This is a bad pitch. Even by doing this I am giving the bad pitch more time and attention than it needs. Maybe, hopefully, at least someone might find this and think it’s useful.
“Apologies in advance :(” read the subject line. I will admit, that I did not immediately read who was sending me this email, so the subject line certainly got my attain.
Then I clicked. Straight away I realised I had made a mistake.
The header information was the first warning.
From whoms’t does the correspondence come?
From: Jaiden [jaiden@REDACTED.com.au] on behalf of Thomas [thomas@REDACTED.com.au]
Interesting, I thought. Who doesn’t send their own emails? I haven’t seen something like that since I last came across a misconfigured CRM that wasn’t using the primary domain of the organisation to send its emails.
This did not appear to be that.
Don’t forget your receipts
“You’ve never heard of me,” is an interesting open when by now I have realised you are trying to sell me something. Why haven’t I heard of you? If you’re so shit hot at what you do, why don’t I know you?
Strike one.
“LinkedIn told me you’re one of the movers and shakers in your industry.”
Strike two.
LinkedIn has told you nothing. I barely use it and when I do, I hate it.
“Your industry”. How personal. The one thing contained on my LinkedIn profile is what industry I work in. You could have at least pretended to have scraped it to glean at least one useful insight. None of this is hard.
As for mover and shaker. Dear god.
Set up, strike out.
“For both our sakes, I’m going to skip the part where I warm you up with a cheesy joke, then try to convince you that you need my help.”
Wait. That opening line wasn’t a cheesy joke to flatter my ego? You’re not going to offer me help? Why are you even here? Why have you bothered?
“I’m reaching out to you because I work with a team of talented creatives at a full-service agency.”
Strike three. Within two sentences you have set up an expectation (this is not a sell) then immediately undermined it (speak to our experts about your problems).
“This means we can do things like build your brand, develop (or implement) a marketing strategy or build you a killer website (among many other things)”
So you’re telling me you can….help….with…those things. Mere words after finishing up about how you were not going to do that?
I know this is a sell, you know that I know this is a sell. Don’t lie. You’re out.
This is the point where I should have stopped reading.
I did not stop reading.
All of this is nonsense
“At our agency, we cut the bullshit and get straight to the chase.”
[citation needed]
“You don’t have to take my word for it though….”
That is not going to be a problem.
“…you can take a look at our 50 + 5-star Google reviews.”
N…no…no I won’t be doing that.
“Typically I’d offer to take you out for lunch (or a drink) but with lockdowns that’s a little tricky.”
Also the fact that, four paragraphs into your email, I have zero interest of ever willingly being in the same room as you.
“Why don’t we have a chat on zoom?”
No.
“I promise to be somewhat entertaining…”
Stop.
“…and you can even choose my zoom background!”
I thought you were trying to incentivise me here.
Attention to detail
“I have attached a picture of a puppy wearing a hat, which I hope will charm you into submission.”
This was the final straw. I’m going to show you the picture.
Are you ready? Are you ready for the picture of the puppy wearing a hat that was designed to charm me?
Here it is:
I could not tell you whether or not the absence of the hat was intentional or not. I suspect the latter. To assume, after everything I’ve read already, that Thomas (Jaiden?) did this intentionally is giving him too much credit.
The end…ish
“Looking forward to hearing from you soon (or not).”
You get one guess.
“Have an absolutely wonderful day.”
That ship has well and truly sailed.
It’s then signed off “Thomas”.
But….Jaiden sent me this email on your behalf? Did you write it then get him to send it? How does that even work? Are you not allowed to directly send emails? I could certainly understand why that might be the case.
“PS”
Oh no.
“P.S: Let the fact that this email found you be an indication of how good we are ;)”
Haha hohoho. Oh yes. You have scraped some database somewhere that has my email address on it and worked a bit of mail merge magic. How clever.
“PS: If you’ve read this far, there’s probably something you have in mind.”
No. There is not. I will not be contacting you. In fact, I have probably given your unsolicited correspondence more attention that it was due already.
Does this work? How? Why?
Does this….work? Do marketing people actually respond to this sort of stuff? Why would you? Nothing about it screams expertise, consideration of our needs or even acknowledging what the name of the business is or my role.
All of that is readily available but you lead with bizarre attempts at flattery and a stupid (HATLESS) picture of a dog.
This email is a pitch that from the very first sentence had me off-side. So, no, Thomas, Jaiden or whichever person actually put this together. I won’t be engaging your services.
Although I did not train as a marketer or sales person, I do have a Bachelor of Communication and worked as a journalist for a brief period. I like to think I have at least some understanding of what engages people and how you can put together an argument that demonstrates your point.
Even for a templated email that you are sending out to people, there are things here that you could have easily done to make it appear as though you already had a basic level of knowledge about me, about what I do and about the company I work for. None of that is a secret, it is all pretty easy to work out. I am sure there are tools that will do it for you.
Urgh. It’s bad. Don’t do this.
That said, I am still open to the idea of becoming a brand ambassador…
Post-script
As a fan of transparency, here is the entirety of the email (with some details redacted) for you to behold in all its glory.
