Or better question: Are ALL cold emails spam?
We recently received an email from a reader which had one core message:
“Sending cold emails is a form of spamming.”
It sparked an interesting discussion in our internal channels, and we’re glad our readers chimed in—it’s good to hear all sorts of viewpoints from marketers.
Are cold emails spam?
First, let’s consider some facts…
What is spam? It’s not the spiced ham that tastes delicious in fried rice. The traditional definition of spam is “irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent to a large number of people.”
With that definition in mind, consider two hypothetical cold emails to Manu, the founder of Stacked Marketer:
Email 1: “Hey Manu, reaching out because I’d like to chat about swapping promos between my newsletter and yours. I also run a large marketing newsletter.”
Email 2: “Hello Manu! I came across your site. I love the content. I will pay for link insertion!”
Email 1 doesn’t feel like spam. It’s personalized and potentially useful.
Email 2 feels like spam because it’s clearly a template sent to thousands of people.
Email 2 is fine, in our view. Email 1 may not be.
Are your cold emails spam?
You can find out by asking yourself:
- Is my email personalized to the recipient?
- Is my email useful for the recipient?
- If I got this email in my inbox, would I be annoyed?
- Would it be reasonable for someone else to get annoyed if they received this?
If you answered “yes” to the first two questions and “no” to the second two, then you’re probably safe.
Note
We’re not saying that all automated email campaigns are spam. Many tools let you personalize emails at scale and send large volumes of useful, personalized messaging.
What do you think?
