Did you have a prior relationship with these people? Did they somehow indicate they would be involved in your marketing actions?
No? Then it's probably a cold call and you're just annoying people.
No? Then it's probably a cold call and you're just annoying people.
Sorry but this is naiive. Cold calling works, and not because you are bugging people. You know that "prior relationship" you mention? Well it has to start somewhere and a call is as good as any.
Your mistake is not accounting for the negative externalities. Cold calling and spam both can "work" for the sending party because it lets them find the very small proportion of people who they can sucker into whatever they're pushing. But they impose costs upon other people too, and for them spamming and cold calling definitely doesn't work. Which is why we took the time to outlaw both of them in the US.
This is the same "If you build it they will come" logic that doom so many startups. The reality is that even if you have a perfect solution to someone's problem you still have to go sell it to them. Uber started with cold calls, so did many other successful startups. It's the lowest barrier to entry there is.
Lets also differentiate between b2b cold calls which is what I have in mind mostly, and b2c cold calling. I think the latter is probably magnitudes less effective and more "sleazy" than the former and there are better ways of targeting advertising at individual consumers at this point.
Your point that cold calling works is repetitive, and was previously addressed.
And of course you believe that the thing you did/want to do is less sleazy. All people doing sleazy things believe that whatever they're doing is in fact ok, or at least justifiable. That's what we humans are really good at: justifying our own particular bullshit.