I recently received a reply to one of my agency prospect emails.
“I receive hundreds of emails from ad agencies and can’t stand it when they know nothing about me or my business. Yours was about to get the DELETE button when something caught my attention in your subject line. I have to say I appreciate you doing your homework before interrupting me. I don’t have any need right now, but I am going to put your note in my save folder for when we start planning 2016. Please reach out to me in January in case I forget.”
Did you see that - please reach out to me!
Of course, I’d rather have the email conclude – please call me immediately. However, that is not always going to happen. What did happen is the next best thing and that’s the thing that can make your outbound prospecting efforts much more effective. It astounds me every time I hear how many agency people prospect with generic, self-aggrandizing, we are great messaging. Do you respond to that kind of email or do you do what the marketer said she was about to do – DELETE.
Don’t be a DELETE. Think about the person you want to connect with and talk to them, not some generic email list because it's more convenient for you. Marketers consistently tell me how many times a week they get emails from ad agencies clogging up their inbox that have nothing to do with them or their needs, business, marketing challenges at all. They all become DELETEs.
There is no perfect solution or silver bullet. Email response rates are well documented for every industry including ad agency prospecting. The single most important thing you can do for your outreach, other than spelling the name right, is to demonstrate that you've done your homework. When you do a little research and familiarize yourself with the person with who you want to connect with the result is more likely to be what came back to me. It’s not hard to do a quick scan and learn about recent product launches, declining share, new competitors, a promotion or any other nugget that will resonate. You will still get plenty of deletes but not as many as before.
The same is true for a call, a meeting, chance encounter at a conference, even a tweet or blog post. If you do your homework and know something about who you are talking to, the conversation is more likely to continue rather than go down to the DELETE button. There are over 138 million “email best practices” articles instantly available on the Google for your review. Read a few before your next outreach.
Get more conversations started that lead to more new business. All you have to do is a little bit of homework first.
Happy Hunting!
I’ve got a lot of advice on how to make your business development efforts more effective and would enjoy sharing what I know. If you like this post, click the thumbs up, so I’ll know, and then sign up for my new business newsletter. Find me on LinkedIn for daily tips, tricks, and insights. And, please share your new business advice, successes, and failures. #LetsGrow!
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