7 Tips for Emailing Busy Prospects for Ad Agency New Business

E-mail is still relevant as a tool for ad agency new business but use it wisely because prospects are extremely busy just like you. 

With the popularity of my blog, I receive a large number of emails daily. I’ve learned to better filter all of the invitations to review, speak, advise and consult as well as the emails that pitch products, services and other opportunities. It isn’t unusual to receive well over a hundred of these type of emails daily.

What I’ve learned from my own experience, the type of email pitches that enlist my response, have helped me to be more effective in using emails for ad agency new business.

Below is an example of a great emailed invitation/pitch. One of the few that I personally responded to almost immediately. 

Dear Michael

I run a small events company in Johannesburg South Africa and we have had it on our radar to run an Advertising Innovation Day for some time, we have had good success with events dealing with Social Media and we have had surprisingly a number of delegates from advertising agencies attend a few of them. Please see our website www.classicevents.co.za to give you an idea of what we have run before, please excuse our site – it is due for an upgrade which I am busy attending to now.

I believe there would be a market for talks in Johannesburg and Cape Town and possibly Durban as well, these are the tree main centres where there are a number of agencies, the bulk of the agencies are Johannesburg and Cape Town based but Durban does have some smaller agencies and offices of the larger agencies. I could do some research for you and share lists of agencies here and possibly conduct a test to see if agencies are keen to attend.

Do you have standard speaker fees or would you entertain a profit share or delegate rate share. Please could you also give me an idea of when you could come across for a week or so, I’m guessing you’d surely want a couple of days to relax and see some of the country whilst here.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards

NIGEL BROWN

Here are the reasons why this is such a good email that hopefully will provide some helpful tips as you reach out to your prospective clients using email. 

1. Use a person’s first name. Personal is always better than formal when you are reaching out through email. Formal seems cold and indifferent, often appears spammy. Nigel starts off his email pitch to me simply with “Dear Michael.”
2. Create a pitch letter that is concise and brief. My heart always sinks we I get a long email from someone. Even though it is much easier to bang out a lengthy email but it is also discourteous. Being short and concise take effort on the part of the sender but it is always appreciated and leaves a positive impression upon the person you are trying to reach out to. Nigel condensed his email down to 3 short paragraphs – perfect!
3. The request is very clear as well as the invitation on how he would like me to respond.
4. I can’t tell you the number of times that I receive requests like this and have to search for the contact info info. That is discourteous and leaves a negative impression. But it occurs more often than not. Nigel made it easy for me to follow-up by including all of the various channels that I can make contact with him. Though I didn’t list them here for obvious reasons, Nigel provided me with his email address, cell phone and direct dial office numbers, fax and Skype numbers and an active link to his company’s website.
5. Don’t over pitch in the subject line. Nigel’s subject line was very effective in getting my attention: Query to explore you coming to South Africa for a series of talks. Who wouldn’t want an opportunity to visit South Africa. But also, Nigel’s invitation wasn’t salesy. It was a simple invitation to explore the possibility, a gauge of my interest. He left the response totally in my court. He didn’t use it as a precursor for a “warm call” that he would initiate.
6. Nigel was proactive in providing information about his company. In the email he provided me with a hyper link to his company’s website knowing that I would want to investigate credentials.
7. Don’t overuse flattery. The owner of the first ad agency that I ever worked for, used a lot of flattery in conversation’s with prospects.  It always came off as insincere, almost sleazy. Most of the time flattery can be implied without even stating anything and is more effectual.

Photo credit: Frank Gruber