TIL: marketing, solutions & DMing

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you messaged 10,000 people who don’t know you to buy your stuff?

The answer might shock you.

As a matter of fact, I couldn’t really comprehend how easy you can build a team of 4 using this method.

It was one of the first marketing methods that I learned that required just my time to work with literally no money upfront.

In this letter, I’m sharing all the things I learned in the second half of this letter so hang on tight.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED

1.
What are the biggest recent Marketing Agencies?

In my quest to uncover the secrets behind the world’s longest-lasting companies, one question kept pushing me forward: Who truly dominates the digital marketing world today?

The list of giants seemed endless. So, I sharpened my focus—zeroing in on companies born in the last 15 years.

These are the bold ones. The ones who understood the internet from day one and used it as a weapon to rise above the rest.

In my analysis, I’ve included variables like Established Date, Number of Employees, Annual Revenue , Country, and the Three Main Services.

You can find the full analysis here.

2.
To get the right answers, you need to ask the right questions.

Something that fascinates me is how the help we need is often right in front of us.

The support that could make our lives so much easier is just one good question away—whether it’s from our best friends, our teachers, the internet, or the new AI models now available to everyone.

The art of sitting in silence for five minutes, reflecting on the problem you’re facing, and crafting the right question has become my favorite underrated skill.

GROW YOUR INFLUENCE

A marketing method that no one likes, but some people benefit heavily from, is sending messages to people you don’t know on social media.

If you’re using social media, chances are that at some point, you’ve received spam messages from random people online.

Maybe you delete these messages instantly.

Maybe you just scroll past them.

Maybe you’ve even thought about doing a little bit of research on the account sending you these messages.

Well, I ran an experiment to generate an additional source of traffic and revenue for my clothing brand when I was starting out, and the data might surprise you.

The experiment was successful.

As you can see in the graph below, from week 11 to week 44 (for eight straight months), we were sending messages to people on Instagram.

The system was simple.

We used dozens of secondary accounts to send messages to women on Instagram who were interested in fashion. We asked them to message our main account if they were interested in joining our ambassador program which later became a membership program.

1 out of 12 women who received our messages decided to reach out to us on our main account.

1 out of 28 women who reached out to our main account ended up joining our program.

Every new member of our program generated an average profit of $68.

In other words:

The more messages we sent (DMs Sent), the more responses we received (DMs Received).

The more responses we received, the more new members we gained (Conversions).

These abbreviations will be useful because below, I’ve attached the document with all the data we collected during this period.

The more messages we sent, the more responses we received, the more members joined, and the more profit we earned. The formula was simple.

When we started out, we just needed to send 10 DMs to get 1 DM back to our main account. By sending 242 DMs to random people online, we could gain 1 new paying member for our membership program!

How fast could you do that? Well, if you had 3 phones, each with 5 active Instagram accounts logged in, you could send 15 messages per account every 4 hours.

The “every 4 hours” part is important because Instagram imposes activity limits on its users.

In reality, the math wasn’t that simple.

You couldn’t always maintain 5 active accounts because there were obstacles in place:

– Instagram would ban accounts that showed unusual activity.

– You needed to create new accounts periodically.

– These accounts had to upload posts and appear to be real users.

So, things were a bit complicated.

To simplify, you could hire someone to send the DMs for you at a rate of €3 per hour back in 2020.

This person could send around 80–120 DMs per day by splitting the workload:

40 DMs in the morning

40 DMs in the middle of the day

40 DMs in the evening

The job wasn’t difficult, but it required consistency.

With just 3 people on your team, you could earn up to €1,500 in profit. However, the average earnings were often lower than that.

Eventually, other marketing activities, like Paid Ads and Email Marketing, proved to be more effective, but this was a great way to drive traffic and sales with little to no risk when starting out.

If you are interested in studying the numbers, you can find the full analysis here.

My goal is to build brands to document the best methods and systems that create an organization that stands the test of time. If we are going to partner up together in the near future, this analysis might be helpful.

Do I think spamming people is a good way to build a brand? Absolutely not.

However, if you’re just starting out or see yourself managing a large team that reaches out daily while battling with the restrictions set by social media and big platforms, this marketing method could be an effective way to grow your revenue.

to your growth and influence,
>> Chris Fountoulis
Founder – Elcune.com & GrowthOfInfluence.com
chris@growthofinfluence.com

Interested in our ventures? Find them here:
– Women’s clothing brand: Elcune.com
– Agency for creators: GrowthOfInfluence.com
– Personal Website: ChrisFountoulis.com