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This is a great point and also very applicable to sales generally. There's definitely a continuum between "hyper target / completely customized" and "spray and

This is a great point and also very applicable to sales generally. There's definitely a continuum between "hyper target / completely customized" and "spray and pray" and each person/company needs to find the right point on that continuum for themselves. My company actually just put out a blog post last week on this showing how to quickly create customized emails while still leveraging templates [0]. [0] https://blaze.today/blog/best_sales_cold_email_templates_and_snippets/ https://blaze.today/blog/best_sales_cold_email_templates_and...

_jal 7y ago
Spam like this earns an immediate "remove all email addresses from your lists @ourdomain.com and let me know that you are suppressing them from your future mailings", ccing your mail provider's abuse address. The second mail gets your domain blocked and I tell your provider they're on notice. Some of us still take spam seriously.
- goatherders 7y ago
  I recognize we start from different places on this, but unrequested email does not necessarily equal SPAM. We had a guy a few months ago who threatened all kinds of litigation and reporting etc. when we reached out cold. At the same time, one of his colleagues responded with interest and just before Christmas their company signed a 5-figure annual deal with our client to provide an endpoint security solution they needed for their managed services practice. Put another way, if I honest to God had a gold bar with your name on it and contacted you by email to say "when can we meet up so I can give you this gold bar" and you replied and we met up and I gave you your gold bar, you wouldn't view my message as SPAM at all because now you have a gold bar that is worth a bunch of money. Hey, free gold bar!@ But when it comes to cold outreach many people defer to "I didn't ask for this email....SPAM SPAM SPAM!" Sometimes what's being offered isn't a good fit, doesn't provide ROI, etc. But sometimes it turns out to be a gold bar. I don't think that a business reaching out and saying "You guys provide X, we have a solution that does Y and has helped other companies that provide X in a meaningful way" is remotely the same as a Nigerian Prince selling Viagra.
  - _jal 7y ago
    I agree that there is a difference between sales spam and scam spam. This is why we provide the former with a warning before being blocked, while the latter gets no such courtesy. (We don't engage in legal threats over it, that's pointless and stupid.)
    - goatherders 7y ago
      Honest question b/c I'm curious: does this mean that as a policy you won't engage with cold outreach regardless of what is being offered? And if so, do you ever consider that such a policy may indeed hinder your business? A non-zero portion of unsolicited sales-based emails DO include something of meaningful value.
      - _jal 7y ago
        A non-zero portion of just about anything includes something of meaningful value to someone. This does not mean that sifting through it will yield value considering opportunity cost. Given the volume of spam I get from would-be vendors, there probably has been something I could have used somewhere in there. Similarly, I've probably walked past storm drains with valuables in them. I don't dig in there either. If some tool or service really is great, relevant and not something we already do/have, we won't have to read spam to find out about it.
        goatherders 7y ago
        I agree to a large degree, your analogy about storm drains is spot on. As a person that does cold outreach sales spam bothers me too because it makes the job harder for people that are doing valuable research and targeting their prospects with greater purpose. I do, however, disagree that great or relevant service will present itself without a proactive salesperson.
        tener 7y ago
        Huh, why do you bother with replying at all? Wouldn't silent ban be quicker and therefore cheaper for you?
- hash872 7y ago
  Do you know or have you ever in your professional career worked for a company that employed salespeople? Do you understand that they mostly do cold outreach to generate revenue? If all the salespeople were to disappear overnight from that present or past employer, what would happen to company revenue and how many people would lose their jobs?
  - _jal 7y ago
    I'm talking about spam. And I do indeed want spammers to do something else for a living - making spam economically nonviable is the strategic intent of suppressing it.
    - hash872 7y ago
      How do you propose that the salespeople, without whom your employer or employers would go bankrupt, reach out to new prospects? How would that work? Am genuinely curious. By definition it seems to involve cold outreach of some type
      - _jal 7y ago
        I don't manage sales people; telling them how to do their job isn't my job. I can suggest that if the lack of a single communications channel would be crippling for you, you're already in a pretty precarious place and should maybe think about that. As for what you appear to believe is your gotcha, we don't have sales people, because our business doesn't work that way. I have worked for firms that did, though, and strangely, they somehow managed to do their jobs without spamming.
        hash872 7y ago
        You seem to define all cold outreach whatsoever as 'spam', so of course you can choose to fit anything into that category. If people contacted you cold via other communications channels, it seems like you would define that as spam as well. Seeing as you don't manage sales people, I would gently suggest that at your old firms they were reaching out to people, cold, one way or another. That's literally what the job is

_jal 7y ago

Spam like this earns an immediate "remove all email addresses from your lists @ourdomain.com and let me know that you are suppressing them from your future mailings", ccing your mail provider's abuse address. The second mail gets your domain blocked and I tell your provider they're on notice. Some of us still take spam seriously.

goatherders 7y ago
I recognize we start from different places on this, but unrequested email does not necessarily equal SPAM. We had a guy a few months ago who threatened all kinds of litigation and reporting etc. when we reached out cold. At the same time, one of his colleagues responded with interest and just before Christmas their company signed a 5-figure annual deal with our client to provide an endpoint security solution they needed for their managed services practice. Put another way, if I honest to God had a gold bar with your name on it and contacted you by email to say "when can we meet up so I can give you this gold bar" and you replied and we met up and I gave you your gold bar, you wouldn't view my message as SPAM at all because now you have a gold bar that is worth a bunch of money. Hey, free gold bar!@ But when it comes to cold outreach many people defer to "I didn't ask for this email....SPAM SPAM SPAM!" Sometimes what's being offered isn't a good fit, doesn't provide ROI, etc. But sometimes it turns out to be a gold bar. I don't think that a business reaching out and saying "You guys provide X, we have a solution that does Y and has helped other companies that provide X in a meaningful way" is remotely the same as a Nigerian Prince selling Viagra.
- _jal 7y ago
  I agree that there is a difference between sales spam and scam spam. This is why we provide the former with a warning before being blocked, while the latter gets no such courtesy. (We don't engage in legal threats over it, that's pointless and stupid.)
  - goatherders 7y ago
    Honest question b/c I'm curious: does this mean that as a policy you won't engage with cold outreach regardless of what is being offered? And if so, do you ever consider that such a policy may indeed hinder your business? A non-zero portion of unsolicited sales-based emails DO include something of meaningful value.
    - _jal 7y ago
      A non-zero portion of just about anything includes something of meaningful value to someone. This does not mean that sifting through it will yield value considering opportunity cost. Given the volume of spam I get from would-be vendors, there probably has been something I could have used somewhere in there. Similarly, I've probably walked past storm drains with valuables in them. I don't dig in there either. If some tool or service really is great, relevant and not something we already do/have, we won't have to read spam to find out about it.
      - goatherders 7y ago
        I agree to a large degree, your analogy about storm drains is spot on. As a person that does cold outreach sales spam bothers me too because it makes the job harder for people that are doing valuable research and targeting their prospects with greater purpose. I do, however, disagree that great or relevant service will present itself without a proactive salesperson.
      - tener 7y ago
        Huh, why do you bother with replying at all? Wouldn't silent ban be quicker and therefore cheaper for you?
hash872 7y ago
Do you know or have you ever in your professional career worked for a company that employed salespeople? Do you understand that they mostly do cold outreach to generate revenue? If all the salespeople were to disappear overnight from that present or past employer, what would happen to company revenue and how many people would lose their jobs?
- _jal 7y ago
  I'm talking about spam. And I do indeed want spammers to do something else for a living - making spam economically nonviable is the strategic intent of suppressing it.
  - hash872 7y ago
    How do you propose that the salespeople, without whom your employer or employers would go bankrupt, reach out to new prospects? How would that work? Am genuinely curious. By definition it seems to involve cold outreach of some type
    - _jal 7y ago
      I don't manage sales people; telling them how to do their job isn't my job. I can suggest that if the lack of a single communications channel would be crippling for you, you're already in a pretty precarious place and should maybe think about that. As for what you appear to believe is your gotcha, we don't have sales people, because our business doesn't work that way. I have worked for firms that did, though, and strangely, they somehow managed to do their jobs without spamming.
      - hash872 7y ago
        You seem to define all cold outreach whatsoever as 'spam', so of course you can choose to fit anything into that category. If people contacted you cold via other communications channels, it seems like you would define that as spam as well. Seeing as you don't manage sales people, I would gently suggest that at your old firms they were reaching out to people, cold, one way or another. That's literally what the job is