Earlier today, I was talking with one
of the more than 1,000 Wholesale Suppliers we list in our
Drop Ship Source Directory. Our Directories provides
Internet Retailers like yourself with personally verified,
legitimate Wholesale Suppliers who will send single products
directly to your customers, from their warehouses, for you.
This eliminates the need for you to buy Wholesale products
up front, and stock and ship them yourself.
We here at Worldwide Brands know ALL the
Wholesale Suppliers we list in our Drop Ship Source Directory,
and in our Light Bulk Wholesale Directory, personally. We
are in contact with them constantly. We talk back and forth,
using phone and email, and give each other feedback on issues
we think are important. This helps us to continue to provide
you with the best information on Wholesale Suppliers available.
So, I was talking with the owner of one of
these companies today, and he gave me some feedback.
In our Directories, there is detailed
contact information for each of the Wholesale Suppliers
we list. That information includes the Email Address you
should use to contact them about setting up an account if
you want to sell their products.
This Wholesale Supplier forwarded me
an email he had gotten today from one of our new Directory
members. At the top of the email, as at the top of most
emails, was this Supplier's email address, in the "To:"
field of the email.
Here's an example:
To: WholesaleAccounts@SomeWholesaler.com
From: InternetRetailer@MyECommerceStore.com
Sent: Today, 10:24 AM
Subject: Opening a Wholesale Account
with your Company
Well, in this email's "To:" field was the
email address of the Supplier I was talking to. That's all as it
should be; it was an email from an Internet Retailer asking about
setting up a Wholesale Account with this Wholesale Supplier's company.
However, ALSO in the To field of this email were
the email addresses of something like two hundred other wholesale
suppliers.
Now, it's obvious what the new Internet Retailer
who sent this email did. He patiently gathered email addresses from a
couple of hundred of the Drop Ship Wholesale Suppliers listed in our
Drop Ship Source Directory, and sent the same request for a
Wholesale Account to all of them at once, in a mass email.
There's nothing terribly wrong with doing that.
It's not a good idea, since you really should research what
products you want to sell first, and then contact only those
companies that sell those products. But, this Internet
Retailer wanted to jump ahead a bit and gather info on
opening as many accounts as he could.
So what's the problem?
The problem is that he let the Wholesaler
see that it was a Mass Email.
Most people don't understand that it takes
time and effort for a Wholesale Supplier to set up a Wholesale
Account for you. If you're selling online, and you want to
sell the products of a particular Wholesale Supplier, you go
through their process for setting up an Account, which is
almost always free to you.
However, it's not free to the Wholesale
Supplier. They have to pay an employee to process the
account for you. Somebody has to sit their in their
office and fill out your information on their computer
system, so that the Wholesale Supplier can open your Account.
That's part of their business, and
they really don't mind the time it takes. As far as they are
concerned, they're getting a new Internet Retailer to work with,
and that's just great.
BUT! When it's obvious to the Wholesale
Supplier that you are writing to hundreds of Wholesalers at
once, it's also obvious to them that the time they spend
setting up your Account is probably wasted time. If you're
emailing hundreds of Wholesale Suppliers at once, that means
you are not focused on what you want to sell, you do not really
care which wholesalers you are getting Accounts with, and you
have not taken the time to become familiar with that Wholesale
Supplier's web site, products, and Account Setup procedures.
There's a very good chance that most of
the Wholesale Supplier who see that list of hundreds of
email addresses in the To field are not going to bother
responding to you!
In other words, you're shooting yourself
in the foot before you even get started with your online business.
If you MUST Mass Email a group of Wholesale
Suppliers, for Goodness' Sake, use the "BCC" field in your Email Program!
For those unfamiliar with it, BCC stands for
"Blind Courtesy Copy". That means that there will only be ONE
Email Address in the To field, and the rest of the addresses
will be hidden from the recipient.
If you don't have an Email Program that
allows BCC, get one! Microsoft's Outlook Express comes FREE
with Microsoft Internet Explorer, and it has this feature.
If you have Outlook express, and you don't see the BCC field
when you Create a New Email, look in the Help files.
You'll find it. Same goes for other Email Programs.
If you don't see a way to send BCC's, check your Email
Program's Help files.
Now, a little bit about how BCC works.
When you send an email to a lot of people using BCC, you put
ONE Email Address in the To field. Then you put all the other
Email Addresses in the BCC field. The Email will go out to the
Email Address in the To field, and all the other Email
Addresses in the BCC filed at the same time. However,
everyone who gets that Email will only see the one Email
Address in the To field.
Okay, I know what you may be thinking
at this point. What if the Email Address you put in the
To field isn't the Email Address of the Wholesale Supplier
who gets the Email?
That's obviously going to happen. When you
send a Mass Email to 200 people, and you put one of those
people in the To field, and 199 of them in the BCC field,
that Email is only going to look right to one of the
Wholesale Suppliers! All the others are going to be wondering
why they got an Email that was sent to a different Supplier, right?
Well, chances are that the Wholesale Supplier
isn't even going to look at the To field if there's only
one name there. It's not an obvious thing, and chances are
no one will notice, or even care if they do notice. If
it's a slow day at some particular wholesale warehouse,
someone might notice, though.
So, there's something else you can do
to 'mask' your Email.
Go into your Address Book, and set up
a New Contact. Name the New Contact something like
"Preferred Wholesale Supplier". In the New Contact's
"Email Address" field, enter your own Email Address.
Then, when you send your Mass Email,
put "Preferred Wholesale Supplier" in the To field,
then put the Email Addresses of all 200 Wholesale
Suppliers in the BCC field.
That way, each Wholesale Supplier
will get an Email that's addressed to "Preferred Wholesale
Supplier", and they won't see any of the other Addresses
you sent to. Of course, you'll end up getting a copy of
the Email too, because you are "Preferred Wholesale Supplier",
but at least that's a good way to verify that it went
out properly, right?
Don't worry if this all sounds too
technical. It's really not hard, and a good look at
your Email Program's Help Files will fill in the blanks
if you're not sure about how to do this.
Again, Mass Emailing Wholesale Supplier
asking for accounts is not a good idea. You really need
to spend time figuring out what you want to sell first,
and then just email those Wholesale Supplier who carry
those products. But, you may have other reasons to
Mass Email people, and this approach works well for
them as well.
If you absolutely must Mass Email
Wholesale Supplier, this little trick is worth learning,
believe me. You don't want to alienate your product
suppliers before you even start!
