The Craziest Get Meetings Strategy I Tried

I used to send spam.

… cans of it.

… in the mail.

Was that effective? No! No, it was not.

I’ve tried a lot of off the wall strategies for getting meetings.

The craziest one was mailing cans of Spam to prospects to promote a cold email service.

I thought this was wildly clever.

When I was checking out at the grocery store with several trays of Spam, I’m thinking, this is such a cool idea. People are going to love it.
The little lady ringing me up gave me a look.

That should have been a sign right there.

And you know what?

It was weird.

People didn’t like it.

All I have left is one can of Spam sitting on my desk as a reminder. It expired four years ago. The stuff is basically just salt, so it lasts forever anyway.

But here’s one of the crazy ones that actually worked and got us booked meetings: a coffee mug.

Asking people to meet for a “virtual cup of coffee” gets a little cliched. So we leaned all the way into it.

We’d mail prospects a coffee mug. Initially we’d put a little instant coffee in it.

These days I’d say go with a Starbucks gift card instead. A little more polished, and I think people appreciate the extra effort.

Since you’re already going through the trouble of mailing something and buying a mug, the extra few dollars for a gift card is inconsequential at that point.

It got us meetings in industries where we just couldn’t get any traction.
And it’s not a standalone thing. It’s not “here’s a list of people, send them coffee mugs.”

First we’d connect with them on LinkedIn and say hello, so at least we knew it was a live account we were sending something to.

Then once the tracking showed the mug was delivered, we’d follow up again on LinkedIn. Or heck, pick up the phone, say hello, ask if they got the coffee mug, and strike up a conversation.

The schtick was simple: I figured if I was going to ask you for a virtual cup of coffee, I should at least buy the coffee.

Then you can get into whatever you actually want to talk about.

That’s been one of those weird ones that actually worked. People liked it, and it did pretty well for us.

So if you need an off the wall idea to try in an area where you’re just not getting meetings right now, don’t send spam, send coffee (mugs).