Ignorance isn't bliss

I used to think that I had good written communications skills, but now I'm not so sure. The reason? I have sent quite a few emails over recent weeks on various matters, however a large portion of them seem to have been ignored. I'm trying to work out what went wrong. Do they not like my writing style? Or am I not being aggressive enough? Or do they somehow have something against me even though they've never seen me in person?

Here are some examples of my failure to get a reply. Firstly, I applied for a job over a month ago at an Australian company. Things were going fine, and I progressed to the next stage, which involved IQ tests. This happened within one week, so I expected the entire process to not last a large amount of time. I completed that stage more than 3 weeks ago, and have heard nothing from them since. I decided to do something I had heard about at one of the student services workshops - send a follow up email. I politely enquired as to the status of my application. If this doesn't get a response, I think a more aggressive tone will have to be adopted.

On another job-related issue, I found a job I was interested in on a website. An email address was given for where to submit your application, and this seemed to be the only contact details available. However, I had a couple of questions about the position, so I wanted to get them answered before I spent a large amount of time on an application which may turn out to be not my "cup of tea". Thus, I sent a nicely-worded email to the address given, saying I was interested in the position and outlining my questions. This occurred more than a week ago now, and I have still not received a reply. I checked the website where I found the job listing. It is still there. I can only assume I have been ignored again.

As a third example, I'm currently trying to organise an overseas tour scheduled for next January for an ensemble I play in. I sent emails to eight potential gig locations. I had spent a lot of time organising those individually-written emails, and I did not want them to just be fobbed off. So, I put in a request at the bottom of each one, asking the recipient to please forward the along to the correct person if it was not the right person (in a lot of cases, the websites did not make it clear to whom a performance request should be sent). Out of eight places, only two replied. Thus, I can rule out the possibility of my email address having malfunctioned. It seems what I did not want to happen (being fobbed off) did happen. I have just provided fodder for email trashcans.