Four years ago this fall I took my first trip to New York City to meet with editors and agencies to review my work. One question that I was asked several times was “how are you promoting yourself?” The only answer I had was “I’m not.” I started asking them what the best way to promote my work was. I got several different answers but the service I heard mentioned the most was AdBase. The first thing I did when I got home was sign up with AdBase. It is both fantastic and the bane of my existence. I hate marketing myself in this way and here is an example of why.
Last Wednesday I sent out an email promo to about 5,000 Art Directors and Photo Editors. This is what it looked like…
Simple and straight to the point. But occasionally people will express their displeasure in receiving these emails. On Wednesday I decided to pull from my past sales experience and try and turn a negative into a positive. The following is an email exchange I had with an individual who earlier that morning received my email. We will call him “E”.
“E”,
Sorry you didn’t like receiving my email and that it gave you digestive distress.
I subscribe to an email service for creatives called AdBase. They maintain a data base of industry people. It is possible to contact them and amend your profile so that you will not receive emails from myself or others trying to promote their work.
If it is my emails that made you particularly inclined to losing your lunch, you can unsubscribe/opt out of receiving emails from me. Just scroll to the bottom of the offending email and click the appropriate link.
Best wishes
Kenneth M. Ruggiano
PS
If you would like to send me your address I would be happy to send you a gift certificate to McDonald’s. I hope that would make up for my email causing you to puke.
From “E”:
“E”,
I suppose Ad Base might be your “nemesis,” but they are mostly a middle man. Photographers like me and other creatives generate the emails and choose who we want to send them to. The hope is that someone will like what they see and keep us in mind for a job in the future.
Once the email is sent out we are able to track who opened our email, clicked through to our website and who opted out of hearing from us in the future. The hope is to generate a list of people we can more specifically correspond with in the future. Sadly, it lacks a personal touch but it’s the electronic age we live in.
I tell you all this in hope that perhaps you might decide to continue receiving emails from people like me. We are working creatives trying to make connections with people that may need our services. I have no doubt that receiving dozens of emails a day can jam up your inbox and be a pain to go through. But consider that there was a real creative that sat behind a computer made an email and decided to send it to you. While I make no illusions that I picked you specifically, but rather I choose to send my email to Art Directors. I did that because I’ve always had good luck with reaching out to people with your title.
Sorry for the lengthy reply but I hope you understand no one wants to be your nemesis in this. We just want to be on your team.
Best wishes
KMR
PS
Dump would have sounded worse than puke. However, I wouldn’t have offered a gift card to help with that.
From “E”:
Bookmarked. Thanks.
I tracked my analytics and I’m fairly certain he ended up visiting my website and I know he didn’t opt out of emails from me in the future. I don’t know if it was because of shame or I peaked his interest but either way I’m going to put this in the win column. Will I actually see work out of this? Who knows, but I was able to pull someone into a discussion about what I’m trying to accomplish with the email.
As creatives we don’t do a good enough job promoting ourselves to the world and worse when we run into something like this we tend to take it personal and shut down. I have resolved myself to not let this happen to me and engage in a sales mindset.
Build a prospect list and work it. Turn “no’s” into a “yes.” Know when the prospect is dead and move on and don’t look back. Know that the product you’re selling is good.
I hope one day I will be able to hire someone to do this for me, because I don’t think I will ever love it. Until than the one man show will go on.