My relatively good record of success on the Lafayette Indiana CL. (Smaller city and home of Purdue University)

(1) I put in the subject line of the email; "Legitimate local inquiry about your xxxx xxxxx"

(2) In the message I tell them my first name, my town and my daytime phone and the hours that I can be reached at the number.

(3) I also ask them that if it is still for sale, to please reply with their contact information and when is the best time to reach them and when I can come and look at it. And that I am flexible with hours and can come at their convenience within reason.

I think the polite and well written message goes a long way to legitimize my inquiry.

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When I'm selling, I tell in the ad that the moment it sells, I will take down the ad. If you are looking at this ad, it is still for sale. I put my phone number and say I'm legit and expect the same. A scam email will be ignored etc..

I find the typical turn off messages to be;

still for sale? what's your bottom dollar? can you bring it to me?

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As per gmail addresses, generally speaking, I don't trust an inquiry from any gmail or yahoo type address as my perspective is that gmail has the largest percentage of scammers. Especially if the address is one of those convoluted types.
i.e. 147johnlb21788@gmail

emails from actual .com based sources are the ones that go to the front of my possibly legit list.

just sayin'