Webform Spam

Here’s exact text I came across as posted through a corporate comment box. The kind that hopes for random contact from a cold prospect. It was headed “Thought regarding your website“, and subheaded “google“;

I’ve helped hundreds of companies increase their traffic and I’d love to show you what my service can do for you. I don’t promise the world, I’m straight forward and to the point … I deliver rankings. My rates are completely affordable and I don’t want to oversell you either, I start small and have my clients begging for more. I won’t take on your site unless I know I can deliver rankings. Reply to this e-mail if you have the slightest interest … you’ll never see rankings the same way again.

Remarkable. In a bad way.

Whether it be direct mail, unsolicited email or a web-posting, this kind of approach is sadly all so familiar. I hope you don’t do it this way.

It is so obviously spam. The final sentence even still begs ‘reply to this email’, bizarre as there is no email of course.

The pronoun “I” features a staggering ten times in these just five sentences. The word “my” a further three.

Given that the sender must have been on the website to fill in the comment box in the first place, it is incredible that not a single mention of what the target company does is made. Not even a glimmer of how a match to potential business issues could exist.

Think of your last cold(-ish) pitch. Could it have come across like this too?