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Is it real or is it spam?

The wanted but unexpected email is one of the major challenges facing ISPs and filter developers. If there was never any need or desire for people to receive email from someone they don’t know, then mail clients could be locked down to only accept mail from addresses on a whitelist. It wouldn’t completely solve the spam problem, for a number of reasons, but it would lessen the problem, particularly for average email users.
But, we don’t live in a world where we know beforehand who will be sending us mail, so we can’t just whitelist correspondents and reject everything else. I think this is a good thing. Email can be used to meet new people, develop new relationships and introduce new opportunities.
While the “cold call” email isn’t much talked about I think it’s worth some discussion. What makes a good cold email? What makes a bad one?  We can use two recent emails I received as examples.
Example 1:

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Appendleads is not unusual

I called out David Williams from appendleads.com yesterday for his spam. Sure he’s a spammer, his database is full of garbage information and his email violates CAN SPAM but he’s not that unusual in the realm of list sellers. He is very typical of the people I see offering lists for sale.
List sellers are the internet version of used car salesmen. Everyone knows they are slimy sales guys who will do anything to close the sale. They don’t have a real web presence, just visit appendleads.com and see what I mean.
And yet, people still buy lists from them! I have no doubt that my spammer friend has a nice little business selling email addresses. He sends out spam, he gets a few responses, makes a tidy profit and then sends out another spam, hooks a few more people and makes more money.
OK, so not all list sellers are like appendleads. Some of them go so far to build a website. But at the core they’re the same. They are selling data that isn’t clean, it’s not opt-in, it’s not been verified.
This is why so many of us harp on not buying lists. The sales guys talk a great game, but they aren’t selling what purchasers think they’re getting. They also don’t care. They have no incentive to clean up their data. They have no incentive to accurately represent what they’re selling. All of the risk is on the person that sends the email. Once they have their money, the buyer is on their own.
Can you ever successfully purchase a list? I’m sure some senders have. But that experience is closer to winning more than a thousand dollars in the lottery than an actual good business decision.

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You've got to be kidding me

Earlier this week I received an email to a work address I retired 4 or 5 years ago. The from and subject lines alone were enough to make me laugh and decide I had to blog about this particular spammer.

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