The Email of The Species
Posted under: Don’t you sometimes wish that you just hadn’t bothered replying to an email! This morning we had an enquiry. It was evident that they hadn’t quite understood what we do so a reply was sent correcting their error. Another email arrived this time asking a few more questions including “how much traffic will we get”?
Now I like to try and give straight answers. I’m not going to say 50000 clicks or 5 clicks, the simple fact is I don’t know. With competitions it’s not easy to be definitive as factors like prize type and competition mechanic need to be included and even then I’m reluctant to offer someone a number. However this answer wasn’t acceptable, and apparently I was supposed to provide a “few case histories or recent examples” and not tell him that I thought he really didn’t understand what we actually do!
Why at this point he also felt necessary to announce that he was the MD of 2 media companies is a mystery. The answer would have been the same regardless of position. If a car mechanic is asked “how much to mend my car” he doesn’t whip out a few case studies and say “this one cost £500″ and “that one cost £300″ and here’s some stats and pretty pictures… he says “what’s the car, what’s wrong with it and bring it here sunny jim and i’ll have a look over… oooooh it’s going to be expensive”. Likewise with a competition site. It’s no point asking us questions about a competition we can’t look at and with a prize we don’t know!
At all times answers were provided – the problem though was my new found media mate didn’t like them. So next time I’m either not going to reply to such queries or just send over a powerpoint presentation with some fancy graphics, made up numbers and an invoice for a large bag of cash. The kind of thing that pleases the MD of 2 media companies I’m sure….