Found a weird trick for getting vendors to actually reply to emails
So I was planning a small tech meetup in Denver last month, like 50 people max, and I kept hitting this wall where vendors would just ignore my emails or give me the runaround for weeks. I tried follow-ups, calls, even LinkedIn messages, nothing worked. Then on a whim I changed my subject line to include the exact date and a weird emoji, like a rocket ship or a pizza slice, and suddenly my reply rate shot up to almost 80 percent. I think they just got tired of the same boring "networking opportunity" stuff and the emoji made them curious enough to click. Has anyone else tried something offbeat like this, or do you have a better system for cutting through the noise?