Aaron Marcus shares how Boomerang, an email-tracking app, helped him confirm whether agents actually opened his submitted materials. He walks through using it to follow up strategically with casting directors and agents in New York.
In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you a powerful app that helped me get an agent. And watch this to the end, I've got a great bonus video for you. It's my method for working with A-listers. Okay, let's get started. Hi, my name is Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center. This video, I don't know why, it just feels different to me. Before I tell you about this great app that you definitely want to check out, a little bit of a backstory is— and I know I'm kind of sounding like I'm going into prehistoric times and dinosaur age— but years ago when I first start going to New York, I was represented by I thought like the best commercial modeling agency. I mean, I did TV and film, but the very, very beginning of my career in New York, it was mostly commercial modeling work. And there was an agency, they were called McDonald Richards. Unfortunately, they haven't been in existence for a long time. I thought they were the best commercial modeling agency in New York. And a couple of years before I started going there, Some of the models told me you could actually— and by the way, this is all connected to what I'm talking about. I'm not just kind of going crazy and, and just riffing here. You could actually go into the agency. The models could go into the agency. They had a separate little room, like a little lounge just for the models. There was a telephone because nobody had cell phones then, and you would sit in there And agents would call in and walk in there and say, hey, got a booking for you, go to 7th Avenue, you know, here's the address. And people would just go out and get bookings. They would just go into the agent's office, sit and wait for bookings to happen. I mean, that's just— it was crazy. When I got there, they still had the room and you could walk in, you could talk with the agents. Now, we were all very Considerate, you know. And we're not— look, the agents are there to try to get us work and negotiate and send out information. So, you know, we didn't, we didn't want to take them off the phone that, that long. But, you know, to go in, say hello, say a couple words to somebody, that's just what you did. And you could hang out with some of the other models while you were there. It was really incredible. But as you all know, the world has changed. It's changed a lot, the acting world. Well, I guess the, the world in general. And one of the things— and, and I found this before, but I find it even more true today— is that it feels a lot less personal. I mean, there are agents that I work with I've never met, I've never seen before in person. And so one of the things that makes it hard for me, just personally, is people not getting back in touch with me. It's always been hard for me, and I don't know, maybe it was just the way I was brought up. You know, if somebody— like, look, if you send me an email and you have a question about something, even if I don't have the time in that moment to respond, I will at least get back in touch with you and say, is this an emergency? If it's not, I'll get back to you soon. I don't know, I just kind of feel like your time is just as important as my time, and, and I want to, you know, give you the respect just to let you know I got it, can't talk now. If it's not urgent, I'll, you know, get back in touch with you. So There, there was a time period with an agent where— spoke to the agent on the phone, and this was a number of years ago— spoke to the agent on the phone, and it was an agent I wanted representation with. The agent seemed interested in working with me, and the agent said, send me your information. And I did. Didn't hear from the agent, didn't hear back. So I thought, okay, well, I don't know. I'm not sure. Maybe they're just busy right now. And I followed up again and didn't hear anything. And then I decided there's an app that I have, and I have the free version of it. You can pay for a, you know, an upgrade. I don't. With the free version, I can use it 10 times a month. And then the next month it starts over again. And it's really, it's an amazing, it's an amazing app that allows you to track emails and it's called Boomerang. And I'll put the exact link in the description here so that, you know, you can check it out. I think, I'm not 100% sure, it might only be available for Gmail. Now, you'll have to look into this on your own if you don't have Gmail, but if you have Gmail, absolutely you can use it. And it's pretty incredible. And as you can see here, uh, in the images, when you're getting ready to send an email to somebody that you definitely need to know Did they get it? It's crucial. And by the way, going back to that story, the next time I followed up with the agent and I used Boomerang and I didn't hear back from them, that meant I knew they didn't open it. So either it went into their spam filter or for some reason it got blocked. And I called the agent and he said, no, I haven't gotten anything from you. I was kind of wondering why you hadn't sent it because you said you're going to send something to me. So by using Boomerang, it is an amazing way that we can track our emails to know if it's been opened or not. So anyhow, look at the pictures here, um, and you can see you send it first, you click saying that you want it tracked, and then it will pop up and it'll show you, you can send and track it, and then you'll get an email back. When it's been opened, and it'll say it's been opened and it'll give you the date and that kind of stuff. It is so incredible. And so in today's time period, when you're not sure if somebody got your information, and who knows, maybe they're just deleting things, maybe they're not opening up their emails, maybe it is going into spam, you will know. And then if you want to follow up with a phone call, maybe that's, you know, something that you need to do. You know, a lot of times I kind of avoid phone calls unless I know it's okay to actually call So anyhow, using Boomerang is absolutely incredible, and it's a game changer for me. Hey, look, and if you haven't done this yet, please get onto my free mailing list and just go to howtoactandmodel.com. Put your name and email address in there, and then you will be receiving free acting and modeling information from me every week. If you haven't subscribed to this channel yet, Please click the subscribe button, the notification bell, so you always know when a new video has been uploaded. And if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up because that's actually very helpful. I did promise a great bonus video for you. If you just look up here, it's my method for working with A-listers, and I share some experiences that I've had that I think will be really helpful to you. Anyhow, this was really fun for me. I liked going down memory lane a little bit. And if you have any special apps that will be helpful to us, please share it with us on the channel so that way we can learn from you. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.
