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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 kin

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?
      - _jal 7y ago
        Ignoring spam does not make it go away.
        tener 7y ago
        It kind of does: you don't want it to arrive in your inbox. It is implementation detail how you arrive at that effect. Personally I find adding a silent filter to be superior option in most aspects: it is quicker and foolproof. Surely it won't "educate" the sender, but TBH I don't think your current method is doing so anyway.
  - nonzeromeans 7y ago
    A non-zero number of alternative methods don't have to involve spam, which does nothing for us than show us you are not to be taken seriously.
    - goatherders 7y ago
      If not email, then what kinds of alternative methods do you find acceptable/permissible for someone to connect with you in an effort to introduce you to a new product or service?
      - JoshuaDavid 7y ago
        Not the GP but a couple examples: An informative blog post which solves or helps with a problem I am experience, and plugs your service at the end. A more direct approach of an offer of something of value in exchange for my time (e.g. pay $$ to beta test this for a week). In general, the more the method of getting my attention requires a non-fakeable demonstration of value, the more likely I am to pay attention to it and the less likely it is to bother me.
        goatherders 7y ago
        I actually thought long ago of a platform that gave vendors a place to pay people to demo software. Like "$10 gift card for 15 minutes of your time." Problem is that most companies strictly prohibit their workers receiving outside compensation. Many companies would gladly pay prospects to engage.
        JoshuaDavid 7y ago
        In the case of a larger business, the content-marketing approach (or really any other approach that generates warm leads for your sales team) is probably a better way to approach things. I know that my company uses something on the order of 20 SAAS products, all of which we found by looking for a solution to a specific problem we were facing and either running across the product directly, across a post by that company explaining how to solve the problem and plugging their product for similar problems, or getting a recommendation by an internal dev who had used the product before or a third party that did not stand to significantly gain by us using that product. That last channel is actually the largest, but not really actionable for you as a sales person.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    I'm not connected to anyone else commenting here, just chiming in with another data point for you. does this mean that as a policy you won't engage with cold outreach regardless of what is being offered? How will we know what is being offered if we don't read the message or accept the call? Unless we've had prior contact with someone or they make contact through a trusted third party, we normally won't, we'll just block and move on. And if so, do you ever consider that such a policy may indeed hinder your business? No, not at all. We're quite happy doing our thing, and when we identify something that seems like we could do it better, we're quite happy going out and actively looking for ways we could improve it. If someone wants our business, by far the best way to win it is simply to have a good, no-nonsense website so we can find them if we're looking.
    - goatherders 7y ago
      Fair points all. But what if you dont know what you are looking for? What if you dont know that the way you are doing things now can be done significantly faster, better, or with less cost? I used to work for a large managed WordPress provider in their early days. The vast majority of people we talked to said "I had no idea this was available. For $x dollars you are saving me Y hours of time each month, Y hours that I'm doing work that I absolutely hate and probably am not good at."
      - Silhouette 7y ago
        But what if you dont know what you are looking for? What if you dont know that the way you are doing things now can be done significantly faster, better, or with less cost? That's a possibility that we accept, but the simple truth is that we're OK with it. We keep an eye on our industry and we have a decent professional network. We think the odds of something that really could revolutionize our business going unnoticed for long are slim. This philosophy isn't just about emails or calls. We're similarly allergic to other time-wasters, such as websites full of vacuous waffle and nothing but "call us" for pricing. If we're actively looking for something but a potential supplier doesn't have easy ways to contact them and transparent terms and pricing, most of the time we're just going to move on without giving them a second thought. Again, we accept that we might miss out on a genuinely valuable opportunity, but we're OK with not finding that one if it means we also don't get tied up in spammy enterprise sales engines for the rest. I operate mostly in the world of SMEs, where time is precious and the business's finances often have a direct effect on its people. If someone wants our business and has a useful product or service, the best thing they can do is be findable when we look for something like that and then be easy to work with.
wpietri 7y ago
They are not the same, but if they're sent in bulk, they are both spam. The essence of spam is using automation to use the same amount of your time to waste more of other people's time. Door-to-door sales is awful, but at the very least the waste of time is symmetrical. Computers, though, let spammers waste ever more of their targets' time on their quest to get rich. Having talked to many spammers on the phone back in the day, excuses like yours are common. "I'm an exception! What I'm doing is special and valuable!" Sure, bud. We're all special snowflakes. But you don't really believe it's all that valuable, or you'd trust that people with a need would seek you out. Your actual goal is to manipulate people such that money goes into your pocket instead of somebody else's. Which I get, in that there are plenty of other people doing the same thing. It's an arms race, and not playing guarantees you don't win. But let's not pretend that your spam is somehow not spam.
- goatherders 7y ago
  I would never ever in a million years trust that people with a need would seek me out. Most people are lazy and they don't pay my bills. Not sure I agree/understand the idea that cold outreach is manipulation.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Sure. I believe you don't understand. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." If it made sense to you, you'd be doing something else.
    - goatherders 7y ago
      Your patronization and condescension are not lost on me. Without knowing anything about me, my work, and my company aside from what I've shared you've taken the time to behave like an utter jackass because you dont happen to like what you think I do for a living. Know this: I love my job and the company I've built. My employees love working here and the problems we solve. The clients love the service we provide and their customers love that we helped them connect.
meowface 7y ago
It's spam. Using templates to automate mass sending of cold (read: unsolicited) emails is the definition of spam. Not all unsolicited emails are spam, like in the original article, but the article in that comment is demonstrating how to blast spam. I've previously been in the position of having to review all spam (and other unwanted or suspicious emails) reported by employees at a large company. Every day. I've seen thousands of different spam messages that are essentially indistinguishable from this. It's all the same. It's all spam. People don't like your spam. Most of them report it, and then people like me have to look at it every day, and nearly all of the rest of them delete it. Some tiny, tiny percentage will reply, but that's exactly how the viagra spammers work, too. They need to send massive volumes because the percentage that click or reply is so miniscule, and then the percentage of those who make a purchase are also miniscule. I recommend finding something different to do with your career or life if your career or life is just spamming as many people as possible to try to convince them to do something they don't want to do. At the end of the day, is this truly what you want your infinitesimally small fraction of existence to be composed of?
- goatherders 7y ago
  What if every email is sent by hand and carefully crafted? What if there is no automation? Does that remove it as SPAM in your designation?
  - meowface 7y ago
    Totally depends. A particularly industrious person could essentially be a human spam bot / template permuter. It's too open to say definitively. How many people are contacted, how were they identified, how much unique effort went into each email, what is the actual content of the email, what are your intentions, what is your offering, what do you say you want from them, what do you actually want from them, etc. If it's sent to 1 person, like in this article, it might be completely fine. But in general, I don't think there's any way to answer that without thoroughly looking at each case.
    - goatherders 7y ago

_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?
    - _jal 7y ago
      Ignoring spam does not make it go away.
      - tener 7y ago
        It kind of does: you don't want it to arrive in your inbox. It is implementation detail how you arrive at that effect. Personally I find adding a silent filter to be superior option in most aspects: it is quicker and foolproof. Surely it won't "educate" the sender, but TBH I don't think your current method is doing so anyway.
- nonzeromeans 7y ago
  A non-zero number of alternative methods don't have to involve spam, which does nothing for us than show us you are not to be taken seriously.
  - goatherders 7y ago
    If not email, then what kinds of alternative methods do you find acceptable/permissible for someone to connect with you in an effort to introduce you to a new product or service?
    - JoshuaDavid 7y ago
      Not the GP but a couple examples: An informative blog post which solves or helps with a problem I am experience, and plugs your service at the end. A more direct approach of an offer of something of value in exchange for my time (e.g. pay $$ to beta test this for a week). In general, the more the method of getting my attention requires a non-fakeable demonstration of value, the more likely I am to pay attention to it and the less likely it is to bother me.
      - goatherders 7y ago
        I actually thought long ago of a platform that gave vendors a place to pay people to demo software. Like "$10 gift card for 15 minutes of your time." Problem is that most companies strictly prohibit their workers receiving outside compensation. Many companies would gladly pay prospects to engage.
        JoshuaDavid 7y ago
        In the case of a larger business, the content-marketing approach (or really any other approach that generates warm leads for your sales team) is probably a better way to approach things. I know that my company uses something on the order of 20 SAAS products, all of which we found by looking for a solution to a specific problem we were facing and either running across the product directly, across a post by that company explaining how to solve the problem and plugging their product for similar problems, or getting a recommendation by an internal dev who had used the product before or a third party that did not stand to significantly gain by us using that product. That last channel is actually the largest, but not really actionable for you as a sales person.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  I'm not connected to anyone else commenting here, just chiming in with another data point for you. does this mean that as a policy you won't engage with cold outreach regardless of what is being offered? How will we know what is being offered if we don't read the message or accept the call? Unless we've had prior contact with someone or they make contact through a trusted third party, we normally won't, we'll just block and move on. And if so, do you ever consider that such a policy may indeed hinder your business? No, not at all. We're quite happy doing our thing, and when we identify something that seems like we could do it better, we're quite happy going out and actively looking for ways we could improve it. If someone wants our business, by far the best way to win it is simply to have a good, no-nonsense website so we can find them if we're looking.
  - goatherders 7y ago
    Fair points all. But what if you dont know what you are looking for? What if you dont know that the way you are doing things now can be done significantly faster, better, or with less cost? I used to work for a large managed WordPress provider in their early days. The vast majority of people we talked to said "I had no idea this was available. For $x dollars you are saving me Y hours of time each month, Y hours that I'm doing work that I absolutely hate and probably am not good at."
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      But what if you dont know what you are looking for? What if you dont know that the way you are doing things now can be done significantly faster, better, or with less cost? That's a possibility that we accept, but the simple truth is that we're OK with it. We keep an eye on our industry and we have a decent professional network. We think the odds of something that really could revolutionize our business going unnoticed for long are slim. This philosophy isn't just about emails or calls. We're similarly allergic to other time-wasters, such as websites full of vacuous waffle and nothing but "call us" for pricing. If we're actively looking for something but a potential supplier doesn't have easy ways to contact them and transparent terms and pricing, most of the time we're just going to move on without giving them a second thought. Again, we accept that we might miss out on a genuinely valuable opportunity, but we're OK with not finding that one if it means we also don't get tied up in spammy enterprise sales engines for the rest. I operate mostly in the world of SMEs, where time is precious and the business's finances often have a direct effect on its people. If someone wants our business and has a useful product or service, the best thing they can do is be findable when we look for something like that and then be easy to work with.

wpietri 7y ago

They are not the same, but if they're sent in bulk, they are both spam. The essence of spam is using automation to use the same amount of your time to waste more of other people's time. Door-to-door sales is awful, but at the very least the waste of time is symmetrical. Computers, though, let spammers waste ever more of their targets' time on their quest to get rich. Having talked to many spammers on the phone back in the day, excuses like yours are common. "I'm an exception! What I'm doing is special and valuable!" Sure, bud. We're all special snowflakes. But you don't really believe it's all that valuable, or you'd trust that people with a need would seek you out. Your actual goal is to manipulate people such that money goes into your pocket instead of somebody else's. Which I get, in that there are plenty of other people doing the same thing. It's an arms race, and not playing guarantees you don't win. But let's not pretend that your spam is somehow not spam.

goatherders 7y ago
I would never ever in a million years trust that people with a need would seek me out. Most people are lazy and they don't pay my bills. Not sure I agree/understand the idea that cold outreach is manipulation.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Sure. I believe you don't understand. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." If it made sense to you, you'd be doing something else.
  - goatherders 7y ago
    Your patronization and condescension are not lost on me. Without knowing anything about me, my work, and my company aside from what I've shared you've taken the time to behave like an utter jackass because you dont happen to like what you think I do for a living. Know this: I love my job and the company I've built. My employees love working here and the problems we solve. The clients love the service we provide and their customers love that we helped them connect.

meowface 7y ago

It's spam. Using templates to automate mass sending of cold (read: unsolicited) emails is the definition of spam. Not all unsolicited emails are spam, like in the original article, but the article in that comment is demonstrating how to blast spam. I've previously been in the position of having to review all spam (and other unwanted or suspicious emails) reported by employees at a large company. Every day. I've seen thousands of different spam messages that are essentially indistinguishable from this. It's all the same. It's all spam. People don't like your spam. Most of them report it, and then people like me have to look at it every day, and nearly all of the rest of them delete it. Some tiny, tiny percentage will reply, but that's exactly how the viagra spammers work, too. They need to send massive volumes because the percentage that click or reply is so miniscule, and then the percentage of those who make a purchase are also miniscule. I recommend finding something different to do with your career or life if your career or life is just spamming as many people as possible to try to convince them to do something they don't want to do. At the end of the day, is this truly what you want your infinitesimally small fraction of existence to be composed of?

goatherders 7y ago
What if every email is sent by hand and carefully crafted? What if there is no automation? Does that remove it as SPAM in your designation?
- meowface 7y ago
  Totally depends. A particularly industrious person could essentially be a human spam bot / template permuter. It's too open to say definitively. How many people are contacted, how were they identified, how much unique effort went into each email, what is the actual content of the email, what are your intentions, what is your offering, what do you say you want from them, what do you actually want from them, etc. If it's sent to 1 person, like in this article, it might be completely fine. But in general, I don't think there's any way to answer that without thoroughly looking at each case.
  - goatherders 7y ago