Cold-emailing?

[Milkerz]

I have tried what I like to call 'cold-emailing' (although this may already be what it's called - I don't know) to many local people to try and get them to join my business. This has actually been quite effective so far with about a 10-20% sign up rate with the people that I've emailed literally from just finding their email address online.

However, this is a very slow process - I have to search the internet, find their page, click on the contact page, copy the email, paste it into the bcc box...for every single process. Although this seems like it might not take a long time, I have worked out the time of finding each individual business to be around 5 minutes (this including thinking and planning time with searching and navigating) which means I'm only getting about 12 emails per hour done, and it's a very boring process.

Does anyone know of any software which automatically picks up email addresses that you can quickly forward to? I was hoping to be able to target around 500 businesses a day with little work, so I can get on with other things rather than spending all day mulling over email advertising. I wouldn't want the email to end up in their 'junk' folder though.

If this service is available - please can someone help me out? If it's not available - I may have just given someone an invention

Thanks,
Luke

[soccerprodigy777]

Have you tried purchasing or renting e-mail/mailing lists?

[WHUK]

cold emailing is also a nice kind of marketing technique where you connect the marketing process via emai. Multiple email are being send to the viewers for the marketing process. Its actually a new way and some how effecient as well.

[fthom]

While cold emailing can work at times it can also send very negative messages to those that do not become clients/customers.

I would have to suggest that you put more of an emphasis on social marketing - be this by social networking online or hosting events and getting out there and speaking to people. Word of mouth, when positive, is by far a more effective way of marketing than cold calling or emailing.

Best of luck with it, I'm sure you'll get there!
:-)

[WHUK]

While cold emailing can work at times it can also send very negative messages to those that do not become clients/customers.

I too agree with the above point fthom mentioned. The reason email marketing get convert towards other aspect becuase there are plenty of client who do not accept promotional email in there mail box. These kind of client are increasing day by day. So we are unable to judge such kind of clients. So we have to take care what kind of email list do we have with us for the promotion of our product.

[wadeinni]

I really don't like the idea of cold emailing. This is no different from cold calling which was very popular several years back with telemarketers. The run the risk also of being seen as a spammer or even worst being reported to your ISP for unsolicited spamming. The best way to effectively reach and retain users or customers is through list building. Of course I'm referring to creating your own list by allowing users to voluntarily sign up for a site membership or newsletter instead of randomly blasting them with an email blast. List building allows customers to have more trust and recognition in your brand, and those same users are more likely to recommend your products or services to others in that target audience. I say this because I learned my lesson the hard way from "cold-emailing" as you call it Milkerz. Several of those users on an email list I purchased had never heard of me or my services and reported me as a spammer to my ISP. The situation was rectified but I've gotten way better results since I've started list building.

[ccbarlow]

I have emailed a ton of people over the last year and have had hardly any luck with finding sponsors/investors for my business its tough to do probably 90% of the emails go directly into there spam and get deleted!

[wadeinni]

I have emailed a ton of people over the last year and have had hardly any luck with finding sponsors/investors for my business its tough to do probably 90% of the emails go directly into there spam and get deleted!

This is another point I forgot to mention. Many of those emails whether "cold" or through a list you built with users mutually often do end up in their spam box. This is not exactly your fault though. This all depends on the their email server setup. Some recipients' email servers have very strict settings and even the most legit messages get sent to their spam folder sometimes. I for one use godaddy email service and a few of my sent emails and newsletters accidentally go to the receivers junk mail. Not much you can do about that. Putting that aside cold-emailing is effort better placed elsewhere in your marketing campaign.