Emailing companies for sponsorship - What to include?

[John D]

Hey,
I am going to email some companies and request sponsorship for some of my forums.

Has anyone done this? Did it work well?

What should I include in the email?

I am thinking of including a bit of background info on the site, stats, my future plans, what I will be doing every month to keep traffic up, what their sponsorship money will be going towards and how the rate to sponsor the site.

Any other ideas or suggestions?

Thanks :)

[writespeak]

John, this sounds like the same question in this thread (http://www.forumuniversity.com/campus/showthread.php?t=298), or am I missing something?

But it's good to raise it again. We have more members now = more people who can share their own experiences. :)

Lois

[SoftWareRevue]

Has anyone done this? Yes. :angel: (for services and products)
Did it work well? Yes. :angel: (for services and products)
What should I include in the email? A bit of background info on the site, stats, your future plans, what you will be doing every month to keep traffic up, what their sponsorship money will be going towards and something I couldn't quite figure out. :angel:
Any other ideas or suggestions? Yes. :skully:


How they will benefit from sponsoring you. (maybe that's what your last sentence was leaning towards)

It's more difficult soliciting monetary sponsors than it is services/product sponsors. But, you basically need to look at it like how you would like to be approached to sponsor a site. What information would you require?

First, I'd probably want to know who was contacting me. Then, of course, there's the why. Why me? Is it because I'm generous? Or is it because a relationship could be beneficial.

It's all about, "What's in it for me?"

[SoftWareRevue]

John, this sounds like the same question in this thread (http://www.forumuniversity.com/campus/showthread.php?t=298), or am I missing something?

But it's good to raise it again. We have more members now = more people who can share their own experiences. :)

LoisHa!

I was actually going to link to a post I made in that thread. But, that one seemed to be more about contacting prospective sponsors without being considered a spammer. While this one seemed to be more directly, what to include in the contact.

Now that I think about it, this could be a good FU project.

If we could come up with a template or even a checklist, it could help out lots of folks wanting to gain sponsors.

Let's get them white boards out and get ta crackin!' :whip"

[John D]

Haha yep this is similar but I thought it might be better to have what should be included in the contact emails in a separate thread, I think a lot of people would be very interested in this since its one of the main things a forum owner has to do at some stage.

Some sort of template that people could use would be great, I have sent emails in the past and always included as much as I could think of, or at least sent an email asking if they would be interested in knowing more first.

I think if you send a great email containing a lot of information that would help sway a prospective advertiser would be great.