Weddingbee PRO

I get around 50 emails a day from PR agencies asking me to feature their client’s latest work, product or service. Most of the time I don’t respond because it’s obvious they haven’t really spent any time on Weddingbee to see if their product or service is a good fit.  They’re also probably emailing every blog out there, and I don’t like blogging about something that’s already been covered extensively on other blogs.

Here are some of the common mistakes PR agencies make when they contact me:

1) Their product or service has absolutely nothing to do with weddings.  I’m sure there are blogs out there that would love to write about the latest innovation in car wax, but unfortunately Weddingbee just isn’t the right blog.  Sometimes though, they’ll try to convince me that car wax is indeed wedding related.

2) They address the email to the wrong person.  If someone addresses me by my last name “Kim”, it doesn’t really bother me because 90% of people who don’t know me do it.  But I also regularly get emails addressed to bees like Mrs. Dragonfly — retired bloggers who haven’t been active in years. That tells me you haven’t spent any time on the site at all.

3) They send a form letter where they just change the name of the person the email is going out to. Sometimes you’ll see the name of the previous person the email was addressed to somewhere in the email.  Most of the time it’s a standard press release with no personalization at all.

4) Even though our contact page clearly states that we do very few product and vendor reviews, I often receive the same email sent to info, press, help and vendors@weddingbee dot com.  Maybe some people think blogs are bigger than they really are, so they want to make sure they get in contact with the right person.  But most blogs are run by one person, and all those different emails come to the same person, who probably doesn’t want to receive 4 copies of the same email.

99% of the emails I receive from PR agencies go straight into my pr archive folder and I never think about them again.  But if someone writes me a personal email, I will respond to them (don’t hold me to this, as I’m usually behind in my emails ).  After all, if someone didn’t take the time to write me any sort of personal email, why should I take the time to write a post about them?  Most of the time I tell pr agencies and vendors that we don’t really do any product or vendor reviews because the focus of Weddingbee is on our real brides and their wedding planning journeys.  But I have to admit that a nice email definitely affects how I respond.

So how do you get my attention?

Write me a personalized email introducing yourself.  Show me that you’re familiar with Weddingbee, and convince me why your product or service should be featured.  Show me something new, cool, different, interesting.  Let me know what makes you and your work different from all the other photographers, invitation designers, wedding planners, etc. out there who email me daily.

Bottom line: Put yourself in my shoes.  I get hundreds of emails every day, so make me want to blog about you!