Short version:

If I emailed you this invitation, would you think it is spam?

http://www.rentyourdot.com/email.html

Long version:

I've been researching clients for my new program, emailing webmasters and trying to build business relationships. It's all going well, and most webmasters I email are either really nice turning me down, or really nice and signing up with my program.

But there is that last one, that just says SPAM SPAM SPAM and send me hate mail. Which is fine, some people are just like that.

I want to reduce the number of webmasters that think I am just sending them bulk spam, and make it clear, that I did look at their site, and actually would like to have a business relationship with them. I emailed about 50 webmasters last weekend - hardly qualifiing as bulk spam.

So rather than just emailing them and saying "Hey buddy, can I advertise on your site?" I made a nice fancy HTML email in the hopes that it will be clear that it is not just bulk email I am sending out.

The email I made is here:

http://www.rentyourdot.com/email.html

So I want to ask, does this look worse than just saying "Hey buddy, can I advertise on your site?"? Did I make it too corporate? If you got this in your email box would you confuse this as spam?

The hard part is that directly emailing webmasters works really well (if it didn't work I would just drop it). If I email 10 webmasters I get 3 signups, 3 declines, and 1 ignore. Most of them are really nice, but I would like to reduce the 1 webmaster that think I am sending bulk email.

Suggestions / comments / flames / hate mail?

JM

PS - Instead of emailing them the invitation, should I email them a cover letter that goes to the invitation instead?

Well i would maybe like it but it is spam if they didnt ask for it.

Try researching a little domain whois information including there name in the email that would personalise it more to make them not think its spam

If I got any unsolicited emails from someone I didn't know I would consider it spam, however politely they were worded.

But that's just me.

Get rid of the html formatting. Send a plain text email with a plain text link to your site. This will probably look a lot less like spam.

Also, maybe in the first sentance or two (or somewhere else where you KNOW the person will see it right away) include something like:

"Hello Trenton Davis, I saw your website www.millenium-designs.net and thought..."

Just something like that, which shows that the email is a bit more personal.

I dont know, thats just my two cents, and sorry if thats considered plugging, I can change it

Hi

Just a quick post. imo i dont mind if as cptnwinky posted the email is plain text.

If some one sends me a plain text email thats looks like its content is specific to me i read it. If the email is full of graphics i suspect its spam from the offset and my filters are set to send it automatically to the spam bin and i dont read it anyway.

I average about 700 spam emails a day , everyone has their own ideas about spam but for me its:-
Pictures of porn - sent 9 to 10 times in a row
Messages about drugs - same message constantly
And any sh@t email saying "Hi its me", Bank Docs enclosed, your account has been updated, etc, etc or any other pointless message with zero email content value.

I dont mind a webmaster introducing a service or requesting a link exchange from me if its done just the once and its not or doesnt look computer generated.

At the end of the day some webmasters can be funny about any email you send out without their permission but most of us recognise that sometimes you need to write first to introduce what you offer.

Good luck anyway but certainly keep your message plain, to the point and as personalised as you can get it.

I'm not sure how you're going to make the breakthrough - even with me - - I have Norton AntiSpam installed and if I don't recognize the subject line as something I've asked for then I just file the email as AntiSpam and Norton makes all subsequent attempts to communicate with me disappear....

JohnJ