Voiceovers And Cold Emails – The Not Silent Blog – 10/29/19
Here’s an important lesson about sending cold emails to potential clients…
As many of you know, in a addition to being a full-time voice talent, coach, and demo producer I produce the comic book ‘Agent 1.22″. Here is an email that was recently sent to my Agent 1.22 business email account:
hi, congratulations on your work, my name is xxx, I would like to know if you accept penciler samples at this time, or for future projects, thank you very much.
That is the entire email. Word-for-word.
You would be shocked at how many times I have received cold emails similar to this not just as a comic book producer, but as a voice talent as well. Those emails are often from video production companies asking if they can produce my next video. When I reply that I’m a voice talent, I never hear from them again.
TIP OF THE WEEK
If you are going to send cold emails to potential clients, here are a few tips:
DO. YOUR. RESEARCH. I find myself giving this bit of advice almost every week in this here blog and on social media. Even just doing one Google or Bing search to learn one fact about the company you are submitting to will demonstrate you have at least a quarter of a clue.
Use full sentences, proper grammar, and correct punctuation. Spellcheck, anyone? It’s the 21st Century, people. There is no excuse to not send a properly written message. And don’t tell me that you’re an artiste and just want to express yourself or whatever so you can’t be bothered with writing in full sentences. You wanna express yourself? Go join community theater or dance around a fountain or something and leave my inbox alone. We’ve got grownup stuff to do over here.
Make it an original email. You can’t tell from the quote, but in the above email the person in question clearly copied & pasted it. How do I know? Because you could see the light grey background from wherever the original message was copied from. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every single email. Heck, I have over a dozen email templates that I’ve developed based on the genre the voice seeker casts and where they are in the Sales Funnel. Then I tweak it with something personalized like, “Loved that Nike spot I saw your production company’s website” or “Can you believe it’s been three months since we did that Explainer video?”.
Look, I know that marketing is hard. It takes creativity, diligence, consistency, and patience to do it right with no guarantee of success. Far more of my marketing ideas have failed than succeeded. But at least make more of an effort then what this guy did. Any effort!
NEWS AND NOTES
I am proud to announce that I am the VO Atlanta 2020 eLearning/narration Track leader! Stay tuned for more announcements…
What happens when you get a LinkedIn invitation from a 14-year old kid living in Bulgaria? You become a guest on a podcast, that’s what! I’m thrilled to be a guest on “The Successful Network”. Thank you Nikoli for the fascinating conversation about the world of eLearning. Click here to listen to the podcast.
Tuesday, October 29th @8PM EST: Edge Studio Marketing 201 webinar, ‘Keeping Clients Coming Back’. In this one-hour webinar, I’ll tell you the REAL secret to client retention. Click here to sign up!
Thursday, November 7th @8PM EST: my next Edge Studio “Business and Money 201” webinar topic will be ‘Managing Your Money’. We’ll talk about how to spend, earn, and save your money like a boss! Click here to sign up.
Thursday, November 14th @8PM EST: Edge Studio Marketing 201 webinar, ‘The Sales Funnel’. In this one-hour webinar, I’ll talk about what the Sales Funnel is and how to push voice seekers through it. Click here to sign up!
HAPPY HAPPYS
Happy Candy Corn Day and Mother-In-Law Day! I have a GREAT mother-in-law so no cliche jokes here. 🙂
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Tom Dheere is a 20+year veteran of the voice over industry who has narrated thousands of projects for hundreds of clients in over a dozen countries. He is also a voiceover business & marketing consultant known as the VOStrategist and produces the comic book “Agent 1.22”.
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I have a different take, as someone who spent over 20 years in corporate America, receiving 100s of emails a day. I used to get emails…telling me to expect…another email!
I also, however started to cast voice actors. In my opinion, the shorter the better.
Give me a link or sample to listen to and if I’m interested, I’ll research more on my own. YMMV of course.
Great work as always Sir!
Tom
The quote “Look, I know that marketing is hard” sums it up for me. And in truth, what makes it so rewarding when it works. If it was easy, we would all be overnight successes!
Thanks again for a great blog!
Thank you for this Tom.
Email marketing is definitely a challenge for me, and one I am diligently working to overcome.
I have several templates I use, but I do my research and tweak each one to fit the receiver.
I saw that you are the eLearning/Narration Track Leader for VOAtlanta. I am hoping to attend and will definitely be taking that track, eLearning is where my strengths lie.
As always, thank you for the information that you give to all in the industry.