Flexible Working Life

Photo by Clurr

When I was writing the title to this post, I got really stuck on whether to call it an ‘introductory’ email.  Should it be sales letter?  Or an email pitch?
I’m not sure, but you know the kind of thing I mean, it’s the email that you send to someone whom you don’t know, asking for work and offering your services.  They are really tricky things to do because the temptation for the reader to press the delete key is huge.
Why should they open and read an email from someone they don’t know and give them work?

When I first started out in freelancing, this was my first hurdle.  I wanted to write for publications but I couldn’t get the editors attention at all.  All my emails were either going straight to ‘junk’ folder or the trash can and I really wanted that to change.
Over time, it did change and now I can happily send a batch of emails out and expect to hear a response.  It may be a ‘not right now..’ response or a ‘let us know of any other ideas you may have…’ response but it’s something.  It’s a reply that I can work on and respond to and build up a relationship from, it’s not the deafening silence that leaves me checking email every five minutes and wondering if they ever really received my message in the first place.  So here’s the first thing I did:

I found out exactly who to send my email to.

That sounds so obvious doesn’t it, but believe it or not, at the time I didn’t think it was important.  I would look at the contact information on the magazine, web site or whatever and bang out my little email to them.  But I was so wrong.  If you want a response never use a generic email address.
Any email like contactus @ thismail.com  is a sure-fire way of getting nothing back.  So first off, decide who you want to approach.
For me, I needed to find out who the commissioning editor was.  Or the features editor.
It’s different people for different lines of work, but you need to find out who owns the purse strings and get their email address.  Not their secretaries or their assistants, but theirs.  And it’s so easy to do.  Do some research on forums, ask your contacts or you could make a  phone call to the switch board and ask for it, but if you are picking up the phone, be warned!  You may actually end up talking to the commissioning editor in person, so have your idea/pitch/sales spiel ready to go.

If you hate making calls, and have tried all other avenues with no results, then  send a message to the generic email address asking for the contact information you need.  This sometimes works.  A quick two line email asking for the right email address takes no time at all and in return, you may get the information you need.

The next step is writing the thing, but this would take too long a post, so I’ll save that for later.