 Hi everyone, this is Robert Gephardt again and today I want to talk to you about a bunch of no nodes. No, no, no, no nodes. These are for when you send out emails to perspectives. Your pitch letters or your sales emails and when you try to contact people, hey here I am, I'm a freelance translator, I'm awesome. These are some no nodes for your emails to send out. Once again, I'm saying this because I am a freelance translator that's my background but I also run an agency now so I get a lot of these emails. I just want to let you know from the agency's perspective and some mistakes that you can avoid, hopefully. The first no is no bulk mail to CC a whole bunch of companies. I'll get these emails that have CC'd my company and a whole bunch of other translation companies with the exact same email. Usually I just delete them right away. Obviously when I receive an email, I know you're emailing many other people, but there are a couple things wrong with it. First of all, to me it looks lazy. It shows that you just pasted all the email addresses there and sent it out. You couldn't even copy and paste the same email. I'm not saying personalizing the email for everyone. You couldn't copy and paste the same email 20 times. The other thing is you need to keep in mind that most people use programs for spam and bulk mail. So when you send out 20 emails at a time, even 10 or five, it's a lot more likely to go into someone's bulk mail. Gmail, whatever other email people use these days, they can tell. All these email servers, they're very good at this stuff. So don't send bulk emails, even if you send the same text to all your prospective clients, the agencies, copy and paste it and send it 10, 20 times. Next point, no images. You might think, well, they make it look better and nicer and all that. No, they don't. With all the viruses and Trojan horses, a lot of people in their work email don't have images or they won't see them. Even when they do, chances are you don't really know what you're doing as well as you think. Because all different email programs show these things differently. You can say what you want to say with text. Another one that I am adding now is no hyperlink. I want to add it kind of with a caveat. You never know where it links to or if it's some weird clickbait virus thing. If you're going to have a hyperlink, have it linked to a well-known page. Pros and upward count as well-known pages. They're known enough. Also, you don't want a hidden URL. You don't want something like click here where here is highlighted and they're supposed to click on that. You also don't want an email shortener because with those, you never know what you're clicking on. So if you're applying to me as a freelance translator, I do find it helpful to have links to the pros profile, but just make sure it's above board and there's nothing hidden or weird or odd about it. This is a big one. No attachments. To understand when you contact translation companies or prospective clients, you want to attach your CV, they probably will not open it. The way I prefer it is to have an introduction email and then have your resume as a text below if you want it. I'm just interested in a couple of the main things you've done, not the whole resume. So almost more of a portfolio. When it's an unsolicited email, I will not click on any attachment, even if it's a resume. The next one is no spammy words. Please no spammy words. And this goes especially for the subject line. All you need to write is language to language, you know, Italian to English translator and maybe your specialization, something like that. You don't want stuff with a whole bunch of exclamation points. You don't want all caps. Having a question as a subject is not good. Do this and do that so people click on your email. Well, I mean, if I click on your email thinking it's something and then it turns out to be something else, then who cares if I clicked on your email because I think you're a click bait or and, you know, I'm not going to trust you after that. I just be straightforward with your subject lines, especially with a subject lines, but straightforward. Another point that I feel is important is don't email many people in the same company. Now this is for a couple of reasons. First of all, the spam one that I already mentioned. Another thing is if I receive an email and I see that two other people in my company have been CC'd, I'll think like, well, okay, then they can deal with it. I'm busy anyway. They'll probably think the same thing. And in the end, no one deals with it, right? Even if you email different people separately, chances are they'll find out most companies aren't that big and it shows that you are not targeting me specifically. So say you have a company and there are three people in that company that you could email. What I would do is email one. If you don't hear back from this person, then email the next person, wait a while before you email the next person. And last, but certainly not least, don't email the same person too often. I mean, I understand if you email someone, they don't reply. You email them again, either get the message or, you know, give them some time to breathe. But the thing is, I'll receive an email from someone and I will reply and then I'll get another email like three months later. Obviously, they're just sending emails out willy-nilly to all these translation agencies and they don't even keep track of who they've emailed with and corresponded with in the past. That just looks really weird. Try to find a way to keep track of who you've emailed already. Honestly, I think that's really easy because if you have a list of emails, you know, just keep a list of whoever you've emailed before and then you can search. Definitely don't keep emailing the same person over and over and over, wait, hoping to get a response because that way it's the easiest way to make sure you don't get a response. They'll just put you, they'll block your email address or something. So that's it for my list of don'ts for now. It's by no means exhaustive. And in fact, I have another video, at least one other video where I talk about how I think you should structure the email when you email prospective clients or translation agencies. So I hope that helps. And if you've been doing any of those, please do stop doing them. I think you'll have a lot more success from here on out. So if this helps out, if you find this useful, then please don't forget to click the like button. 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