I'd just like to note this does not pass the golden rule. If every company spent hours to make "relevant" emails that got past spam filters and into all of our

I'd just like to note this does not pass the golden rule. If every company spent hours to make "relevant" emails that got past spam filters and into all of our inboxes, then our inboxes would be full of "relevant" emails that we generally are not interested in and would be crowding out our actually important ones. We'd all be wasting much more of our precious time wading through marketing pitches to use our email. To me this is the worst part about "growth hacking". If you are going to grow your business by being a higher scale spammer, ok, but just don't go bragging about it. You are stealing tons of people's attention and time for a very small percentage of them that will go on to be a customer. What percentage of people unsubscribe from the emails? What percent report it as spam? What percent send you angry responses because your sales tactic made their day a little worse? Those metrics seem to be missing from the story. At least the person who knocks on my door to sell me something is wasting more of their own time than my time. By doing sales in this automated way, you are making a way to steal much more of their time than your time. The fact that you went slightly above the lowest common denominator doesn't make it right. And again, sales is a dirty business and this is certainly not out of the ordinary. But have the decency not to brag about it. Nor brag about it so much that another "growth hacking" website re-publishes the story as a way to do their own growth hacking.