Ask HN: Has cold calling/emailing ever worked for you? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has cold calling/emailing ever worked for you?

26 pointshsikka26 comments

Im actually in need of some pocket money and was thinking about scrapping together a cold emailing service that will send your pitches to VCs for a dollar. I know it doesn't usually work, but hey it might be worth it for some folks!

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I really hate that it's called "cold calling" or "cold emailing." Can't we agree to call it what it is -- spam? As for the question, spam definitely works.

The difference between cold emailing / calling and spam is that cold calls should be individually targeted and well thought out messages, while spam is an identical mass communication to as many people as possible.

This implies that "individually targeted" and "well thought out" somehow make a message not spam. If the recipient is expecting or desires the message, it is not spam, otherwise, it is.

I think it does. Spam has to be done in bulk.

I disagree. Whether it was done in bulk or not is irrelevant to the recipient. The easiest way to prove this is to find a message you consider to be spam. Forward it to someone of your choosing. The message previously considered to spam won't magically cease to be spam just because it's only sent to a single person.

I have always defined spam as "unwanted and undesirable incoming communication, typically for financial reasons". So that includes mass emailing, but is far from restricted to it.

However, that is a definition I basically invented based on experience (i.e. How I imagine most people learn most of their vocabulary).

If it really has to be done in bulk to be spam-callable, what is the individual version of spam? Harassment?

How do you think businesses create relationships? People at each business email each other.

Have you ever been introduced to someone via email? If that person wasn't expecting the introduction, did you spam him?

It's pretty absurd to expect every email should be "expected" by the recipient. Taken to the extreme, that means you could never email someone unless you'd emailed them before...

Spam comes from expectation or the desirability. If neither exist, then yes, it is spam. Also, businesses get spammed a lot too, so I'm not sure what you're getting at there. In fact, businesses are spammed so much most have protocols in place to prevent it, e.g. delisting phone numbers, global internal filters on email, etc.

As for your second example, unsolicited and undesired introductions are spam. I'm shocked that you disagree. If you don't, you won't mind then if I introduce you to a few million of my friends?

Wanted to point out 21.co (https://21.co/) which essentially does this. You can send a message to Ben Horowitz, for example, for $100 (which he donates all to charity). While Ben is on the pricier side, David Lee (of SV Angel, Refactor Capital) is only $1. You pay only if you receive a response.

I wasn't aware that 21.co had pivoted from mining bitcoing on Raspberry PIs to providing an email service that charges people to send emails to you.

This must be one of the most surreal and out of touch ideas that I have ever seen before but given 21.co's previous track record I guess that was to be expected.

I actually didn't know 21 was attempting to mine bitcoin on Raspberry PIs LOL

Short answer: Yes

However, here's my 2c (BusDev 2+ years): a cold call/email isn't worth a dollar in your case. If the audience (target market) is a group of let's say 1000 individuals, and I need 8 to 10 touches to get a single response... then I'm paying your service $10,000 to (in all probability) be told, "sorry, not interested".

It takes an immense amount time and energy 'beating the drum' to get anyone to notice you. I think it was Bezos who said that in this age, attention is the scarcest commodity. He's right.

Awesome insight, thank you! I figured the same, still might put up a page to see if there are any takers! haha

> I think it was Bezos who said that in this age, attention is the scarcest commodity. He's right.

Of course he's right. How else could the ad industry have turned into such a disaster?

I lead an engineering team and am on the receiving end of a ton of vendor pitch emails. Almost always they go ignored but nearly every single one will have a few follow ups and surprisingly (but rarely) I may end up responding at the 4th of 5th attempt.

I realize that they're likely automated but sometimes you just need to get me at the right moment in which I'm more likely to respond.

I have a cast-iron rule that if a vendor has spammed me, I will never use their services.

I have the same rule for cold-callers. If a vendor cold-calls me, I take a note of their business name, politely explain that I am ideologically opposed to this marketing method, and that I will never use their services because of their use of that method.

I've been doing this since the mid-90's. I like to be the change I want to see in the world :)

Perchance are you a Unix/Linux admin?

Definitely respect that but a bit too extreme for me. Have you never had a vendor reach out with a potentially useful service?

Occasionally I'll find something useful. And sure I could have found it on my own if I was searching for that specific problem but occasionally something new comes across that piques my curiosity. Even then I end up looking at competing products (love relying on Google's autocomplete to do "product vs" and seeing what shows up).

The spam game is getting better and better too - I wonder what they're going to look like in a few years with some help from ML. At that point they will look personal.

Yeah it's getting blurry between spam and targeted ads. I have less objection to targeted ads, because it's not wasting everyone's time - there is some reason for the recipient getting the ad.

This is well-meaning but not effective.

First, feedback like yours is rare and it doesn't give opportunity for follow-up, so there is no incentive to change.

Second, this comes off as tire-kicking to the company, just like the classic "I'd totally buy your product if you had Feature A/B/C" excuse to avoid having to say "not interested." If a business cold-calls heavily, and they receive this feedback often enough, the worst that will happen is that they work on developing a response to it, just like to any other objection.

Third, vendors know that you will consider them if they are the best option. They have been told no for more substantial reasons before and still gotten the account.

I have a bunch of behaviours like this, that are ineffective if it's just me, but would change the world if we all did them.

Because if vendors knew that the act of cold-calling or spamming would immediately exclude them, then they wouldn't do it.

I get your point that with just me doing it, this is ineffective because the vendors don't get enough feedback as to why they didn't get my business.

But I have no power to change other people's behaviour. I can only change my own and hope others see the world as I do.

I think cold email only works when the email is to the point and has a personal touch to it. eg:- You tell the receiver how you adore his work or why this is the right thing for him to do. It requires you to be particular,honest and also needs a personal touch point. Otherwise I doubt cold emails will work.

How would this differ from spam? Would you be able to provide reliable metrics on responses?

Spam is unsolicited bulk email. Seems like this meets the definition of spam. A textbook example, even.

I'm actually thinking about incentivizing the VC firm to respond as well! Maybe create a premium tier, 10 bucks to pitch and get a little feedback. I then give 5 bucks to the vc firm for 2 minutes of their analysts time. It has worked for music blogs and artists, with services like submithub! Of course, this is all assuming there is any value in this at all, LOL, which there may very much not be.

Don't do it. That's spam. If people want to send emails, they ought to send their emails themselves.

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