Fanatical Military Recruiting

24E-Mail and Direct Messaging

Your e-mail inbox is a bit like a Las Vegas roulette machine. You know, you just check it and check it, and every once in a while there’s some juicy little tidbit of reward, like the three quarters that pop down on a one-armed bandit. And that keeps you coming back for more.

—Douglas Rushkoff, writer

E-mail and social media direct messaging are powerful parts of a balanced prospecting approach. Most of your prospects will have an e-mail account and almost all of them will have a social media in-box that allows you to send a direct message.

Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Snapchat are often used as proxies, supplements, or complete replacements for traditional e-mail. The benefit of the social media channel and direct messaging (DM) apps is that you may send mail to prospects even if you don’t know their e-mail address (though in most cases you need to be connected with them first).

The downside of direct messages and e-mail, in all forms, is that if you irritate your prospect by sending them spam-laden crap, they’ll block you, spam you, or unfriend you in a heartbeat. E-mail done wrong wastes your time, makes you look unprofessional, and exasperates prospects.

When leveraged intelligently, though, e-mail and direct messages engage and open conversations with prospects. E-mail done right is a powerful prospecting methodology that will reward you with a consistent stream of qualified prospects.

In this chapter ...