[downandout]

I agree that one man's spam can be another man's valuable service offering. But generally sending unsolicited email to people at work is considered spam.

The alternatives are numerous. Adwords, Facebook advertising, LinkedIn ads, running ad campaigns on targeted websites, etc. I saw one a story about one guy that was acutally able to specifically target a single person at a specific company he wanted using LinkedIn ads [1].

[1] http://thehustle.co/the-linkedin-hack-that-made-me-120000

[the_watcher]

All those ad channels are substantially more expensive in almost all SaaS cases. Sending an unsolicited email is not spam. Sending mass numbers of automated unsolicited emails is spam. LeadGenius and the like simply provide email addresses.

I run large scale advertising campaigns. I wish that it was cheaper than hiring an SDR to cold email. It simply isn't. In the very early days, advertising is so expensive that it makes almost no sense to prefer it over cold emails. Cold emailing simply works, as much as it might irritate you

[jwatte]

I get dozens of unsolicited sales emails every day. Just answering "thanks but no thanks, and please take me of your mailing and prospect lists" takes time out of my day. It had a real cost.

I have to answer, because the sales people will keep mailing every week otherwise, and marking as spam reduces the quality of the spam filter rules.

I'm the kind of person who will use inbound information if I'm actually looking to solve a problem, and I will resent your wasting my time if you go outbound at me. You literally end up on a "prefer not to do business with" list, hurting yourself.

Meanwhile, enough people apparently can't research their own problems enough, that cold marketing works. I just can't really understand why that is.