Mel,
Not long ago an AdWords consultant got the idea that he'd like to niche himself down to work with plastic surgeons.
But how to reach them?
Cold calling was getting him nowhere—the gatekeepers were on him at every turn. He decided to try an end run.
So he hired a $2 an hour freelancer in Pakistan to scrape plastic surgeon websites and compile a list of doctors' email addresses.
Then he brought in a "hot-shot" copywriter to whip up a blistering sales message all about his PPC services...
And he fired it out to the 3,000 names on this cobbled-together list.
He was hoping for a few dozen responses.
Wanna take a stab at how many he got?
Zip, zero, nada. Not a single click, reply or call.
Unfortunately the main lesson this consultant seems to have taken away from this is: "You can't trust copywriters."
Did the copywriter make a mistake here? Sounds like he did—but his mistake was not calling foul on the whole deal.
When you blast out an unsolicited promotion like this to a scraped list of email addresses, you shouldn't expect much.
Last time I checked, spammers got something like 1 response to every 12.5 million emails they send. (And what are the odds that a plastic surgeon wants a great PPC consultant in his life more than he wants a bigger "package"?)
There's a much, much better way to generate B2B leads via email.
Here's how it works:
Some time ago I had a customer named Christoph who sold rotary machine sensors, and he was looking to gin up some business.
Shotgunning out unsolicited emails wasn't going to get the job done. But if he could find a list of people who had specifically opted in to hear about industrial equipment—well then he'd have a fighting chance.
As it turns out, these lists ARE available. Industry trade publications often have their own email lists with tens of thousands of subscribers. For a reasonable fee they'll blast out an email for you.
Christoph decided to buy access to 1,000 subscribers of Sensors Magazine for $0.45 each.
Next I had him write up a simple, plain-text email like this:
To: Perry Marshall
From: Sensors Magazine
Reply-To Email Address: Christoph @ company
Subject Line: Rotary Sensing Tech Guides
Dear Perry,
I just wanted to let you know that our technical support guys
have finished writing three convenient guides about rotary encoders and I'll be happy to send you a Free copy if you reply back:
- "How does an Optical Encoder work" (20K) gives you
a brief explanation of the sensor technology used in an optical encoder.
- "Pros and Cons of Absolute vs. Incremental Encoders" (20K) explains the key differences between incremental and absolute encoders and suggests which one is the right rotary sensor for your application.
- "Various Interfaces for Rotary Encoders" (20K) deals with the principles, technical specification, and advantages of commonly used interfaces between the rotary sensor and the machine control.
Again, these guides are Free, all you have to do is reply back with
your choices, and I'll send you one or more guides in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.
Best success with your current encoder project,
Christoph
They blast out the email. Next day I get a very excited email from him:
Hi Perry,
I am still in "shock", so far we got 76 answers (out of 1000). And I expect that we are getting close or even higher than 8%.
Thanks for your great idea and I great weekend I had because of that success.
Christoph
8% response from total strangers. Not bad, eh? Responses from real people at real companies who have real projects or have specific interest in this topic.
The most important thing you need to recognize is that we set this up so that Christoph would personally receive and process these requests, not an automated robot or web form. That's probably what the magazine ad person thought was so strange. Why did we do this? Because we wanted an 8% response instead of a 3% response.
And when Christoph replied with the PDF, he asked a follow-up question. Dialog engaged.
Now you know exactly how to bring hot leads to a hungry business, one or two or three days from today. All you need to do is find some email lists and go forth and prosper.
Carpe Diem,
Perry Marshall
P.S. Too busy to do all this yourself? Head over to Marketers 24/7 and make a post describing what you want done. There you'll have access to dozens of whip-smart, Planet Perry-trained lead gen experts and copywriters. It's my first stop when I have a job I need done without a lot of handholding.
***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:
support@perrymarshall.com
 | Free Video
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