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Ask HN: Why are spamming services (aka 'cold email') on the rise?

11 points by JohnTHaller ↗ HN
I've been getting more and more spam from entrepreneurs and growth hackers who send "personalized" emails (with automated followups at 1, 2, and 4 week intervals) using services like yesware, ninjaoutreach, etc to my non-public work email. The pitch verbiage is always similar like they're all using a shared script. Most violate the CAN-SPAM act as they have no opt-out mechanism while some others use a link to whatever service they are using to send the spam. Most also use tracked links as well as a hidden image to try to track open rates. Without fail, when asked, the sender will claim they 'got your email from LinkedIn' (where it has never been published) or 'guessed what it would be'.

Are other folks seeing a similar rise in this annoyance? Any thoughts on why spamming is suddenly 'sexy' and 'growth hacky'?

9 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 33.5 ms ] thread
tabeth
The reason is pretty simple: the punishment is not great enough. If the gain from doing "bad" acts is greater from any expected punishment, expect the bad behavior to continue.
panorama
I'm not seeing a rise. But more sophisticated software exists for it now compared to 10 years ago, that's true.

Guessing emails is also common practice, but it's also likely that you're on a lead list somewhere. And the original person curating that list probably got your email from another service, guessed it, or simply found it on your website provided in your HN profile.

It's not going away any time soon - cold emails play an integral role in the sales funnel for the vast majority of online b2b services. It's easier to ignore it than to let it annoy you.

chatmasta
Yes I've definitely noticed a rise. Each email always mentions something about me that gives away where they scraped my email from. Some of the sources I've gotten spam from:

github (most common), academia.edu, HN who's hiring, Show HN

I don't get annoyed at emails like this because I accept that if I'm posting my email along with my work in a public place, I am inviting people to email me about it. Emails are easy to ignore, so I don't get annoyed at receiving emails like this. Even if these services are automated, at least they're semi targeted, and maybe 1/10 might interest me. One time someone emailed me promoting a business with an interesting business model and I replied and spent some time discussing it with him.

What does annoy me is that they get through my very strict gmail filters. I filter every email to an "ignore" label unless it's directly addressed to me and not categorized by gmail as "primary" (i.e., not one of social/promotions/updates/forums). It works very well and basically zero newsletters get into my primary inbox. But these emails are different. It seems these emails are categorized by gmail as "primary" which means they escape my filter. I wonder if, ironically, gmail filters newsletters by looking for an unsubscribe link. Because as you mentioned, I have noticed that none of these emails have an opt-out link.

JohnTHaller
I'd have less of a problem (bit still a problem due to automation) with it if this email address was "public", but it isn't. It leaked once due to a misconfigured git ignore file in sometime else's open source project.
AznHisoka
just setup an autoresponder saying "click here to see my phone number" and have that link be an amazon affiliate link.
jackgolding
know its a joke but FYI amazon really doesn't like people emailing affiliate links so your account will probably be disabled.
wayn3
Because it works
tmaly
Emails still have a higher conversion rate than other methods. There have been a number of blog posts and podcasts recently about how much better cold emailing is. This could explain the recent uptick.

I tried to guard my work email, but someone signed me up for some things they thought would be useful to me. Suddenly, my email gets sold to list after list. I am thankful our company has a really nice anti-spam system that prevents 99.99% of the spam from reaching me.