Emailing Companies

[Adept PC Repair]

Has anybody tried emailing their details over to companies, and has this resulted in any work for you or has the indication been that they've just classed it as spam?

I'm really interested in doing this, as cold calling is getting me nowhere, and is possibly more invasive to their busy lives.

Any comments are welcome, I'm really trying to get my first business contract down.

 

[Kitten Kong]

I personally haven't tried this as of yet. But I am compiling a mass mail shot, to all the local companies in my immediate area. The majority of these are smb's, shops etc. I am also seriously considering offering a recycling aspect of my service. But, this would cost me some serious money to arrange, if I decide to go ahead, which could earn again some very serious money....

 

[cmonova]

About the only way I think this is a good thing to do is if you know your competition is actually doing work for companies. Otherwise you are going to be sending alot of mail that will probably go unread. Personally, better time spent is hand delivering a few a day and talk to the people in person. You get much better ROI.

 

[Kitten Kong]

About the only way I think this is a good thing to do is if you know your competition is actually doing work for companies. Otherwise you are going to be sending alot of mail that will probably go unread. Personally, better time spent is hand delivering a few a day and talk to the people in person. You get much better ROI.

Couple of problems with this awesome idea for me Dan. Firstly, I have no direct competition. As far as im aware, there is only me in the immediate area. Great for me .

Secondly, re the hand delivery part, I'm physically disabled with my back, and cannot walk for long distances. In saying that though, if I dont know someone who works there, I know people who do, so word of mouth is a really strong point there.

It's a case of finding the time to complete everything here..

 

[cmonova]

Couple of problems with this awesome idea for me Dan. Firstly, I have no direct competition. As far as im aware, there is only me in the immediate area. Great for me .

Secondly, re the hand delivery part, I'm physically disabled with my back, and cannot walk for long distances. In saying that though, if I dont know someone who works there, I know people who do, so word of mouth is a really strong point there.

It's a case of finding the time to complete everything here..

Well obviously in your case my "awesome" idea won't work.....

But, I don't think the original poster is in that situation. Yes, if you work around it and know people etc then that is great. He is saying that he's trying to get his "first" business contract so word of mouth is not going to accomplish that in this case.

To me "if" you can it's well worth investing the time to do it in person.

 

[NeutronTech]

I personally haven't tried this as of yet. But I am compiling a mass mail shot, to all the local companies in my immediate area. The majority of these are smb's, shops etc. I am also seriously considering offering a recycling aspect of my service. But, this would cost me some serious money to arrange, if I decide to go ahead, which could earn again some very serious money....

The recycling idea is great. I started that a month or two back. I've gotten 2 decent desktops (2.x ghz ea.). I have also gotten two flat panels and one fairly new laptop with a bad LCD. It's pretty cheap to get rid of stuff that is of no use. I usually take what I want or can use first, then see what I can fix for donation, then scrap the rest.

It pays for itself really, when you think about the equipment you'll get. I haven't officially donated anything, but when I do I can write it off on my taxes. I'm building a server out of one of the desktops, and the laptop and one of the flat panels have become my office computer.

 

[Kitten Kong]

I totally agree with you. There are some fantastic ideas, in your book, which I think the OP could gain some valuable experience from.

To the OP, a few questions..

How long have you been in business?
Are you in the Yellow Pages etc?
Yell.com and 118 247, I have found to be a waste of time myself.
How many local businesses do you have?
What size companies are they?

If they are large companies, I tend to find that they have their own in house IT dept, so personally I wouldn't target those.

Is it businesses you are specifically targeting?
How is your residential targeting going?
Would it not be worthwhile going for res first, and then going for the bus deals, once your name is out there etc..

Re the cold calling, I dont know about you, but personally I detest being cold called. Up to date I have never cold called, for a number of reasons.

 

[Kitten Kong]

The recycling idea is great. I started that a month or two back. I've gotten 2 decent desktops (2.x ghz ea.). I have also gotten two flat panels and one fairly new laptop with a bad LCD. It's pretty cheap to get rid of stuff that is of no use. I usually take what I want or can use first, then see what I can fix for donation, then scrap the rest.

It pays for itself really, when you think about the equipment you'll get. I haven't officially donated anything, but when I do I can write it off on my taxes. I'm building a server out of one of the desktops, and the laptop and one of the flat panels have become my office computer.

Well done on the recycling side of things.

Over here, its a bit more difficult than there. We have to comply with the WEEE which CAN and DOES cost a small fortune. (I have posted on another thread about this).

I do recycling of all the local primary schools in my area. Like you I take whats good, or I can put to good use, then the rest, I usually refurb it out with other parts, so my clients have a better spec, than it should be, and then sell it to them.

Alternatively, I have a client who has a retail outlet in Wales, who will take all the decent desktops I can gather together, for sale in his shop.

Then the rest, is either donated to Freegle on a wanted basis, or scrapped.

 

[Alan22]

Has anybody tried emailing their details over to companies, and has this resulted in any work for you or has the indication been that they've just classed it as spam?

Unsolicited Commercial Email = Spam
Spam can also stand for "Stupid people annoying me" or "Stupid people advertisements". Thank about that before pursuing this line of promotion for your business. Personally if I received spam from a computer/network repair company I'd seriously question their motives. Just my opinion.

 

[cmonova]

It also can also stand for:

"send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately"

"generally e-mail advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup"

In this case of the poster I do not really think the "intent" is to "spam" anything. Even though I still don't care for the method of trying to get business this way I would not consider it "spam"...

Simple letter address to a specific identifying yourself and telling what services you can provide with some contact details would not classify itself as spam to me especially if they are in my community.

 

[perryny]

I don't think any of us would consider sending a sincere email message offering our valuable service to companies that we believe could genuinely benefit from our offer should be considered spam.

But it is. It won't be well received, it won't be effective in generating a decent ROI and it could get you into trouble.

I know a lot of folks don't think cold-calling works, because it can be uncomfortable and sometimes downright sucky when the call-ee is a jerk.

But in my personal experience of making thousands upon thousands of cold-calls over the past 15+ years... it definitely works. You need to get past the discomfort and just keep going.

However, I somewhat recently discovered that cold-calling can be made MUCH more effective and easier by sending a sales letter first. If the letter is well written (I mean it follows the rules of professional copywriting), then a follow-up phone call can be very, very effective.

The letter does the selling. The follow-up phone call simply confirms interest. If interest is there, a sales meeting can be secured pretty easily.

If the interest isn't there (which would have been determined by the customer before you called), it's simply "ok, thanks for your time. buh-bye and have a nice day". Next.

-Rob

 

[Alan22]

I find this interesting. This post has some support, while this post Opinions on Email Spamming to promote our business has opposite opinions.

Other than how the op's are worded, I don't see the difference. They're both essentially the same subject (sending unsolicted email to try and get business), but one gets support and the other doesn't.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

I find this interesting. This post has some support, while this post Opinions on Email Spamming to promote our business has opposite opinions.

Other than how the op's are worded, I don't see the difference. They're both essentially the same subject (sending unsolicted email to try and get business), but one gets support and the other doesn't.

the other thread mentions collecting email addresses via a bot, and knows that it is spamming

this thread is talking about a more targeted approach, kind of individual emails

 

[Alan22]

I don't think any of us would consider sending a sincere email message offering our valuable service to companies that we believe could genuinely benefit from our offer should be considered spam.

But it is. It won't be well received, it won't be effective in generating a decent ROI and it could get you into trouble.

I know a lot of folks don't think cold-calling works, because it can be uncomfortable and sometimes downright sucky when the call-ee is a jerk.

But in my personal experience of making thousands upon thousands of cold-calls over the past 15+ years... it definitely works. You need to get past the discomfort and just keep going.

However, I somewhat recently discovered that cold-calling can be made MUCH more effective and easier by sending a sales letter first. If the letter is well written (I mean it follows the rules of professional copywriting), then a follow-up phone call can be very, very effective.

The letter does the selling. The follow-up phone call simply confirms interest. If interest is there, a sales meeting can be secured pretty easily.

If the interest isn't there (which would have been determined by the customer before you called), it's simply "ok, thanks for your time. buh-bye and have a nice day". Next.

-Rob

Rob, I like the idea and used to do that after exhibiting at trade shows, but these days what about the National Do Not Call Registry? If someone is going to cold call is it a good idea to subscribe to the National Do Not Call Registry so the caller doesn't call numbers on the list? I'm thinking if enough people complain by filling out the complaint form on donotcall.gov the caller can get into some serious trouble with the FTC &/or FCC. Do you think that's something to be concerned about?

 

[Alan22]

the other thread mentions collecting email addresses via a bot, and knows that it is spamming

this thread is talking about a more targeted approach, kind of individual emails

Yeah, I know. I read both posts.

The concept is the same. Whether email addresses are collected via a bot or collected manually via browsing company websites or by other means. Whether the email is personalized or generic form letter, it's still unsolicited commercial email, i.e., spam. Alot of the spam I get is personalized. It doesn't make it any less appealing or less annoying.

 

[perryny]

Rob, I like the idea and used to do that after exhibiting at trade shows, but these days what about the National Do Not Call Registry? If someone is going to cold call is it a good idea to subscribe to the National Do Not Call Registry so the caller doesn't call numbers on the list? I'm thinking if enough people complain by filling out the complaint form on donotcall.gov the caller can get into some serious trouble with the FTC &/or FCC. Do you think that's something to be concerned about?

Sorry, I should remember to preface most of my posts with the statement that I only support businesses and I don't support residential customers.

The DNC Registry doesn't apply to B2B calls.

But yes, if you're intending to cold-call residential customers (no idea if that would be very effective) then you should absolutely make sure you're not violating any DNC rules.

-Rob

 

[perryny]

the other thread mentions collecting email addresses via a bot, and knows that it is spamming

this thread is talking about a more targeted approach, kind of individual emails

It doesn't matter how targeted your approach is. It doesn't matter if you got their address through a bot, or if you looked them up in the phone book, or you researched their website, or whatever... if the target didn't give you explicit permission to send them email, then no matter how targeted you feel your message is... it's spam.

If you say, "Hey Mr. Joe, I visited your website. Your product x and product y are the very same types of products I've been marketing very successfully to a market I notice you're not addressing. I believe I can sincerely help you triple your revenue by showing you a simple marketing technique I use. Give me a call at the below number if you're interested."

It's Spam.

At least this is what I've been told many, many times.

I agree it seems stupid that I can't send an email to a person or company that I believe I can offer something of value to, but this is where the evil spammers have brought things to.

 

[callthatgirl]

Spam or not, people in business are used to getting spam and we just make rules or delete it if we are not interested. Is anyone going to file a complaint? Probably not. Will you get business? Probably!

I once scoured the metro area for realtor email accounts, got about 5000. I found a great source online for their email accounts. I added them all to my email marketing, shot out an email about how we are perfect for the realtors and the next day I got banned from my email marketing company for spamming. They lifted the restriction as I explained what I did and said I would not do it again. (spanking).

But I got 500 opens in a short amount of time and made over $1000 off it in the next few weeks. And the VP of a large real estate agency got it, called months later, told me that he got on my list somehow and liked my email marketing (I think he got added somehow else actually).

So yes, it's again the Anti Canned Spam Act (however it is) and you can get in trouble, but if you are doing it with their emails that are posted on their websites, found a contact to deal with directly (name of the manager) and told them each one by one about your business, I don't think that is spamming. That would be considered a virtual door knock.

Of course, I would write up a basic message and send a personal note to each one.

 

[Reset]

So yes, it's again the Anti Canned Spam Act (however it is) and you can get in trouble, but if you are doing it with their emails that are posted on their websites, found a contact to deal with directly (name of the manager) and told them each one by one about your business, I don't think that is spamming. That would be considered a virtual door knock.

You might want to read up on the spam act as its states that if you list your email address on any web site or online directory you are allowing anyone to send you email. I know because i manage and create newsletters for a company and they have over 70,000 emails and send out 2 too 5 newsletters a month.

And therefore they can not be blacklisted because the emails follows the canned spam act. Anyone on there mailing list has currently 3 ways to be removed which is stated in the footer of the emails.

So, I say yes and make sure if you do use email marketing have a way the end user can have a way to op-out of the mailing list in the emails.