Comments on: Getting in touch with the right people

By: Azlan Hussain @ Online business ideas & opportunities

Azlan Hussain @ Online business ideas & opportunities — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:40:52 +0000

I never thought it could work so well. I have recently started and am seeing great reply mail after mail. This is swesome!

cheers,

By: CraziestGadgets.com

CraziestGadgets.com — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:22:07 +0000

Also note that for large companies where there may be a lot of people with the same name they might throw a number on at the end…ie
john.smith2@bigcompanywithmultiplejohnsmiths.com

By: Joe Maddalone

Joe Maddalone — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:51:03 +0000

Just curious if anyone here uses Linkedin order to find the types of contacts you are looking for. I have had some success there.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:41:52 +0000

I had success with this method today using a little different twist. If you have an industry blog, post something about the company you want to contact. Once the article is up, email the marketing manager and let them know about the recent “news.” Many times you’ll get a link back and build an email exchange with someone at the company - then build the relationship.

By: 2 guys that earn 6 figures online share everything - Bloggeries Blog Forum

2 guys that earn 6 figures online share everything - Bloggeries Blog Forum — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:49:47 +0000

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By: Makeup

Makeup — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:46:36 +0000

Thanks for this usefull article, i boomarked this page and i will defently use this techniqe when my own blog is a bit older.

By: Justin Cook

Justin Cook — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:27:33 +0000

So essentially you’re performing a small scale directory harvest. Crude, but effective I suppose.

By: Stefanie

Stefanie — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:09:13 +0000

I’ve used this technique quite successfully to locate the names of journalists at various publications, too. A couple of other common variations are john.smith@company.com and john_smith@company.com.

By: Marcus

Marcus — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:42:45 +0000

It’s a fine line between drumming up interest in a domain name and spamming. What is your time period between cold calls for the prospective client?

Undoubtedly it yields great returns but one has to thread carefully nonetheless.

By: Nigel Hall

Nigel Hall — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:38:59 +0000

I’ve been using the same technique for several years when cold-emailing companies to introduce myself (I’m a freelance copywriter by trade). In my experience, aiming high definitely gets a better return. I generally work with relatively low-level marcom folks on a daily basis, but sending an intro email to a VP or CEO has a better hit rate than sending directly to the marcom person. The VP or CEO also knows the right person to route you to.

One caveat though. I’ve noticed diminishing returns over the past couple of years. Reaching someone at a really big company using this technique is still a good bet. But I’ve had less success at mid- to small-sized companies. I’ve noticed, from in-bound mail, that some companies are using a different email domain name to the one they use for their web site. And I think hosted email, like gmail, is gaining ground, making this more difficult. When I first started doing cold-call emails, I was getting close to 20% returns - amazing for direct mail. But a recent email blast I did to a list I generated from trade show exhibitors gave less than 5% returns: mostly due to address-not-found problems.

Couple of other ideas I’ve used for finding the right email address format: if you trying to find for a technical person’s email and you know the name and domain, try searching Google groups. Also, try searching social networking sites like LinkedIn.