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7 Tips for Emailing Busy Prospects for Ad Agency New Business

July 28, 2011

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.

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.”
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!
The request is very clear as well as the invitation on how he would like me to respond.
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.
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.
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.
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

2 Comments | Digital, Fuel for Thought, New Business Tips | Tagged: ad agency, advertising agencies, business development, email marketing, Michael Gass, new business | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Jump Start Your Ad Agency Blog Using Email

July 2, 2010

This is a guest post from my friend Todd Knutson, CEO of The List, the most accurate online database of marketing and advertising decision makers in North America. Todd is also the author of a great new business blog, New Business Intel.

If your ad agency has or is considering writing a blog, deciding how to spread the word to acquire readers is important: If relevant corporate marketers aren’t reading it, the time you invest in writing may be in vain.
Common ways to promote your blog include:

Email marketing
Twitter
Links from your website

This post is a guide to using email as a blog promotional tool.
Your most important decision is choosing between using an internal email list or purchasing a list. There are pros and cons of each:
Your list – pros

You own it
It’s free
It has your clients and (some) prospects on it

Your list – cons

It may be out of date
It may not include all the prospects you should be pursing
It may be too small (you need at least 1500 good names to kick-start your blog (and more gets you there faster)

External list – pros

It’s the most effective way to increase the size of your list
The right llist will allow you to reach the corporate marketers that exactly fit your prospect profile: by the geography, industries, titles, company size(s), and media spend.
The right list will be high-quality (i.e. clean), with a low (5%) bounce rate
Certain list companies will completely update their email list multiple times per year, and/or will offer to correct or replace those emails that bounce.

External list – cons

There are few, if any, opt-in lists for corporate marketers
You’ll get what you pay for: low price usually equates to not being able to effectively target as described above, or you’ll have a high bounce rate.

The opt-in question is tricky: to my knowledge, highly targeted, opt-in lists of relevant corporate marketers just aren’t available. Our clients tell us they’ve purchased them from many different companies and they’re universally terrible. We’ve tried it internally and experienced the same thing. I think the reason is fairly simple: the corporate marketers you want to reach just don’t opt-in very often. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in relevant content.

Your next decision is to choose an email provider from the many available services. I recommend you look for one with as many of the following features as you can get:

Easily manages opt-out requests
Tracks soft and hard bounces
Tracks opens
Manages out of office replies
Creates browser-friendly, text-friendly, and HTML-friendly format
Allows you to test different subject lines to see which one(s) work the best, with follow-up emails going to non-opens of the first message
Allows you to easily manage days, times, time zones for each send
Has good analytics / reports so you can effectively measure your performance over time

Promoting your blog well makes the effort it takes to write all the more worthwhile, and email is a great way to do so.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions – Todd

2 Comments | Agency Blogs, Best Practices, New Business Tips, Social Media | Tagged: Blogs I Recommend, email marketing, Newsletters, The List, Todd Knutson | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Combine Email Marketing and Social Media for Ad Agency New Business

June 1, 2010

The mix of social media and email marketing can greatly accelerate your social media presence and in turn generate inbound leads for your agency’s new business.

An email newsletter is one of the two most important sources for information and advice for small and medium businesses, according to a study entitled, “Optimizing Email Newsletters for Small/Medium Businesses” released by Bredin Business Information, Inc. (BBI).

According to the study of over 380 executives …

Email newsletters remain highly relevant. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said that even in the age of Facebook and Twitter, email newsletters are as, or more, important than ever. Ninety-seven percent rate them an important or very important source of business management advice, more than print and broadcast media, major company websites and social networks.
Readers spend time with email newsletters. Fifty-eight percent spend more than a minute reading an email newsletter in their inbox, and 73% spend more than a minute reading (or watching) content that they click through to from the newsletter.
Readers prefer frequent email newsletters. Forty-two percent prefer weekly delivery, 27% monthly and 12% daily. Only 5% prefer a quarterly delivery schedule.
Readers want “how-to” information in their email newsletters. On a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (important), how-to content rated 3.6, slightly ahead of case studies, perspective pieces, product information and offers, and company news.
Readers want information on their industry and a quick and easy read. Roughly 80% of respondents rated those as important or very important newsletter criteria.
SMBs use email newsletters themselves – after having a website (70%), an email newsletter is the second most popular online marketing tactic (63%).

The rise in popularity of social media only enhances email newsletters. The two can work powerfully together to generate inbound leads for your agency’s new business pipeline as you share content and engage in conversations.

Here are a couple of tips to mix email marketing and social media:

1. Repurpose content. The content for your newsletter can come from your blog. Don’t assume that just because you’ve written it that everyone has read it. People are busy. Your audience will read your content in a variety of ways. Your helpful posts will be found by keyword search or through an RSS reader. It may be seen through your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts.

I recommend choosing your newer, highest ranking posts to use for your email newsletter. Include a snippet of teaser copy and a link-back to the full article on your blog site. Give your recipients 4 or 5 of these choice articles to choose from in each newsletter. It will take literally 15 minutes at most to create the newsletter. Anybody can be easily trained to put it together and allows for it to be consistently created and sent, even when your agency is at its busiest.

This link provides a good example of an agency’s email newsletter that derives content from its blog, Big Fuel

2. Use your email list to “jump-start” your social media presence. Your blog should be the gate-way to your agency. This is the place where you want to generate a consistent flow of targeted traffic. The use of your email list to send your email newsletter will provide you with a spike in your blog’s traffic, as you introduce those on your list to your rich, helpful content.

Your list will also accelerate your followers on other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Your social media presence will also help to grow opt-ins for your email list.

Additional tips:

Send your email newsletter twice a month. Set the send-dates in advance.
The email should come from you rather than the agency. It is much more personal.
Use a blog post title for the email newsletter’s subject line.
Best days to send, usually are Tuesday and Wednesdays. You can always test other days/times once you have a benchmark established.
Compare your blog’s analytics to your email analytics whenever your email newsletter has been sent. Also compare analytics of previous email newsletters to improve your open and click through rates.
Remember that the fuel for this engine will be new content. You’ll need to be consistent in creating it.

A great resource for small and midsize ad agencies is iContact’s 35 page report Email Marketing Best Practices

10 Comments | New Business Tips, New Business Trends, Promotion, Social Media | Tagged: advertising agencies, Big Fuel, Bredin Business Information, email marketing, Michael Gass, new business, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

20 Reasons Why Social Media Won’t Replace Email

October 18, 2009

Email marketing is still an important tool to your ad agency new business program.

The rise in popularity of social media only enhances email. The two can work powerfully together. Two excellent articles, Chris Crums, writer for WebPro News, “10 Reasons Social Media isn’t Replacing Email“ and VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick, “10 More Reasons Why Social Media Wont Replace Email. Chris always has great marketing insights. Janine also provides some insightful resources and practices what she preaches for both email marketing and social media. I recommend them both.

Here are their 20 reasons why social media wont replace email:

People still send hand-written letters.
Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address.
Email notifies you of updates from all social networks.
We haven’t seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really will catch on on a large scale.
Email is universal, and social networks are not.
There are plenty who have no interest in joining social networks.
Email is still improving.
Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email.
More social media use means more email use.
As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well.
Twitter and Facebook are fantastic products and companies; but that’s what they are, companies.
Your email recipients are still going to use business email for business purposes.
You can’t easily segment your friends and followers to do targeted marketing (through social media)
You can’t tell who clicked on a link with some social media outlets.
That said, you can’t tell who didn’t click on the link so you can follow up with them with a different message.
You cannot personalize your Facebook updates.
You cannot size your graphics or use more than one in Facebook.
You can’t track how many clicks you got on your links in Facebook.
You are limited to 140 characters in Twitter.
You almost have to have separate social media accounts for your business and your personal life.

Additional resourceful articles that may be of interest:

19 Comments | New Business Tips, New Business Tools, Social Media | Tagged: Blogs I Recommend, Chris Crums, email marketing, Janine Popick, Social Media, VerticalResponse, WebPro News | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Email a Great Tool for Ad Agency New Business

August 17, 2008

83.2% of marketers in a February survey by Datran Media list email as their most important advertising tactic for 2007

Email marketing needs to be among the promotional tools for small and midsize advertising agencies new business programs. It has the potential to deliver the best ROI (time and money) of any of the tools in your new business program’s arsenal. Agency new business is going through a paradigm shift. Using online marketing tools, such as emails, has become essential securing new business opportunities.

It is typical for email marketing campaigns to top the 2% conversion rates typically expected from direct mail.

In fact, email delivers the highest return-on-investment among marketing mediums by an eye-popping margin: a whopping $57.25 for every dollar spent on it in 2005, according to the Direct Marketing Association’s “The Power of Direct Marketing”(October 2006).

Not only that, but email is delivering sales at an average cost per order of less than $7! Compare this to average cost per order of $71.89 for banner ads, $26.75 for paid search and $17.47 for affiliate programs, according to Shop.org’s “State of Retailing Online 2007″ (September 2007).

Some helpful email marketing stats and metrics:

Wednesday is the most popular day for opening emails, followed by Tuesday.
Text drives more email click-throughs than images
11 a.m. has been the highest time for email recipients to open their email messages.
304: Average number of business emails weekly
83.2% of marketers in a February survey by Datran Media list email as their most important advertising tactic for 2007
HTML has nearly universal adoption among consumers: A Jupiter Research consumer survey found just 3% receive only text email
67% of survey participants said they read at least three out of four promotional emails they receive from direct marketers

A great resource for small and midsize ad agencies is iContact’s 35 page report Email Marketing Best Practices

Check out these EmailLabs’ online email tools:

Email marketing Websites:

A great way to demonstrate your competence for email marketing is to demonstrate its success for your agency’s own promotional efforts. Practicing what you preach and using the tools you recommend for your clients.