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Tell HN: Please put a contact email on your site

2 points by fabiandesimone ↗ HN
I'm an entrepreneur like most of you, with a few projects in the last years. I know how hard it is to find customers, gain traction, etc.

Today after an afternoon of prospecting, I'm amazed by the number of companies that make it INCREDIBLY hard for people to connect with them.

Most sites don't have a contact email or phone. Others use forms, but the big majority don't have a clear way of contacting them.

I mean, what's so prohibited about publicly displaying an email address use for general inquiries? (I can understand hiding your personal one)

Granted, I'm trying to contact these companies to sell something. But I honestly think I'm selling a very good product.

For example, in this particular case I'm trying to get in touch with Blackberry Developers that would like to promote their apps in Latin America. We have an email list (completely legal, with users looking forward to our information about new apps every-week) of about 520K users. We work on volumen which means we charge VERY cheap per email sent. The first 3 companies that sign up would get a significant discount.

Guess how many companies I was able to connect with? I'll keep at it, improving my sales process. But, if you are a business owner make it easier for opportunities to present themselves.

3 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 15.4 ms ] thread
dirkdeman
That's exactly the reason why I don't have an email address on the site. I had one before, but almost 100% of emails received were not from people asking legitimate questions, but from other businesses sollicitating.
AznHisoka
Seems like your complaint is "Why can't I sell my product?" rather than "Why don't people put their email addresses online so ppl can help them?".

If you didn't have a product to sell, and wanted to email people about a typo on their blog, would you be complaining about this?

fabiandesimone
Actually, yes.

I can see why this looks like I'm complaining but I'm not.

It just seems estrange how companies avoid making it easy for people to contact them.

I could be trying to apply for a job (and turn out to be a valuable asset for their company) or wanting to buy something... only that in this case I'm selling.

My point is, that we as entrepreneurs should be letting the doors open instead of closing them.