Which business to write to first, and on what basis

Once a district list exists, the next move is usually to write down it from the top. Alphabetically if it arrived alphabetically, in insertion order if it came out of a database. Both leave the ordering to chance, and chance is the worst possible way to spend a limited sending budget.

Three criteria set the order

No elaborate score is needed. Answers to three questions are enough.

Is the need visible? A business with no site, a site that falls apart on a phone, or one nobody has touched in years is living with the problem in a concrete way, and this group returns the highest reply rate by a clear margin. The reason is simple: the message rests on an observation.

Can you reach the person who decides? In a chain the decision is made centrally and writing to a branch goes nowhere. In a single-site business the decider is usually the person who answers the phone.

Is there any prospect of a budget? The honest way to guess is to look at what else the business spends money on: does it advertise regularly, does it run a booking system, is the equipment new. It gives you no certainty. It does keep you from guessing blind.

Folding the three into one number

Give each criterion a score from zero to two and add them up. The total lands out of six.

Fives and sixes go into the first week. Threes and fours into the second. Twos and below stay on the list and never enter that round.

A scale this crude is enough, because the aim is not finding the perfect order. The aim is avoiding a bad one. On an alphabetical list your best candidates may be waiting under W and never make it into that week at all.

Geography does not count as a criterion

Starting with the nearest districts feels intuitive and is wrong most of the time. When the work is done remotely, distance does not change the cost.

Geography becomes a criterion in exactly two cases: when the meeting has to happen in person, or when you are building a chain of referrals. The second is a real reason. Writing to three businesses on the same parade pays back far better than writing to three districts that never hear of one another, because shopkeepers ask each other.

Score once, then keep updating

The first pass covers the whole list and takes roughly twenty seconds per record. A hundred-record list means thirty-five minutes.

In later rounds nothing gets scored from scratch. The scores of records that replied, stayed quiet or bounced are updated instead, and a record silent for two rounds loses a point and sinks down the order.

So the list gets a little better ordered every round, and that improvement arrives without sending more.