3 Tips to Improve Recruiting by Stopping the Car Sales Tactics

Heath Bertini

Why do most people hate buying a new car?  Most of the time the issue is the salesperson.

Sales people can be pushy, demanding, irritating, and relentless.

What does this have in common with recruiting emails?  If done improperly, that’s exactly how your email is perceived by the publishers you’re attempting to contact. When recruiting, the idea is to be friendly, informative, and respectful of boundaries; not a car salesperson.

The following are some tips to help win over new partners using email outreach, based on my experience of over 6 years as a Senior Development Manager.

1. Create a Genuine Interaction

It’s amazing how many people immediately set the wrong tone with a bad subject line; “Join Widgets Etc. Affiliate Program TODAY and Earn TONS of Commissions!”

Subject lines like this will give potential partners the same sinking feeling you get when you notice a car salesman approaching you on the lot when you just wanted to browse.

Taking the time to carefully choose a subject that doesn’t scream “bulk mail” is time well spent. The subject line is the preamble to the content of the email- make sure it simply summarizes your message. There are lots of people who do nothing but develop subject lines for marketing emails, but you don’t need to be a seasoned email veteran to get it right.

Are you looking for a partnership? Then why not something simple, such as: “Partnership Inquiry from John’s Widgets Etc.”? You would be surprised at how effective a short, to-the-point subject line can be.

Other suggestions for subject line creation include omitting exclamation points and CAPS; there’s no need to shout about it – stay professional.

Another tip is to try and think of four or five well-crafted subject lines, run them by someone outside of the affiliate marketing space and see how they perceive them.

2. Don’t be annoying

Once the car salesperson has you in their clutches, you feel trapped and find yourself looking for a way out. Don’t give this feeling to publishers and make them regret replying to your initial outreach from their personal email address. Just because you have a contact with a good working email doesn’t mean you should send all communications to it.

For example, restrict your newsletters and other mass mailings to the email address provided in the affiliate network.  If the publisher you are trying to recruit is slow to reply or non-responsive, wait more than 3 days before sending a follow-up. Don’t reply every time with your fancy html email signature with five embedded hyperlinks, nobody wants to scroll past blocked images and malformed html to read your reply.

Most importantly, make sure your email body doesn’t contain unsolicited links to join an affiliate network or creative ads. Remember, you never asked the car salesperson to get into financing options when you haven’t yet made a decision to buy – don’t push ads on publishers who are still trying to decide if you are a good fit for their audience.

3. Engage in Valuable Correspondence

Publishers don’t like to be repeatedly harassed about an ongoing deal or coupon, just like you don’t appreciate the car dealership trying to sell you an extended warranty months after your purchase. Sending an email about new creatives to a publisher who mainly uses data-feeds is not in the least bit relevant. Additionally, emailing a publisher to make them aware of a new promotion suggests you’re not willing to go further than an email blast to get a publisher performing.

Good reasons to reach out:

– To see if there are any new areas of the publisher’s website for more visibility.

– To suggest campaign tailored to their audience.

Both of these topics encourage an in-depth interaction that shows publishers you are willing to work for them to help improve performance.

Craft your communication within the scope of the publishers’ promotional methods, and ask questions where appropriate.

Make sure to keep these tips in mind during your next recruiting initiative, and watch your response rate improve without having to offer “FREE undercoating”.

Reach out to opm@madrivo.com for more information on improving your client recruiting process.

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