Feeling a little frustrated but possibly being unreasonable re: advertising for work.

[CharminglyOdd]

DP is self-employed and I am helping a little whilst I am unemployed. His main income is from a long-standing contract but he would like to diversify and work more for himself (contract involves doing only what the company wants).

As part of his work for them he is used to advertising for an annual event and often uses vast email contact lists to send out identical very advert-style emails. He tried this for his first foray into proper self-employment and had me ring around one month later (quite late but couldn't be earlier for various reasons). We had no interest, primarily because he hadn't filtered the addresses he'd used so many looked like individual companies but had outsourced the services he was offering (and subsequently the address he emailed) to one of half a dozen national companies.

I really think that he needs to do two things. 1) Filter the addresses he is sending to and get me to do research into individual names/addresses, 2) Not just send out a blog post without editing it (because it looks like spam) but send out something a bit more tailored... I think he needs at least three types of introductory email for different businesses.

I have offered to do both of these things but he has just asked me to continue compiling a generic, non-tailored URL list from publicly available data. I can't shake the feeling that this will be a massive waste of time (I am meant to be jobhunting so will happily do something to bring in money but I don't want to waste time I could use for my own career). I am also concerned that it may create a negative first impression of him/his business.

AIBU? Is the way he's doing things the right way? Neither of us has any experience in this field - I'm going on the way I've read about self-employed people getting their businesses up and running. Any replies appreciated :)

You're right, he's not.

Actually I'm not sure that emails are the best way forward at all. I know letters are very old hat nowadays but unless your email has something very compelling in the subject line, it will probably just get deleted without even being opened. A letter (properly targeted) with a real hook in it is much more likely to get results

And you need to do your follow up calls a lot sooner than one month.

You have one shot - if you screw it up, then you're right, it doesn't help the business, it hinders it.

Has your husband tried Linked In? I've had a couple of people contact me through there with real work opportunities - I'm just coming to the end of one contract which I got purely on the strength of my profile. It's a really good way (if you invest in a Premium account but they quite often give away one month free membership) to find out exactly who the person is at an organisation you want to speak to.

On my phone so can't manage a long post. I get contacted by freelancers/companies frequently. The only chance of me noticing an individual contact is if they phone me then follow up with a tailored email. You can use an email tracking company to see who has opened an email and then follow up with a phone call.

Thanks for your reply. He is a prolific LinkedIn user and uses it a lot for his current contract. I managed to find a local person who was in the same line of work and only two contacts removed so DP set up a meeting but it came to nothing. He leaves himself logged in to our home computer on LinkedIn so maybe I could cross-reference my Internet research with his contacts lists to see if he is connected to anyone useful.

I really think he could end up with a reputation for spam, which is unhelpful. I used to work in a similar field and was the first point of call for very similar attempts to his - calls were politely declined and emails deleted.

His work is very IT and social media based so I don't think he would be willing to do anything print-related but I will try and persuade him to adopt a tailored approach. It's difficult as he is older than me so has more business experience but I am the one with experience of applying for jobs (he has achieved all his roles through contacts only) and I understand British culture better (he isn't from the UK).

Thanks pushmepullyou, I have suggested an email tracking company.

As it stands he still wants me to compile massive company lists but has said I can filter them once compiled... which is a result of a kind!

I am trying to work out what he does! I am self-employed and can't imagine a bulk email I could send to anyone I wanted work from. I tailor every single email I send to the individual if not the company, but then maybe I am in a very different line of work and am contacting far fewer people.

I think he's working on the basis that X% reply of however many thousands so if he wants Y customers he needs to send out Z number of emails. I just think that an event (which is his experience base) is totally different to shifting your own product. It doesn't matter (overly much) if he pisses people off when using the company name, but it does matter when the email is in his name only.

It's an IT product that he's trying to sell (any more specific would, I think, out him as he uses Google Analytics a lot to bump up his Google ranking). Once he sells it it should mostly run itself. I just fret that he hasn't thought through many of the practical sides - for example he asked me to call around and when I did and was trying to provide more information for the little interest that I received I couldn't even give them a ballpark price because he wouldn't give me one.

Anyway, thanks to your advice I have persuaded him to let me try it my way (i.e. tailored) for a bit - I just quoted verbatim from your posts :)

Mailchimp is free for the first 500/1000 (?) email addresses - you can also see who's opened the mail and which bits of it they've read.

I'm a marketer and in my opinion you are absolutely right. I would recommend you send a tailored emails based on a bit of background research to a batch at a time including something about calling them in a few days time - then call that batch, and follow up with an email. It's also worth starting locally so he can offer to visit their office.
Good rule of thumb is to treat contacts like people you really want to impress, not as one of a 1000 anonymous addresses. And think how you'd like to be approached. Reputation and word of mouth is THE best marketing tool in my experience so you are wise to want to protect it.

Also agree that a nice posted letter can cut through the email overload!

Finally if you're doing followup he needs to make sure you can answer questions.

Good luck

I thought I'd add in response to FreelanceMama that mailchimp also offers the option to tailor the newsletter to specific groups (types) of users and they also give a lot of advice on things that people like me (non-marketing types) wouldn't have a clue about - e.g., how people scan the mail, the way their eyes move across it - you know, where to put your hook versus contact details and all "that stuff".

Isnt there a chance that if he spams a lot (and it sounds like he does) his email address will already be blacklisted by various ISPS? And his emails already redirected into junk folders. Is there a way you can find out?

Thank you for your replies, I really appreciate the advice. FreelanceMama I will send out tailored letters to local companies and maybe suggest that the emails go to 'long shot' companies (e.g. venues a long distance away or who already have his type of service).

Alpine thank you - I will check out mailchimp and see what they suggest. My uni also offers a service to freelancers and I took a business card a few months ago (they offered to read the email for me) so I will send the new versions through and ask them to look.

Quintessential He has many email addresses that he uses for these things. His contract-related spam is often blacklisted (he has received notifications) but somehow he gets around it, I'm not sure how. Aside from the business-damaging aspects I actually hate spam so I find what he's doing really morally dubious... often have to hoick my judgy pants down!