Spam Outreach & Cold Emails

Updated March 3, 2025

Knocking On Doors

Cold calling and direct mail were some of the earliest marketing techniques developed and they’re still alive today under the banner of ‘cold emails’ or spam emails. Most businesses will receive some form of spam email and it’s normally pretty easy to work out what’s legitimate and what isn’t. However, in the last few months we’ve seen some more sophisticated spam emails come through that we thought we could share.

Definitive Definitions

To make things clear, in this article we’re talking about cold emails. Cold emails, in my mind at least, are a step above general spam emails. A cold email is an unsolicited sales approach from a company. Typically they will have found your website and contacted you through a form, or perhaps purchased a list that has your contact details on.

While we wouldn’t endorse cold emailing as a good business practice, especially taking into account recent Spam legislation, cold emails can be successful. But only if done in a highly targeted, personalized, way. In small doses.

Using the Information You’ve Got

You can find a lot of information about a person, or a company, online. As well as being able to find information, you can also infer a great deal more. So it is possible to create something pretty personal. Take a look at this link request I received last week:

The company that sent this email want us to give them a link to an article on their site. The tone of the email is friendly (perhaps too friendly) and they even suggest where we can remove a link.

As far as cold outreach goes, this is pretty good. Even if it is automated (and I would suspect the majority of it is a template) it gives the impression of being personally written. Small mistakes like the “Heyyy” make you think ‘typo’ for example. Also, you can tell they’ve taken at least the time to skim our article, click the link on it, and match it to a post of their own.

As far as cold emails go, this is a solid 4 stars out of 5.

Do Cold Emails Get a Link?

To the untrained eye, this email looks like a good email. Worth your time reading and potentially responding to it. But it isn’t. The website sells mobile phone cases, so while their article on Buyer Personas might be good (and it isn’t bad), it has absolutely zero relevance to their business. Which immediately sets alarm bells marked ‘link farm’ ringing. However, if you were in a rush you could quite easily skim the email, skim their blog post and add the link to your site. Fortunately, we didn’t.

Be Careful

In short, be careful. Not every spam email is sent from a Nigerian prince. Some are subtle and more difficult to pick out. You don’t want to end up accidentally creating a link to a dodgy spammy website.

Have you seen any ‘good’ spam recently? We’d love to see it if you have. Spam us in the contact form below 😉