A couple quick facts.
I’m a PR/Marketing guy so I feel it’s OK to highlight less than stellar practices on occasion, and to accompany them with best practices.
Also, if you don’t know, I run a little fashion blog on the side for fun, which means I receive a good number of pitches from PR folks (in-house and agency).
With those two things mentioned, I think the stage is set for this quick example.
An email recently came in from Company X sharing information about a brand. The pitch itself was concise and well done.
But, when I looked at the sender section of the email something was odd. It first showed the person’s name, let’s call him Jon Doe for the sake of privacy, and then it showed the email address – [Intern01@companyname.com].
Intern01?
Now, I’m not here to tell anyone how to run their business or how to handle IT needs, but what I am here to do is state that it didn’t make a great impression.
Like you (the PR person), pitch recipients are also interested in investing in relationships that might be mutually beneficial over time. When a recipient sees Intern01@companyname.com it screams “temporary” and could be a negative to the pitches that are taking place.
The organization in question took the time to create an email address for Jon Doe, now known as Intern01, and it would have been great to see them make him at least appear to be remotely official by providing a standard company email address.
If you’re worried about what happens when interns leave, that shouldn’t be an issue since emails to inactive email addresses can be forwarded to make sure messages don’t go unanswered.
Also, the other relatively large point to make is that you have to consider the client in this situation. If they are paying an agency to do their pitching, it’s highly likely that the company is hoping for top talent to be doing the work, and this could appear as “intern pawning” in their eyes. The intern could be amazing at their job, but perception is key.
