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Yet I worry about the effectiveness of mass emails versus doing a personal request for each link, even if you're using several templates.
What is your campaign like?
But usually i just compose a quick email for each.
I find that if you start by:
"I found your site by searching for "blue widgets" on google"...you usually get good results.
I know i always like to hear how people find my sites.
JOAT
disclaimer...the above example only works in the blue widget industry. ;)
However, I'm also considering visually scanning a directory for non-competing companies who are in the same industry, and just databasing them, and personalizing the email per cat.
Does this sound about right?
I would do it in a way that each others email addresses dont appear on the To: field, so to make it at least appear that it is an individual email.
Personally I am more likely to respond to a personal message than a mass produced mail.
But, you could trail run it on one category, and another technique on a different category and see what works best for your industry.
JOAT
JOAT, I hate to say this, but I delete all those link requests that look like standard canned templates. Why? Because 99% of them are link requests from irrelevant sites. You are up against all the people who haven't a clue about link hunting and are using some form of automation to request those links. They rarely do the research before sending their requests.
If you are really wanting to establish quality links with quality sites, you'll invest some time reviewing the site you are requesting the link from, and finding the right contact person to send the link request to. In some instances, you may even want to make a phone call to that person.
If I were sending out a link request, I might start it off like this...
"Hello Jack, my name is pageoneresults and I am the webmaster for domain.com. I've been doing some intensive research these past few months and have gathered a list of websites that I feel are worthy of a link exchange with my property(s)."
From there I'd have a couple of more paragraphs explaining what my site is about and why a link exchange would be of benefit to both our visitors, not the search engines, but my visitors.
We all know that link exchanges have an effect on the SE's, there is no need to tell me in your email. In fact, those are the other ones that I trash right away. It tells me that they are usually interested in one thing, link pop. They could care less about the visitors, their main concern is link popularity and sucking some PR from your site. I call those PR Suckers, the web is full of these leeches! ;)
Save canned pitches solely for the sites that aren't worth your personal attention.
I can see what your saying there, but in the only case i did it i used sites i listed in a section in my directory site to try and get links for my new site that was in that industry.
The results werent bad, but admittedly i got a better result from personal emails ive sent since.
JOAT
<added>surely even a badly composed link request could have the same benefits as a good one? Personnaly i have a look at the site that is requesting the link...if it has good content for my users, then a link is granted, otherwise binned. Doesnt matter how the link was composed, or how good the site looks, or what the PR is...the content is what is important.</added>
Sounds like good advice.
Although I may use a personalized mass mailing for a more generalized, lower pr site group, as there are a ton of them.
It's the sorting though. I go through at least 200 sites to find 50 to send out an email.
I find it really helps to find an audience and then follow that trail, building out one section of a link directory at a time even. I figure 25 good leads for a stream is worth the effort to send out emails and because it's within one stream I can customize my initial template and then personalize as needed.
I was wondering about something else as well. I know people tend to read what is personalized but how far do they read? If the first few lines manage to create a personalized connection would the reader be tempted to read the whole email even if it's a rather long email?
On the other hand, one of my clients is a non-profit organization where the linking environment is in the thousands. There, I recommend mass-mailing and the use of their regular newsletter to cover a broad audience, but highly individualized efforts for those high profile sites that might link to them.
>>Bottom line, can you personalize emails in the same way for the whole email address database?<<
I think most people can distinguish between a mass mailing and an individual note.
>>I know people tend to read what is personalized but how far do they read?<<
Then try to get to the point quickly. I sometimes go on in huge detail in some of my posts, so I know this can be difficult. ;)
