Should you message several creators at once?

The shortlist is finished. Six creators are on it, each one already past the point where you'd have ruled them out, and not one of them has been written to. The product is a contoured sleep mask that blocks light at the nose bridge, and the campaign it belongs to bought two variations of one message.

Six names, two slots, an empty send box. So somebody asks whether the six get written to this week or one after another, and the question arrives sounding like a question about manners, or about how much of a hurry you're in.

Both readings miss it. It's a question about what you're putting in the envelope.

What's in the envelope?

Two different things can go in it, and our guide to the first message already separated them. "One is an offer: will you do this, for this fee, on these terms?" An offer carries a number and the four terms a campaign settles before anybody films. "The other is smaller: are you open to an offer for this job, in this window?" It carries none of them.

That guide says which of the two you're asking "decides everything below, so settle it before you write a line." It says that about what goes inside one message. The same split decides how many of them can go out, and the reason carries: the two ask for different answers, so a yes to each leaves you holding something different.

For the sleep mask: there's a fee in the budget and nobody has written the terms. So the thing available to send this week is the smaller question, and that was settled before anyone counted envelopes.

What does a yes leave you owing?

Start with the smaller question, because it's the one with nothing attached. A yes to it "commits them to reading what you send next, and to nothing else. Not to a number, and not to terms they haven't seen." Read that from your side of the table and it's symmetrical: you owe them something to read, or a no. There was no slot in what you sent, so none was promised.

An offer is the other case, and the no-reply guide is exact about what it costs to put one out: "You can't un-send a number." The guide is describing one offer sent to one silent account, and the part that carries here is the arithmetic it does next — "If a yes comes back, you've got a creator and a deal you priced without a conversation; if nothing comes back, the number is out there anyway." The same section is firm that a silence doesn't move the figure you put in either, because "The campaign sets it."

That guide is careful to add that "Neither of those makes it the wrong move." An offer isn't a thing to avoid sending. It's a thing that lands and stays landed, and a yes to it is a deal you keep or break.

For the sleep mask: the difference shows up on a Monday morning. Six yeses to the smaller question means six things to send or six polite noes. Six yeses to an offer means four deals you never meant to buy.

So how many can go out?

Each kind stops at a different place.

The smaller question stops at the list. Every name on the shortlist got there the same way: "A shortlist isn't a ranking. It's what's left after you rule people out". So there's nobody on it whose yes would be a problem. That guide is careful about what a profile leaves open, and in the case of a creator with no branded content at all it says how far that goes: "What stays unknown is narrow". Writing to fewer of them wouldn't close it. What it costs sits on your side of the table: every yes is a reply you owe, and a shortlist is already short. Six can go.

An offer stops at the slots. You know how many you have, and the budget guide says where the figure came from: "the count comes off the variations" you decided to buy. That section splits the count three ways by what you want to be holding at the end, and it counts one video as a whole campaign, so the figure you arrive with is a decision already made rather than a minimum to clear. Two variations, two slots. A third offer isn't a spare chance at the same two slots, because you can't take it back. If it lands, it's a third variation you didn't decide to buy, or a deal you'll have to get out of.

The time guide names one cost of asking everyone at once — it "can leave you with more yeses than slots, which you then have to answer." Whether that's a problem depends on which kind you sent. Six yeses to the smaller question and two slots is a choice you have to make. Cutting six names to two was always pending; writing back to six wasn't. And the choosing guide rules names out rather than ranking the ones left, so what separates two names you'd both take is a call this page doesn't make. Six accepted offers against two slots is the other case, and it isn't a choice you get to make.

What does asking everyone at once buy?

Not speed of work. The time guide is flat about that: "The floor is the same either way." The video still gets shot and the rounds of changes you set aside still sit where they were; the brief still has to be written, on your own calendar rather than the floor.

What it removes is a wait that only exists if you go in order. In that guide's words, "What you stop paying is the answer-wait twice over: you ask, you get a no, and you start the same wait with the next name." Send both in the same hour and those two waits run on top of each other instead of end to end.

That guide is listing the move as one of four changes you reach for when the window is short. The saved wait doesn't depend on a short window, and nothing about the sleep mask's calendar has to be tight for that to be true. What a short window changes is whether you can afford to give that up, not how much there is to give, and whether the campaign fits at all is that guide's own subject. What the send costs you is the next section.

For the sleep mask: six smaller questions in one afternoon cost you six sends and whatever comes back to read. They buy back the waits you'd otherwise have taken one at a time.

What does it spend?

The same guide names the other side of the trade: asking everyone at once "spends the room the no-reply guide tells you to hold back for asking the next name".

That room has a size, and the guide is specific about what fills it. When one account goes quiet, "somebody else has to be asked and has to answer inside the same window, and that ask needs room of its own. Take that room off the first date." Who steps in is somebody who hasn't had the message — "Whoever fills the slot needs the same three facts you sent the first time, and the room you subtracted is what they'll be answering in." So the room holds one message and one wait. Both of that guide's dates come off the campaign's own calendar, and it is careful to say that "neither is a claim about how long a week of waiting should be". This page doesn't claim one either.

Writing to everyone doesn't empty your cover. It changes what the cover is made of. Two things can stand behind a slot: a yes you haven't sent an offer to yet, and a name you haven't written to. The first is quicker, because it needs no message and no wait, only the offer. That trades the second kind for the first, and the guide calls putting a slot back a small move: "The slot goes back to the list. That's the whole move, and it's smaller than the week of waiting made it feel."

What you give up is topping the cover back up. While two of the six are unwritten, more can still arrive. Once all six have the message, nothing new comes except the answers already travelling, so from there nothing you do can add to it. When it reaches nothing, with no spare yes and nobody unwritten, you are where the no-reply guide arrives from the other end. Its example is a job that had one name from the start: "There's nobody to reserve room for, so what you're reserving room for is the decision you'd make instead: a different job, or a different campaign." That guide is describing a list that was short before anyone wrote anything, and yours wasn't — you arrived there by sending. What carries across is the shape of what's left: "Both of those are bigger than filling a slot, and they take longer than writing to the next name would."

For the sleep mask: two yeses and two slots looks like enough, and it is until one of the offers comes back declined. Then there is no spare yes and nobody left unwritten, and the next move is the big one. Four yeses and two slots is the version with slack in it: a decline costs you the next name on that list of four, and nothing more.

What the answer doesn't decide

Three things the answer doesn't decide for you.

Who gets the two offers. Nothing above picks a name. The smaller question tells you who's willing to read one, and turning that into two names is the choosing you were going to do anyway.

What the message says. The first-message guide settles that, and it has already ruled on the version with several names in front of it: run its test "per creator, not per campaign", and it says which parts don't move: "Two of the three facts come from the campaign, so they're the same sentence for everyone on the list". Sending six at once leaves the wording where that guide put it, and makes the one place they'd differ — whether the job itself is different for somebody — worth checking before they go.

What comes back. No forecast is doing any work here. A silence won't tell you which of its causes you're looking at, and the no-reply guide's first move is to take that off the table: it is "Nothing you can read off it", and "the silence is identical in all three" cases it lists. What that rules out is picking names on the strength of a reply you predicted. You don't need the prediction anyway: none of the six is bound to the job, and neither are you, until an offer goes out. The send is sized by what a yes would cost you, not by how many you think are coming.

Frequently asked questions

Six said yes to the smaller question and we have two slots. Who do we pick?

Nothing about the order they arrived in is a reason: a fast answer is an answer about their week. Choosing runs the same way it would have if only two had written back. The ones who don't get an offer get a no, and it's cheap for both sides, because they haven't seen terms and you haven't named a number. Hold the noes until an offer has actually been accepted, though. Until then those yeses are what stands behind the slot.

We sent a DM and an email to the same person. Is that two?

No. It's one, and our guide to the two routes says what it costs: "Send both ways at once and you've put one message out twice, and spent the minute anyway."

This page counts people. One person carrying one question is one envelope no matter how many ways it travelled.

We sent offers to exactly as many people as we have slots, and all of them said yes.

Then the slots are full and nothing here was aimed at you. Slots are how many acceptances you can honor. Nothing in that number says how many will arrive.

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