We Need To Talk About Your Boring Ad Agency New Business Emails

I was talking with several of our new business directors recently about email, its prospecting effectiveness and ways to consistently improve those ad agency new business efforts.

One of our NBD’s mentioned the timeliness of our conversation, as a friend of hers had just remarked on the sheer amount of sales emails she gets and how alike, boring, overly sales-ey and uninformative they typically are.

It’s a salient point and one you’ve got to remind yourself of often.

Per advice we’ve relayed here before, a healthy mix of channels when prospecting for agency new business is key: email, social media, direct mail, referrals and phone calls for example.

And yes, Marketers get A LOT of email and we all know this, yet we inevitably fall into that rut of sameness when it comes to emailing prospects.

That is, bland, impersonal emails about the many years of agency experience and integration and how different we are, etc.  (Note, I’m referring more to one-on-one emails than a newsletter.)

Take a look at the latest email you sent a prospect, did it incorporate any of these traits:

-Short, concise sentences-no long, block paragraphs

-Conversational, friendly, yet respectful tone

-Overall brevity, shorter is better with initial contact especially

-A reason for emailing in the first place (“we may be a fit because” for example)

-Something (appropriate and related) that makes them smile

-Your call to action-asking them to (again, respectfully) do something

If the answer is no, re-think your email strategy and think about experimenting with your email copy.

Have someone else read the first sentence or two of your email, if they immediately peg it as a typical sales email, so will a Marketer.

Yes, these are by definition sales emails you’re sending, but make the content concise, informative, personable, actionable and when appropriate, entertaining and you will see a better return.