I bet you've had more than a few SEO solicitations in your email. You
probably do what I do: mark 'em as Spam or just delete them. They
all pretty much follow the same formula: "Your web site could do much
better in the search engines if.."

Most of these folks probably belong in the Trash. Maybe a few really
do have something to offer, but I haven't seen one yet who has done
the bare minimum to increase their chances of getting some value out
of that email list they bought. Of course I could be wrong: there
could be some sharp SEO marketers out there who are bypassing me for
whatever reason or reasons. Maybe those are the bigger folks with no
interest in marketing to a little squirt like me, but there really is
no reason that the smaller SEO firms couldn't dramatically improve
their pitch.

For example, I recently received this:

Dear Tony


Your website looks like it would get a lot more visibility and traffic on the search engines if it is easier to locate. For no cost to you we will analyze your site and your web placement and show you how. Just email us at gwynne.n@gmail.com today and we will give you it. Our free review comes with no strings


Sincerely,
Gwynne Norman
Scout Marketing

That's a real email and a real email address. I assume that
this
is the corporate web site of their firm. That assumption could be
wrong, of course, but let's assume that is true for the moment at least.

There are decent articles on that website. A bit dated (nothing later
than 2005), but if you read a few of them you get the impression that
this is an honest, competent firm, and that's worth more than a few
Brownie points. I don't like that it's hosted on Blogspot - makes
it seem a little fly-by-night - but overall I got a positive impression
from the blog. Too bad the email didn't include a link to that, isn't it?

I know they are just blasting out form emails, but it's actually
easy enough to programmatically learn something about the sites
you are targeting BEFORE you send mail. You could then tailor your
form letter more closely to the likely interests of those sites. If you
were writing individual emails to each site, you'd certainly have
something much different to say to PR1 and PR7 sites, wouldn't you? It's
easy to pull Google PR and Alexa status and your form letter could even
incorporate that information into its pitch.

But you could go much farther. You could pull metadata and see what
keywords the site is trying to rank for and then check the search engines to
see how well they succeed. A form letter wrapped around that bit of
intelligence is going to be far more effective than one that vaguely
promises SEO improvement. You can bet your bippy that if I were
marketing SEO services, my form letters would be very specific to
their targets.

Beyond that, if the solicitation does trigger some interest and
a reply is sent, the person answering that reply should automatically
have all of that research in front of them: how big is this site,
what traffic volumes does it get, what are its keywords.. all of
that and more. Nothing ticks me off faster than a sales droid trying
to sell me something when he or she hasn't made any effort to find out
about ME first. The Internet makes that so easy today that there's no
excuse for not doing it.

So: two pillars for a better sale. Make it easy for me to find
out about YOU (include that website link) and make sure YOU know
something about me (basic Internet research). Those two things
alone will go a long way toward improving conversions from bulk
email.

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