My concern is that my efforts to broadcast this request appear to have failed and I suspect it is because I used a mass email to conduct the broadcast. One-on-one requests, in person, by phone, or by individualized emails, of course is another story.

Can we successfully broadcast or “mass communicate” referral requests? I haven’t figured out the formula yet, but believe it may be possible within social networking environments AFTER you’ve built the good-will and trust of your fans and supporters at places like Facebook and Twitter. But I admit, I haven’t proven the point yet.

I don’t know anyone in business that would say it is rude to ask for referrals. In fact, if someone we do business with asks for a referral (or two), that is an affirmation that they would like to do business with companies like us. If anything, we’ll take it as a compliment, thank you very much.

Getting zero responses is not a negative response to a marketing campaign. It just indicates you need to increase the distribution or target your prospects better.

As far as the spam flagging, everybody has bad days and some will take it out on every unsolicited email they receive. No worries there.