Cold emailing in the B2B space is totally normal. He just wasn't cold emailing. The sheer numbers alone, combined with the fact that he used some scumbag data broker to get contact info, means to me that he was actually just spamming people.
If he had individually researched each company, then after deciding he could likely help them, looked for the right contact in their org and personally contacted them, he would have ended up doing the right thing right.
He would have ended up sending more like 80 emails, not 800.
By the way, Apollo.io is a YC backed company, which was a huge part of my thought process. "YC? Based out of SF? Okay this must be how people do things these days." So against my better judgment, I gave it a shot.
It was definitely the wrong approach, but as someone with zero experience or knowledge of sales and cold outreach, there's no way I could have known that without trying first, especially with experienced salespeople telling me it's just what people do.
For cold emailing to be effective you need to have researched the company you are emailing a bit and give them enough in your initial approach that they want to follow back rather than send you to their spam folder. It means you need to show you understand their problem space, have a good grasp of how you could bring them value and having a chat with you would probably be worth their time if only so they know what’s available on the market for the problem you solve.
Never heard of Apollo.io before so I went to their web landing page https://www.apollo.io which touts : "Search, engage and convert over 250 million contacts at over 60 million companies with Apollo’s sales intelligence and engagement platform."
That type of text would seem to set off all sorts of alarm bells about the service: "Hey wait a sec... how'd they get all those business contact email addresses? They couldn't possibly get 250 million people to willingly submit contact information for marketing?!?"
And some googling around does confirm that they're a data broker that scrapes sites like LinkedIn for contact information without people knowing about it. One google result was a HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23955944
The point of all the above is.... I can't see how sending any bulk marketing emails to a list gathered in a secretive and hostile way would be good for your startup product. Wouldn't many (most?) recipients wonder "How'd you get my email address?" which would poison whatever product you're trying to sell?
Does anyone have any legitimate success stories from using Apollo.io the way op tried?
++EDIT to be more specific about the scenario: an entrepreneur with a programming dev tool like https://www.molecule.dev/ that sent a bunch of cold emails via Apollo.io and got new customers. The target demographic of buyers for developer tools seems like the most hostile to reach via cold emails like that.
Does Apollo.io even reveal the actual email addresses to you ? Or do they only forward your marketing message?
And if these people ever go to a conference, they likely hand out business cards with their info on them.
Always mildly amusing when you get a pitch which refers to your website by someone that obviously hasn't visited it though...
I’ve been working on a tool to automate GDPR & CCPA deletion requests to data brokers - basically it’s a database of ~650 registered data brokers + email templates written in legalese. After the user provides some basic contact information, it does a simple mail merge.
https://github.com/AnalogJ/justvanish
Still a WIP
Whatever the reason, it's a habit that you need to take notice of and exterminate within you. Other people aren't stupid. If enough other people are saying do a thing that you can't understand why anyone would do, don't bother doing it unenthusiastically. Either commit to an act of radical empathy and truly understand why other people are excited to do it or decide it's too much of a bother and don't do it.
Without reading the emails, I can't tell if the low response rate is due in any part to how the email is crafted but I have a reasonably high confidence based on the blog post that the author was intellectually capable enough to have executed a better cold email campaign but couldn't get over the psychological hurdle.
Hey Dylan!
I'm Luke Hager with Molecule.dev, and I'm emailing you because I saw your post on HN. I've been looking around for companies like CALA who might be able to make good use of Molecule.dev. I see that you're using TypeScript, React, PostgreSQL, Node and other modern web/mobile tech.
And no, I'm not trying to be cynical, it's just super damn obvious.
Nonetheless, hope it pays off for them.
You underestimate yourself. I would say "cynic" (a much higher aspiration), and I'm right there with you.
Question though: if you think that was the purpose, then wouldn't that be deceptive? If so, then why do you think it is that you "hope it pays off"?
“Hey James, just thought I’d should you a quick text in addition to my email…”
I already mark any unsolicited email from a vendor as spam. The text is way too far.
There's a qualitative difference between a software author sending an email directly and some random mega-corp adding thousands of emails to a list with a hidden unsubscribe.
Good luck to you, OP. It'd be really interesting to hear more about how you work through this!
By developing and executing a marketing plan. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry, but you are an idiot, harsh but don't care.
I get a lot of spam from sales people at work (IT architect for a large Enterprise). A lot of them clearly never bothered to read my LinkedIn profile (offering solutions that have nothing to do with my field) but are really pushy, demanding a meeting and keep pinging me long after I've blacklisted them though their first email. Usually even including prearranged zoom meetings. I check my junk box once a month or so for legit emails and it's usually full of followups.
Of course I never respond as it will only cause them to follow up more and to demand names of more colleagues to harass.
If you really want me to be interested in what you have to offer, make sure I find it and hear great things about it when I go looking for something I need. It's a lot harder than just buying a list of emails and spamming but also a lot more ethical.
There's definitely a cadence of "followups", that tips into passive-aggressive. "Perhaps you missed my last email" or "if you're not the right person, please pass it along". The entire frame is that you owe them something or are somehow being rude by not replying, even when it's obviously automated spam. And they are positively relentless.
I find the approach especially grating and won't do business with these type, irrespective of what they're selling.
You also act like you have an entitlement to people's time just in case they may be a prospective customer - this is not the case.
A lot of businesses and individuals give out a contact for business inquiries if they're interested in something like that.
> I was told that cold emails are just what B2B companies do and that it is widely accepted, [...] but it just doesn't feel right to me. For me personally, I hate cold emails. I associate it with spam. Do unto others, and all that. I actually hate spam emails so much that I made a custom email service to help combat it.
You are not qualified nor invited to asses your ability to improve mine or my customers’ quality of life, so it is all for you.
Cold contact in business is self interested, rude, and never justified. The only reasons not to reply to every one with “fuck off” are the time/effort, and that it confirms a working email address and that someone probably at least read the subject. (I suppose it might also look rude out of context if it came up in future, but it’s honestly the deserved response.)
Instead I add companies that cold email to the “do not use/work with” shit list for when I’m thinking about partnerships and service providers. (Actually the list manages itself - I just search for emails mentioning any provider we’re considering using and exclude those that have engaged in cold selling or similar.)
Can't we accept an apology for a small mistake without retroactively justifying it?