[jacquesm]

> If you give them something worth responding to, they will respond!

The problem here is that not everybody is objective when it comes to determine what is worth responding to. So this will be applied as a winning recipe because it worked once for someone and that someone blogged about it.

I can see a whole pile of heavy hitters waking up to people trying this scheme out wondering what is the cause of this inbox deluge :)

[ericbieller]

I've actually gained several very valuable contacts from this method, not just one ;) So it's actually worked out for me several times in the past, which is why I still do it.

In either case there's no harm in sending the email. Of course your conversion rate is going to be low. But if you can send 10 well written emails and get 1 valuable response, that certainly seems worth it to me!