. The stationery only works with Microsoft Outlook- no webmail clients or cell phones, but there are no recurring fees. If you are an outlook user this would be a great option for you.