How To Send “Unsolicited” Email Without Raising Anyone’s Blood Pressure

By Mark Gebbie

WHICH CAME FIRST, THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG…

Or how to send someone an email who didn’t request one from you first!

When I first went online and everything was pristine, new and amazing to me, one of the first things I ran into was the golden rule: “Don’t send someone an email unless they want to hear from you.”

I publish the Gebbie Press All-In-One Media Directory, a PR reference work that lists all print and broadcast media in the USA. I learned what HTML was, and began to cook up a page. OK, now I had a site. Obviously, I wanted to develop some cross links and let people know about it. After I learned what a search engine was, I started finding sites relating to PR, publicity, marketing and so on. I knew these would be good places for a Gebbie link and most had a contact email address on them. But I was under the impression that the only sort of message I should send anyone was “To whom do I make out a check and where should I send it?” I was afraid to offend anyone, being the new kid on the block.

I’m not talking about “1,000,000 fresh emails for $50.00” here. Clearly, that’s spamming and a rude way to market anything. I don’t know about you, but my address book was completely empty the first time I fired it up, and I didn’t know one single soul on the net who had said “When you get online, don’t hesitate to write!”

After I had something to offer at my site-links to all the media outlets in our directory, our TV and Weekly Newspaper databases a gratis, etc., I felt I would not be emailing someone out of the blue empty handed. Some of my rules:

“Don’t arrive unless you bear gifts!” “Don’t email a math professor about a media directory.” “If you have a sense of humor, use it.”

I admit I did start out emailing people who I thought would want to buy our directory. I was with AOL at the time; back then, one could search the members by keyword, so I plugged in “PR/publicity/marketing” and waded through all the profiles, sending anyone who clearly did PR for a living or who had one heck of a strong interest in the media in general.

I must have sent hundreds of emails, one by one. I sent each one with great fear and anxiety! But when I got a lot of “Thanks for the head’s up on your site – great resource!”, I relaxed a tad bit. I’ve since come to learn that this is one tough way to sell a book, and no longer go prospecting in this manner. I once emailed the entire membership (thousands) of the Int’l. Assn. Of Business Communicators. I’ve probably sent 10,000 hand picked emails in the last three years, and I can honestly say that I can count the number of truly irate recipients on one…er, well, two hands. The math professor in Oregon was one of them.

Hey, sometimes I miss the mark completely.

About the Author: Mark Gebbie, editor and publisher at

Gebbie Press,

providers of media contact directories, media contact lists and press release distribution services since the year 1955. Company is Dun & Bradstreet listed, website is VeriSign Trusted. Gebbie Press, in business for more than 55 years, is well known and respected within the PR industry for providing quality media contacts lists at

-affordable-

prices.

Source:

isnare.com

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