How Not to Explore New Business Opportunities

July 2^nd 2015 Sally Ormond Email marketing, explore business opportunities, how to not spam, spam emails

spam emails

Is it just me or has there been an influx on ‘cold’ email enquiries for all businesses recently?

Pretty much every morning there’s at least one email from a company I’ve never heard of before offering me their services.

Before you say surely there’s nothing wrong with that, I think there is.

The one thing all these emails have in common is that they’ve come via the contact form on my website. They’re rambling, incoherent and frankly very unprofessional.

Surely, if you want to work with someone you’d want to make a good impression, right?

That means, at the very least, a professional looking email sent from your company email account showing your contact details.

Then I would also expect to see some level of research within the email to show you know something about me and my company and not just randomly picked me off the internet, or worse a paid-for list of email addresses.

I would hope you would show me the benefits you can bring my business eloquently, not in a large bold and colourful font underlined just in case I missed it.

Your email should empathise with me and the issue you think I’m facing.

It should address me directly by name, not ‘Dear Sir’, ‘To Whom it May Concern’ or ‘Dear Briar’ (yes, I really have had emails addressed like that).

Then, when I don’t respond (because your approach was unsolicited and I’m not interested in what you’re selling), don’t send out a chasing email every week in the vain hope that you’ll wear me down and I’ll eventually give in…because I won’t.

Basically, if you want your email marketing to work:

Use your own home grown mailing list not a bought one
Send your email from your company’s email account
Address the email properly to a named person
Do your research to see whether there’s a chance that I may be interested in what you have to offer
Don’t pester if you don’t get a response

That’s it, rant over.