The escalating volume of email across everyone's computer means that fewer and fewer emails are being opened.

That's true of clients, who presumably should be motivated to open emails and it's even more true of prospective clients who don't have the same level of motivation to open emails.

A key challenge is creating a sense of urgency around opening our emails - often clients plan to get back to them at the end of the day, then run out of time and it never happens.

Step one - The right frequency

To avoid having clients set aside your emails, we have to be careful about not overwhelming clients.

I was talking to one advisor who sends clients a market recap at the end of each day. That's fine if clients have asked for this or are retired so have the time to look at these, but for many clients that will simply be way too much email.

And the risk is that clients will stop opening everything we send them a result.

Step two - Meaningful content

The next thing is to ensure that everyone we send will be a good use of clients' time.

Given how busy everyone is, we have to be selective about what we send people. We have to ensure that it truly is valuable information that meets their needs.

Send two or three emails that clients don't see as being relevant and you take the chance that they'll stop opening everything they get from you.

Step three - The right subject line

The subject line is the most important part of any email - it's there that people will decide whether to open that email or not.

And there are five simple words in a subject line that dramatically increase the chances that an email will be opened - that's true of existing clients and it's also true of prospective clients.

Those five words:

The information you asked for

These words get past the sense that an existing or prospective client is getting broad generic information that everyone else is getting and communicates that this information is customized for them and them alone.

Customizing emails one at a time

There are a couple of ways you can customize emails.

For your largest clients, you can personalize the information you're sending.

Your biggest client expresses interest in a stock or a hedge fund, you take 15 or 20 minutes to put together that information and email it to them.

Or let's suppose you're talking to your client and he or she says they're traveling on holiday to Florence.

You could say "I recently read a great article in the New York Times about Florence.  Why don't I send it to you?"

Then you go to the New York Times website, find that article - and now you can send your client an email that says Here's the information about Florence I mentioned.

Customizing emails to groups of clients

The difficulty is that you can only afford to do something like this for your very best clients.

For your broad group of existing and prospective clients, you have to set up a process to send information that's customized to their specific needs but that also allows you to operate efficiently.

A few weeks back I wrote about using an online survey to identify client hot buttons, giving clients twelve topic areas and asking them to indicate the topics in which they are interested in receiving information.

Here's that article

Once you've collected that information for clients, you need to create email groups for each of  those topic areas.

Let's suppose you've got an article or a video interview on retirement income strategies such as minimizing the clawback of benefits, trends in alternative investments or investing opportunities in global markets.

Now you can send that article to only those clients who have expressed interest in this kind of information.

Two critical things happen as a result.

First, you're only sending clients information that they're interested in.

And second, you can legitimately say "Here's the information you asked for."

Customizing prospect communication

Note that this also works for prospects.

When talking to a prospective client, you could say:

 "I'd like to stay in touch but I want to ensure that any information I send is relevant to your needs.

I wonder if I could run through half a dozen topics on which I send my clients information, to see which would be of interest to you."

While this approach does take some upfront effort, you're sending a powerful message about your client orientation ... and dramatically raising the chances of your emails being opened.