You know what I hate? People who don't respond to emails.
It is the 'new' way of contacting people rather then calling them and you cause no disruptions to them, and allow them to respond in their own time. However if I send an email about something important and it is clearly expecting a responde relatively soon, I don't want to wait 2 weeks to get a reply.
This is what is happening at the moment.
With a team, I am busy putting together a Marketing Career Guide for students, we have emailed overall about 40 companies asking them if they are interested. Within the week we got reponses from those companies that we have had previous contact and experience with, as they know that MMSS is a good contact to have to reach Uni students.
The rest of the companies? Well most of them still havn't replied, so I am busy calling them up, disturbing them, and making them give me an answer, of which being the businesses that they are, they didn't do, they simply asked that I re-email them and they will get onto it today.
Now being the nieve guy that I am, I am assuming these people will actually get back to me today. The chances of that actually happening? Slim to nil.
Why do these people even have email?
Seriously if they aren't going to use it properly, don't bother using it at all.
And if they aren't replying because they are not interested, then they need to get over their fear rejecting someone.
3 comments:
Hey Simon,
This post is interesting. But you should put it into context.
Post the original email so we can see how annoying or interesting your proposal sounded.
Also how many emails do you get a day?
Are you sure you email did not get spammed?
Did you ask for a respond to me with a simple NO if not interested? or direct them to a page that requires a click for yes or a click for no. Something that might take 30 seconds
I get close to a few hundred emails a day and half of them from external sources from all the random sites I'm on. Requests for internships, money, advertising, interviews for schools and information on company, hell evn people wanting to purchase soap or banners for their school fete.
I don't reply to all emails because it takes too much time. I do flag a shit load of emails and then once a month do an audit and reply late but I dont think everyone does that.
I also HATE it when people email and then follow up with a call. You're right it is annoying.
Is this what people said when you called them "sorry, I did a 70hr week and your email for information was on top of my list to do on the weekend!"
Probably not?
Gday Mr Truffle
The original email is as follows:
To (Name) (HR Manager)(Whom it may concern),
We have an exciting opportunity that will enable NAME OF COMPANY to obtain exposure and access to the best graduate marketing talent.
The Monash Marketing Students Society (MMSS) is the biggest club marketing club in Melbourne with over 1,200 members across Caulfield, Clayton and Berwick campuses.
We are developing a graduate careers guide for publication in early 2009. The guide is specifically tailored to business students who are undertaking a marketing major. It will be distributed amongst these students at the beginning of the academic year in our annual membership drive in kits given to all new members and also available to those seeking career information from the careers office.
The careers guide will provide insight into the various marketing career options for students and information on how best to pursue these careers.
We’re offering interested companies the opportunity to buy advertising space, in this guide, to promote their company to the Monash graduates. This will cost $450 for a colour A4 page. Advertising is to be provided to the MMSS as camera ready artwork. There are options for a double page spread, single page or half page, with prices varying according to your choice of the above.
We anticipate printing approximately 1500 copies, however of course circulation will exceed this.
Compared to a similar publication, such as UniGrad, the marketing careers guide provides the following benefits:
· Cost is $450 versus UniGrad’s $6, 500
· A4 size versus an A5
· Specifically tailored to marketing students versus all graduates
· Proactive disbursement direct to students versus passive availability
· Provides insightful career information that will encourage students to retain the careers guide as a reference tool versus simply corporate profiles
Interested in advertising in the Marketing Careers Guide? Your next steps are:
1. Email us with your interest and contact details by Friday, December 5th
2. Your company develops the desired advertisement
3. Provide the advertisement and payment (by cheque to the MMSS) by Friday December 19th
4. Targeted publication and distribution for February 2009, including a copy sent to you
If you have any queries please contact me on 0431630777 or simon@simonoboler.com
Kind Regards,
Simon Oboler
Nothing to click, just a response would have been good though. I suppose we could have added something to ask them to respond either way, as we only asked them to respond if interested, however even so a response would have been nice.
In terms of when I called the companies, I only ended up speaking to about 4 and couldn't get an answer from any of them, and everyone else was having the same problem so we have since scraped the idea for 2009 and we are just going to start a lot earlier next year.
One person said they had an extremely busy 3 weeks, which I can kind of understand, but to have NO time at all to respond to that email is a little bit surprising.
I am also 100% sure the email didn't get spammed as at least the companies that I spoke to all said they had at least looked at the email, just haven't done anything with it.
Why didnt you send me the email Simon? Not good enough for you HUH? And here I am replying to your email even though you didnt send it to me!
- Jake.
P.S - when I see "exciting opportunity" in the first line of an email I just assume its going to be of Nigerian origins ;)
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