QUESTION: You make around 50 marketing calls with an MPC presentation in mind, I would be lucky if I speak with 5 people.  I do not leave a message or leave contact detail with the PAs because I am worried that I would not know who they are if and when they call me back.  As silly as it may sound, I am really terrified about this.  

My MPC email marketing is only getting 5% responses, 2 after the second email.  However, I am on the verge of getting a job order from a client I chased with MPC email marketing since November 15th.  I am able to connect with owners of small companies with turnover less than 10 million pounds, but there are not many opportunities with them and they pay very small fees.  Thanks for the ideas and the suggestions. – Vic, UK

ANSWER:  When I am seeing less than a 5% response to your email, I am seeing a problem, probably with the email.  Since I do not have it in front of me, and I know you were in the Double Your Placements Program, I would go back and study that module on the Three Strategies of Marketing Without Cold Calling that you had in the program.

Emails need no be short and highly benefit oriented.  If you are investing too much time at the beginning of your email with – Hey, here is who I am, here is what I am doing, here is who we are, here are our successes, those are going to get deleted before they are read.

A powerful email is . . .

In a recent engaged search we uncovered somebody who . . . wild benefit and a wild accomplishment . . .  and how they can do it for you.

I am only making assumptions, but when I talk to some people with low response rates, they are sending them to Human Resources. I would never send an email like that to Human Resources unless I was an HR recruiter and I had people with HR credentials, really hiring managers.

What I talk about is seven attempts to over three weeks.  So when I was doing this I would send the email and then two or three days later, I would forward the original email through Outlook to the people that did not reply saying –

Hey Vic, Did you see below?  Mike.

Even if you and I never spoke before, I would make it that informal.  That got a really nice response rate because you are kind of screaming at the person.  It’s – I’m sending you this note.

If the second attempt did not get a response, now I am going to leave a verbal presentation, the same one I left in email.  Some people, with a similar response rate, actually probably getting a higher response rate from the voice mails than the emails. This combination will often spike the response rate.  I generally find a lot of the best prospects we get, it takes three, four, or five attempts to get through to them.

After about five to seven attempts over three weeks I will just move on and I will target them again in six to eight weeks.

Those are some strategies, without knowing more, that I can give you to work on there.