Have you ever seen something and thought to yourself "wow… that's really cool"?  You just have to ask about whatever it was that you saw… except that when you do ask, the person with the cool thing doesn't even realize it's cool.  Maybe you've even been on the other side of that scenario.  Has someone ever told you how great something you've done or something you have is and you just haven't seen the greatness of it?

Now you know how MarketingSherpa President Anne Holland felt when she approached IFS North America about a feature of their newsletter that she thought was just way too cool.  The feature Holland was excited about was a link included with every article and summary in their newsletter that allows readers to request additional information on that specific topic.  According to Holland, a click of the link opens a new email message with the exact title of the post pre-filled in the subject.  Simply send the email along and IFS will respond with additional information on that topic.  Holland was impressed and wanted to know more, so she contacted IFS about it.  They didn't see the big deal.

I agree with Holland.  It's a great idea.  She says it best when she says "anything that encourages your customers and prospects to engage with you is a very, very big idea in the long run".  Very sage advice there.

Read on to learn how to create your own custom email links with a simple tutorial.

Implementing such a link is so simple.  I've color-coded the whole thing to make it easier to read.  Remember that the name of the article that the reader is requesting more information about was pre-filled in to the subject.  That's easy to do.  In addition to the regular mailto:email@address.com that is part of any email link, simply add ?subject=title_of_post to the link.  The whole thing would look like this:

mailto:email@address.com?subject=title_of_post

In fact, you can even further customize and refine the link to include body text.  If you want to have the body of the email pre-filled with text either for your company or as a message to the person clicking the link, it's simple to do as well.  Body text could say "Please send me additional information on the article in the subject"… ya know, as a message to your company.  Or it could also say "Please press "Send" to deliver this message to our Information Department.  We will send you additional information shortly"… ya know, as a message to the person requesting information.  All you have to do is add &body=body_text to your link.  So a complete link with all included information would look like this:

mailto:email@address.com?subject=title_of_post&body=body_text

Of course, who wants to use underscores for every space, right?  Just a reminder that "%20" equals a space in URLs and links.  So the above link could be re-written to look like this:

mailto:email@address.com?subject=Title%20of%20Post&body=Body%20text

When clicked, that link would provide a subject that read "Title of Post" and a body that said "Body text".  Want to see it in action?  Click right here.  So yes, long post titles and long body text will create one hideous link.  But imagine the possibilities of what could come from it.  Creating those links could even be automated with a fairly simple script or application.

Anne Holland was smart to get excited about the little touch that IFS North America hadn't even realized was so special.  Maybe they thought everyone did it.  Maybe they just didn't think it was that successful of an idea.  The company described use of the link as "spotty".

But remember:  all you need is one good spot to make the whole thing worth the effort.