Could you promote us, please - but we won't reply

Does silence in strategic alliance work?

Last week I wrote about our encounter with Royal Mail on Direct Mail options which ended in having to go back to the drawing board.

Offering reports to home-movers, after they moved

As Ed Rivis rightly remarked in his comment on my post: Direct Response Advertising is what it's all about when targeting specific not yet known prospects. Because we don't know what type of floor covering and in what kind of state the new home owners will find once the Big Day has arrived our aim is to offer handy "first-aid" tips for stain removal and simple maintenance on both wood flooring - our own expertise - and carpets - of which we do not have "inside" knowledge.

Fortunately, we have been in contact with a carpet cleaning company who indicated over a month ago they were in for strategic alliance. On their request earlier I was following a sequence of email messages about how to find a decent carpet cleaner and how to spot the "tricks of the trade". I also submitted some IMHO constructive comments on the messages, the layout and the style used; sharing our own experience with email marketing and the results we have. Their sequenced emails keep coming, but no reply to my comments.
So, in regards of our new project, we gave them a call and left a message on the answering machine over a week ago.

Complete silence

Which is a pity, because if we work together on this project, they could do the same for new home-movers in their area and use our tips on stain removing and maintaining wooden floors while promoting their own services to those with carpets.

StainExpert

Fortunately we always have Google to search and find the information about stain removing etc ourselves to compile the report we have in mind on our own. One site I discovered truly is a gold mine on giving information, tips and advice on all kinds of stains and how to prevent/remove them.

Great, problem solved I thought. All I have to do now is contact them and request permission to use their info - with naming the source and linking to their site - for our reports. Their contact page invites feedback, by subscribing to their newsletter and entering a comment in the text box. Which of course I promptly did. A kind request to share and promote their expertise on stains.

Auto-answer after registration

Great, another chance to explain to the person in charge our idea. So I replied to the email with an offer to do even more than the above, we would be more than happy to inform all of our contacts of their site.

Complete silence

That was a week ago. Silence until..........

A new (auto?) email which arrived in my inbox yesterday.

Oh yes, I'm interested in interesting information but was actually hoping they would be interested in our proposal. Or at least acknowledge our request.

It seems they are more interested in the number of Like's on Facebook. Pity, we could have added so much extra free information to their site in regards of stain removal and maintaining wooden floors to the benefit of their readers and "fans".

Call me old-fashion but

what's with businesses that seem to step on the Social Media and webmarketing ladder only to turn it into a one-way traffic: from them to us. To them I can highly recommend the "Age of Conversation 3 - It is time to get busy"
There was a ps in the last email: "If you would like us to stop contacting you please reply to this email with 'REMOVE ME' as the subject."

What I'm wondering/even begging is: how can I make you contact me in earnest??

So, stuck again? Back to the drawing board again?

No, I've decided to do exactly what they are asking: use their tips and link to their site and Facebook page because all in all the information that can be found there is a gold-mine and would absolutely benefit our yet unknown prospects who just moved home and might be facing stains on (inherited) carpets. We like to help out - that's how we grow our business. And if need be, as it seems now, we go-it-alone!

Comments

[Dave Blakeman]

Hi Karin,

I had a similar experience with Amazon (except they refused to even give a reply address!) - it's really frustrating when people claim to do one thing and then do the opposite!

see "one-way-conversations" for details!

[Karin H.]

Hi Dave

Ah, the famous no-reply email address! A blog post on AWeber about this practise resulted in a very lively discussion a while ago. My thoughts on those businesses or marketers: no-reply = no-sale

Especially when, like mine and your experience, they seem to state they want to make it easy for us and them to communicate. Yeap, as long as it is one-way traffic!

Thanks for sharing your story, I've edited your link so it is now "clickable" - to simplify the communication and two-way traffic. ;-)

Karin H

[Joe carpet cleaner]

I totally understand what you feel karin. It's really hard to find somebody who can be our associate/affliate when many of them are not serious about things that we are proposing. Nonetheless, we should try and try until we find someone who could have been a lot more interested to become an affiliate or partners with our company.

In addition, social media is a lot more interesting if there are interaction between people not a living robot who just answer or reply automatic emails.

[Karin H.]

Hi Joe Carpet cleaner

Thanks for your comment. How do you in Canada attract decent affiliates or joint-ventures?

Karin H