Another Example of B2B Cold Email Madness

Just like buses. I get no spam for ages then along comes a week when I’m deluged.

I blogged a few days ago about a particularly poor piece of direct marketing via email I got sent. Typical response rates, whether from old snail mail or the modern-day ‘e’ kind, remains an industry shaming 1½%.

The reasons for that are simple. Wayward targeting, wrong messaging, misplaced energy.

Here’s the worst offender recently appearing in my inbox.

I was passed your details on from [someone who I’ve never ever heard of] who I work with….

We help innovative tech companies, through partnerships with angels, seed investors and accelerators like [one is named], with Government funding.

We have and continue to work with people like [two more reference names], and a few [incubator reference] startups like [three more reference names].

The reason for this email is because we were made aware that you might not be on top of your government funding, in particular [something named].

Having had a quick look at what you do we think it is the kind where there may be some non-obvious qualifying work that we could claim for, even if you are claiming already, using a company that specialises in that area could increase your claim.

If you would like to have a quick chat about this or other forms of equity free funding from the Government …, I’d be happy to ring in the next few days.

It’s a shocker.

If your outgoing cold hooks are going out with bait anything like this, then you must stop it.

You could get wound up by the details. I’d never heard of any of the many names mentioned in the mail. None of the ‘references’, none of the ‘partners’, and certainly not our supposed mutual acquaintance.

Then the line about them being ‘aware’ I might not be ‘on top’ of something is an outrage. I suggest that insulting prospects does not tend to encourage them to rush to your door.

Even worse, the ‘grant’ to which they refer garner websurf results evoking unscrupulous door-to-door household energy scams.

The problems are more strategic.

What the sender thinks of as a ‘problem’ is not shared by his prospects.

That’s fundamental.