7 Ways Submitting Sponsorship Proposals is Just Like Tinder (But Without the Good Parts)

You busted your hump to put together a great proposal. You checked out your prospect on their website, set up a Google alert, researched key people on LinkedIn. You sent it. Nothing, Nada, Crickets…

For those of you who don’t know how Tinder works or even what it is, here is the short version. For those of you who do, skip to the next paragraph. Tinder is a dating – hookup site where you submit a picture and a profile and it does some analytics and you come up in the feed of “compatible” matches. You scroll through pictures and swipe right for the ones you are interested in and swipe left to keep looking.

When you send in your sponsorship intro, offer or proposal, the only analytics are the ones you have done, and you aren’t in a marketplace that sponsors have come to looking for love. So here is what probably happened:

1 | You actually thought that someone would open, read, consider or forward your proposal.

The truth is that like Tinder, There are hundreds or thousand of choices that sponsors are flooded with.

2 | Bandwidth.

They aren’t sitting on their couch focused on finding a sponsorship. Your emails are squeezed in between the hundred plus other emails they are trying to sort through while they are multitasking between meetings and conference calls.

3 | You have an uninspiring picture.

I avoided saying ugly but you get the metaphor. So like tinder they will look at your email subject (think picture) and decide if they will open, delete, or save to the “maybe later” folder. You should have the best picture ever taken of you posted. If it isn’t, head straight to Glamour Shots!

4 | You didn’t optimize for mobile.

Take out your phone. Open email. How many words do you see in the subject line? That’s how much space you have to work with. That’s where your compelling and short value proposition (reason to open) must fit. Around half or more of emails are read on a mobile device, adapt.

5 | Don’t confuse activity with progress.

You thought if you sent it to enough prospects you would get some responses. Really?Don’t confuse activity with progress. You may get responses from poor prospects and then you will swipe left.

6 | You give up too easily.

You have heard it before and it is still true that it takes an average of 7 touches to get a response. Keep iterating, refining and improving.

7 | Maybe the best place to meet the prospect you want isn’t Tinder (email).

Try the phone, network, their agency. It isn’t ok to stalk a person for personal reasons, but you may have to be obsessive to get your deal.

In part two we will move from the stop doing these things wrong into some suggestions on doing it right.

For more details, please contact me.