Do not cold email people.
No matter what you do, do NOT cold email people.
If you message people for a marketing proposition and they didn’t explicitly agree to be contacted by you?
You’re in the same category as all those desperate Nigerian princes who just need you to transfer a bit of cash. Those medical professionals selling pills to enhance your masculinity. Those beautiful women in your neighborhood waiting for you.
At least, that was the common wisdom when I started my career.
It’s what all the experts were saying.
Good thing I didn’t know all of that when I cold emailed several thousand people.
I Was New At My Job.
And I had never done the automated email thing. Ever.
But I needed to product results, and while our inbound channels were doing well, getting in strong B2B prospects, I wanted to diversify.
So I researched a target market. Hired someone to build a list of several thousand companies. Had it cleaned.
Then I found an email provider that wouldn’t blacklist me immediately for cold emailing people (hard). I sent them out.
We’re not talking individual, personalized emails, done with careful research.
It was an email blast.
If I followed the well-meaning advice online, this shouldn’t have worked.
Those emails were so successful our salespeople couldn’t keep up with all of them.
We got hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of new leads, some from Fortune 500 companies.
The emails weren’t personalized. I didn’t get their permission beforehand. And it wasn’t a soft sell – it was a direct offer of our service.
And it worked.
I Didn’t Know It Couldn’t Be Done.
Here’s the thing…
If I had gone a few more months without trying it, while reading expert advice…
I might never have done it.
Ignorance can, RARELY, act as a catalyst to innovation.
Because there was just so much information that said that this was an awful idea, that it would blacklist your company and your reputation.
That it was the wrong way to use email.
But that inbox full of hundreds of replies taught me a lesson that day…
“Experts” aren’t always right.
Honestly, I Was Lucky As Hell.
If I had bought an email list directly from a broker, it’s almost inevitable that mailing would have been unsuccessful.
That’s because lists from brokers are complete garbage.
(That advice you actually CAN trust.)
I didn’t know that – I hired a freelancer on Elance to scrape that list for me.
I was also lucky that I found an email provider that allowed that kind of mass-sending without opt-in. It’s nearly impossible to find one of those today.
But that experience showed me the bias inherent in our own experiences (of which I, too, am guilty).
We Need To Take Expert Advice With A Bucket Of Salt.
With a full understanding of where this person who is dispensing this advice came from.
A popular marketing blogger most likely… made a great deal of money blogging. Through content marketing.
What would he know about radio advertising? Or direct mail?
Probably little.
But that doesn’t stop many from proclaiming edicts on those industries.
He probably emails a certain way – and believes his way to be best. That doesn’t mean other methods don’t work.
I’m guilty of this too.
My “baptism” into marketing followed the old school method – a steady diet of Hopkins, Caples, Oglivy, and my personal favorite – Drayton Bird.
I hold a disdain for “awareness campaigns” and would probably bet against most of them.
I’m probably wrong, in many of those cases.
The fact is that when people tell us something is impossible, when we can’t find examples, we also have to remember that…
People Might Have Done It – They’re Just Not Telling Anyone About It.
This unprecedented clarity and free education online is actually quite recent, though it doesn’t feel that way.
For decades companies held their strategies and methods locked behind vault doors.
Many, especially outside the content marketing space, still follow that tradition.
There are a lot of businesses out there doing CRAZY things… and succeeding at them. Things most people would consider to be practically impossible.
They just aren’t telling anyone about them.
Sometimes you just need to test, and find out for yourself.
Also…
Just Because It’s Been Tried Doesn’t Mean It’s Been Tried RIGHT.
There’s an old Chinese idiom…
Right time. Right place. Right people.
In other words, true success needs these three factors to bloom.
And it’s the same with trying new things.
When Nintendo tried the Virtual Boy back in 1995, the market (and the technology) just wasn’t there. They weren’t the right people to do it.
But today, VR and AR are producing a new paradigm – one that is likely to accelerate going forward.
Times have changed. Failed attempts always need to be learned from, yes. But we shouldn’t let them weigh us down and restrict us from taking risks.
History is filled with people who’ve achieved massive success in something everyone else had written off.
You might be one of those people.
Learn From People – Don’t Be Tied Down By Their Opinions.
Business isn’t a science, no matter how hard we wish it were.
The closest we can get to are “opinions informed by data.”
Ultimately, we know a great deal… but not enough.
So, be cautious. Seek knowledge.
And sometimes?
You just need to try it.
