“Dear Team, my name is Jon Pepito and I’m a fan of videogames. Since I was a kid, I’ve played a lot of games and I’ve always enjoyedzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzZzz….”
“Hello, I’m Kate Plouplipou and I’ve composed music for the Orchestra of Loliland in 2016 which earned the Best Soundtrack For Video Games award given by the jury including the famous musician Brian BibadouzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz….”
What do you think of these emails?
This is the kind of thing you start seeing pop up in your inbox once your game gets a bit of visibility.
They come from translators, composers, platforms, publishers, scammers…
…and a good chunk of them look like what I’ve just shown you.
Can you spot the issue with those?
They’re only talking about themselves.
What they’ve done, who they are, how they got here… flaunting random awards, education and statistics.
Here’s the thing though: everyone is busy.
We’ve all got billions of things to do.
We don’t want to read the life story of a random person on the internet or spend time checking if their awards even exist in the first place.
Just like for your games, no one owes you their attention. You have to work to grab it.
Think about why you’re reading this right now.
You’re probably not here because you’re interested in the life of a random french dude thousands of miles away from you.
More likely, you’re here because you’re getting something out of it:
- Useful information and ideas
- Inspiration for your own projects
- Satisfying your curiosity about the inner workings of the game dev world
- Anything else? (let me know why you’re here by replying to this email!)
So, how can we send better cold emails?
3 things:
- Keep your message short and to the point.
- Talk about what you can do for them and their project. They don’t care about you (yet).
- Personalize your message to the recipient.
Obviously, this takes more work than copy/pasting the same message over and over.
But not as much as you’d think.
For example… it could just mean not writing “Team” or “for your studio Thomas Gervraud” when it’s obviously a name.
If you’re sending your game to a content creator, don’t just paste your whole Steam description and ask them if they want a key.
Here’s a loose structure you could follow instead:
- A small GIF of your game so they can know right away whether it fits their content
- The Steam key so they don’t have to go back and forth with you if they’re interested
- 1-2 sentences that explain why they could be interested in your game and what it is
- Links to the Steam page, trailer and presskit to make it easier for them to find what they need
More generally, I’d say this: think about who you’re contacting and make it as easy as possible for them to accept your offer.
Best,
Thomas