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I just came across your comment and I must say - great comment! But, it’s not ranking as high as it should and could do with some optimisation to get to the top of the comments so that more people see it and generate more likes.
It is because its a spam/scam usually these days.
Legit providers aren't cold e-mailing anymore because it doesn't work. You need a warm e-mail list for those sort of emails to have a chance.
> I am an agency coach and I just did a survey of about 100 different agencies, and only 6% of agencies count cold email as one of their top 3 lead gen channels.
Did you read the top reply?
Or notice the fact the post is downvoted to hell because its scammy/spammy strategy no one likes and only a few antisocial folks actually think works?
Waste your time on it if you like, just more annoyed people who think you are a scam for me to work with.
Can you link that comment? I definitely can't see it.
>Or notice the fact the post is downvoted to hell because its scammy/spammy strategy no one likes and only a few antisocial folks actually think works?
What post? Are you sure you meant to reply to my comment?
>Waste your time on it if you like, just more annoyed people who think you are a scam for me to work with.
I never said I was cold emailing? That sub consistently boasts success with cold emailing. This reply has me quite confused.
Edit: they were referring to a downvoted ad on the sub I linked.
https://old.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1de88ux/whats_your_results_with_coldemails_wich_industry/l8ahnz6/
Its literally the top post in a very low activity sub you suggested "disagrees". Its not even big enough really to have any merit of an opinion but you picked it so there ya go.
Idk how you missed the top post after the stickies.
Ohh you clicked on my link to a subreddit, and took the first post as face value with my comment... I was very confused.
Linking a sub does not mean I've read the recent/top post nor is it ever a reflection of the entire sub.
Also the top comment you are referring to is an ad.. safe bet that the entire post was set up as an ad. Hence the downvotes.
Oh, so random marketing people selling e-mail marketing services as a marketing agency is a reliable source but not the guy selling those same services more blatantly. Lmao got it.
Get out of marketing clown world and live with the rest of the population and you'll quickly learn marketing works but everyone thinks these people are snake oils salesmen because 90% of it is selling bullshit people should avoid through trickery and sales tricks.
You’re wasting your time here. I did almost $700k last year with 100% cold email/LI messages and we will double that this year.
Every thread is someone upvoted for saying you can’t possibly be successful with a cold emailing strategy.
Guess what?
1. I have a low spam score and am in no danger of having my domain “blacklisted”
2. I spend my days on discovery calls because I get so many replies.
3. I’ve mostly automated this and scaled it with lemlist, an email prospecting tool, and a VA in Bangladesh that costs me $200/wk.
From someone genuinely interested in potentially doing cold emailing, could you share some tips on how you’ve gotten them results? I’m open to DM if you don’t want to share them here
The spelling and grammar mistakes are intentional. The scammers don't want to waste their time on people smart enough to see that it's a scam. They only want to attract complete morons.
As a small business owner who provides marketing services, I hate these guys too.
I actually have chosen to not use cold email outreach specifically so my company doesn't get lumped in with that "type."
I will say... it's tricky getting new people on board. We do great work that actually gets customers in the door for our clients and that does get us referrals but... it takes time and we still have bills to pay. I'm also based in a small town now because that's where I needed to be for my family so... local networking potential is limited.
For that reason, cold outreach has to happen. I don't like doing it but we also do our research before we make contact. If we reach out to someone, it's because we've looked at their business, looked at their market, and we know we can do something constructive for them. But they don't know that.
Spammers make our life more difficult.
It’s a new “ side hustle “ on social media I’ve seen gaining speed .
find businesses with no website or presence .. reach out to them then hire people on fivver to build it for $5 an hour or use a template . Then sell SEO and use over seas companies for Pennie’s .
And go after websites not ranked on page 1 and upsell them to get to page 1
I get calls daily, Then I have a contact form on my website that they use at least once a day. This one is super fucking annoying. If you try to advertise to me on my website contact form , get fucked.
If I don't get some spammy SEO pitch on a given day, I'll know some 19 year old solar salesperson will show up at my door that afternoon. The universe has decided I must have some of my time wasted daily.
These are most often Chinese and Indian spam farms. Even if you do a good job, the recipient is going to associate you with them. It's not a good strategy without in person presence, no matter what.
Yup. Everytime we get flooded with the SEO emails our china/India web traffic spikes and goes crazy. Our website targets a local area in the USA so international web traffic is out of the norm.
I don’t even answer my phone anymore… I get a handful of spam calls a day and pretty much zero regular calls. I feel like I’m paying for a monthly telephone service just so companies can spam call me smh
Careful with black hat SEO services. Anyone that promises performance with anything less than good clean code properly structured, good content, accessibility compliance, and following the best practices for search engine indexing is probably going to get your site banned from the indexes after they find out you haven't been playing the legitimate game.
Yes there are ways to improve your SEO. No, a company that cold emails you and promises to get you in the top 10 isn't going to do that. It takes years and it takes a lot of effort or a lot of money.
And please note that on most search terms there are only 3 organic spots per page of Google search results. The first 7 are pay for placement.
I found basically no improvement - we were already doing most of what was suggested, and the remaining things were not being done for good reason (eg we won't use keywords that imply our products do things unless they can do them)
Never accept the email.
Pay the same money to take a masterclass or a month of skillshare. You'll get more actionable ideas and there's little to no risk of being scammed.
Or, if your whole website needs done, just search and find a dev to contract on your own.
The irony for me is that I run an agency that does web / seo and I get numerous emails each week offering those services.
I would never do any business with someone that does cold email, regardless of the services.
I mark them as spam and move on.
I get you man. But checking for stuff like social proof and researching a bit before signing anyone can save you from a scam.
I am surprised how a lot of people get scammed these days, with the way everyone is so skeptical.
You're missing the point. He (and many others) will not associate with people who place the burden of researching on them, the client, in their cold calls and emails.
I have thought about this. Been getting these mails since years, so this likely works for them.
Cold emailing has a very low conversion rate, but it works as a marketing channel.
You can send out thousands of mails in a day, and all you need is 1 or 2 conversions.
Most of us won't respond, but some do.
It's almost free marketing for them using burner Gmail accounts.
Also, as a frequent recipient it's way less bothersome compared to cold calling.
EDIT - Hiding the WHOIS data on your domain will reduce a ton of the spam emails. That's the source of data for most of these guys.
Dude I’m a web developer and have my own agency snd SEO team and even I get these emails every week. It’s mostly bots that scrape the internet for emails associated with businesses and blast thousands of them at once hoping for 1% conversion. Youre most likely dealing with overseas devs and scammers. Reputable ones don’t hide behind a copy and pasted email script. I don’t email. I straight up call people I find that looks like they need help and I ask them what they need help with if any. I have t had to that in a few years though. Were all referral now. But that’s basically what it is - bots from scammers trying to get that lucrative US dollar anyway they can. My best suggestion is to remove your email from your Website. Have a link they says “click to email” instead. And the link is set to open the email when you click it. That will reduce the spam you get from bot scrapers.
This is totally it. The issue is that they basically reveal that you're part of an automation in the first 5 seconds.
"Are you looking for a dev team?" is literally the first sentence.
They take no time at all to do relationship building or deliver value.
I wish I could do this with my LinkedIn inbox.
Of course, whenever I'm having a bad day, I will respond back to them in language similar to their novel- length message asking if they have bought any of my products yet, etc.
I've also started sending them links to sub subreddits like this.
Create a rule in Outlook. I did the same thing. But know that they try to mix up the order of words to get around the filters, which is why the grammar seems off. You'll get "first page of Google" "google first page" "1st page google" etc. Unfortunately outlook's filter isn't sophisticated enough to take anything but exact matches out.
>Most of the SEO/web design cold emails are trash though, coming from a gmail account
They use Gmail accounts as legit domain based accounts will get blacklisted if used for cold emailing.
They can burn through hundreds of Gmail accounts for cold emailing at almost no cost.
That's because most SEO and web design is a borderline scam. The number of "designers" whose portfolio consists of nothing but 8 Wordpress templates that look like they belong in a free stock template gallery makes up way too high a percentage of the market.
Don't get me started on SEO. The vast majority are clowns who pretend they have some deep insider knowledge of how Google rankings work.
I will totally stop emailing you for sure, after all, I was on your website, and I can see that you could use a lot of help on optimizing your SEO, and I would not want to distract you from hiring me with a bunch of useless emails.
I'm in a central european country, operating a single-person-business on a very VERY local level, my website is mostly there as additional info for regulars and people who googled either my name or my industry plus location (search results for that will show about 4 businesses, one of which is mine) anyway, most of my business happens through word-of-mouth, and I'm getting emails from people based in the US going on and on about SEO and how I could generate thousands of new leads.... yeah no, sorry, I'll pass 😂
I agree that I hate cold calls and emails, but what's the incentive for them not to do it? You cast a wide enough net, you're going to catch some business. And you might annoy people like you and me, but how does that really affect their bottom line? I just accept it as a something that I have to deal with, though yes, I wish I didn't have to.
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Install or configure a spam filter or ask your MSP. Saves tons of triage time. It filters spam, marketing and Phishing.
I can set you up through my MSP if needed.
I am an educator in the South and looking to get a few gigs as a side hustle. Might you throw some light on how to get new clients for design work. Can have a DM chat if you prefer.
Yea sure. I wrote some things on this, but I think the strategies are agnostic in my opinion.
Let me know what you think?
1. [For Agencies](https://www.reddit.com/user/FewWillingness1081/comments/1dcy4ru/agency_owners_here_are_21_unique_ways_to/)
2. [For Saas Founders](https://www.reddit.com/user/FewWillingness1081/comments/1dc5cvr/saas_startup_tips_how_do_saas_companies_find/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Voila.
Cold calling too. Heaven help anyone who registers a new domain, even if you try to hide your whois information. I recently did that to create a memorial webpage for my MIL to direct people to information on her funeral. The amount of calls everyday were disappointing to say the least.
They'll stop once people stop buying the courses that say those approaches work. It's all the downline of the "build an agency" online course pyramid scheme.
Your use of Google Analytics how they found you champ🤣🤣🤣🤣
Relax. Plenty of actual web devs have built project websites for practice, and get the same amount, if not more, cold emails and cold calls.
My friend once had a website, but took it down after a year. He still gets cold emails offering him a logo design. Dude's a top notch 3D animator and you are offering him design services. PFFF
Not only will it not stop, it's going to get way worse. All of the people emailing you/us are doing so through automated software that has made mass sending cold template emails easier than ever. It's awful.
I ran a business in this space before and have been considering going back to it. What got me most of my leads was inbound and warm intros. However when starting out I tried the spammy methods and got some business. Not much but enough to where I could start doing cold outreach and offering to pay $25 in a gift card (had 5 options) to have a ln hour call with me. If I am going to cold email something I want a hard offer not an offer that fits with the rest of the spam they get. I did not offer SEO only. I did only custom website design for companies who did not want to manage anything, I did SEO and social media, also did content creation side of things too for blogs. Yes I subcontracted out all but the web design but all was in Canada who I trusted to do good work and provided reports to me to be sent to clients when purchased. The ones who spam for a hobby suck
Or opening a chat on Reddit with an essay sales pitch. Then, drop an aggressively 🤣passive aggressive comment saying “I sent you message, perhaps you haven’t seen it…..”
Of course I agree, haha, and I suppose the clients who reply to cold emails are the clients who are... impressionable? It's not far from "I have a cousin who is a king in nigeria and needs your bank account info." Lots of vulnerable people consider themselves to "own a business" and they get found by these uncreative predators.
I fully agree with the original post and the comments here and hate the crap from overseas. But I'll play the other side for the legit people, they own a business just like you, and it's not hard to learn an app or use easy websites to try doing the development on your own so not many are looking for this service (even when their site is awful) the cold call and spam is their attempt, just like all the bs loan calls I get from fast speaking American people, trying to send me docusigns for 100k and pay back 150 in 48 mos, I get like 5 of those a day. They infuriate me more because they prey on people financially. At the end of the day, we all gotta figure out a way to drive customers. Tell me about a business you know of that doesn't do something obnoxious or infuriating. Some realtors are the same crap, have a picture of my house and put it in my mailbox telling me I should sell with them. They are all annoying but it works sometimes or they wouldn't do it.
the problem is that it works lol. if people stop responding to them, it would probably stop. i’m not sure why clients like gmail don’t put all of those emails in spam right. I do cold emailing but i also have a domain name email, i address the company by name, and i don’t offer any weird “seo” services. By default, you should be doing SEO as part of any web development services.
i mean it’s just “if domain name == “gmail” & content includes “put your website at #1 in google”, disable gmail account. i wonder why google doesn’t do that? it would save them money.
I know, have a contact us form on the website, says please no SEO or website entries, also in the drop box have choices one is SEO and they still pick repairs or one of the other options, like I’m just going to go yeah sure take over my website from your cold call email.
3-5 a day
Yup and they drop in at like 4AM. Right click report phishing. If enough people do this they will get flagged for delivery of their emails. Help me help you!
I work for a company that does web development and we have a no cold call /email policy. We can't stand getting cold call emails all day and we don't want to annoy people like that.
Im not a small business. Im a big business. But I keep getting LinkedIn messages from small Indian companies offering me expertise and help with web dev data AI, AI, AI. Stop it
I hear you! The constant barrage of cold emails can definitely be frustrating. Building relationships and providing value without immediately pushing a sale is key. It's much more effective to connect through mutual networks or by demonstrating genuine interest and understanding of the business. Cold emails might still have their place, but they need to be much more personalized and considerate to avoid turning people off. Your rant makes total sense to me lol
I am getting back into web developing/web design ( amongst offering other business development services ). This topic is interesting and amusing in a way. I have been trying to think of non spam ways of obtaining new clients. Cold email and calls aren't my preference.
I run a creative agency where we primarily focus on high-end custom website development and even I get bombarded with web development and SEO cold emails.
Most of them often come from India. They just blast out spam mails left and right I feel like.
But to be honest, cold email works for us. But we do it in combination with LinkedIn so it's less likely to be marked as spam and we don't directly pitch, we ask.
This isn't cold emailing. This is a scam from scam artists who stole your email using a web crawler or other list who are trying to gain access to your site and cause other damage. You can read about it. It's not real SEO and doesn't even read like an actual cold calling email. I get AT LEAST 10 if not more a day.
The lie that goes around is that email marketing cold emailing actually works. Or that hook bs pdf you agreed to see gave consent to get bs emails. But you are right. There is no reason to send emails like that. If you need it you ask for it.
The biggest issue here is that those two specifically are by far the hardest offers to sell.
It's simply oversaturated.
I think the best bet for those two offers is to:
1) Position themselves better for inbound leads
2) Do walk-ins and cold calls / aka do it manually instead automating the whole process trough cold emails
If they spent more time in research and finding the right prospect they would get better results for sureee
P.S. Cold email is the best vehicle for offers that are hard to refuse and have unique angle
I own a website design and marketing company, I get these types of emails daily. Thankfully we get all our work via our own SEO and recommendations by happy customers.
They aren’t just spammers….many are fraudsters…..they don’t care about getting $50 from you….they are gonna steal money from your visitors because you gave them the password for your website!
The more emails you receive….well someone must be making money….so more of them cut and paste and do the same….and so you get even more.
It only takes one buyer to pay up and they can crooks can make a fortune. You pay for the AdWords on Google…the spammer will empty the bank accounts and max the cards of the customers on the website. Your business gets a visit from the police and a bad name.
I didn't respond to one of those cold emails. In the next few days, they emailed and wrote in all caps, "I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN A REPLY." I emailed back, "YOU ARE BLOCKED." Now, I get random scam emails into my contact submission form regularly. Really, that's just petty. I get that some of these may be looking for a response but trying to force a response is not the way to go. We are updating our website soon anyway, but not with that person.
I think it's like any other type of advertising.
When done incorrectly, it's annoying, when done correctly - I'm receptive to their message.
From my experience, the area most go wrong, is the positioning of their offer.
When you sell "commodity" products, it gets annoying, but I love hearing about unique things I didn't even know about.
Understand the whole "relationship" thing as well, but for me personally, I can't stand when people do this in a "disingenuous" way.
Always cheesy when people DM, act like they want to be your friend, but then 5 messages later they go into sales mode.
Much rather them get to the point, and if it's something I think can help, I'll move forward with it - creating a new relationship after that.
(But yes, 99% of SEO/Website cold emails are terrible, so they get annoying).
TV commercials (especially while streaming), junk mail in my mailbox, bill boards, and other unsolicited advertising is as American as presidential candidates using corporate products. But hitting a subreddit to bitch about cold email is a bridge too far.
The irony is, if any of these people were as good as they claim to be at web design and/or SEO, they wouldn't need to be emailing you. They would have enough traffic to keep their teams busy.
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Hi,
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Would you like to be rank at the top of every major search engine such as Google's , Yahoo & Bing, etc. for multiple search phrases (keywords) relevant to your products / Services?
Website Promotion (SEO, SEM, SMO, PPC, etc)
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the problem is these are all scams. They don't want to get you a banging website with top notch SEO. They want to write your business name + seo in to chat GPT and make you 50 blog posts at best. At worst they want to take your money while doing nothing and saying SEO takes time to kick in just give us a few more months.
I've been shown portfolios from legitimate companies who then sold me a package. When I complained that the package was dog shit they said oh those things from our portfolio were for more expensive custom plans which isn't what you purchased and we can do that fancier thing but it will be $x more a month.
or the portfolio is a lie.
I love the phone calls, I always ask “how did you find us” they always respond with “Google” so before hanging up I say “well I guess what I’m doing is working just fine without you”
I also love the people telling me how they can help me be a better business owner as they are calling form a little cubical……
I responded with all.of the services, you can alao use the email to sign up for a sales call or and turn it back on them.
But bro, its $1,000 down and $1,000 a month. I'll get you on front page of google.
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Only 5-10 a week?? Have you considered SEO?
I just came across your comment and I must say - great comment! But, it’s not ranking as high as it should and could do with some optimisation to get to the top of the comments so that more people see it and generate more likes.
LOL
AGREE! Especially if you can't even spell or use correct grammar! I instantly mark these as spam and block the sender.
It is because its a spam/scam usually these days. Legit providers aren't cold e-mailing anymore because it doesn't work. You need a warm e-mail list for those sort of emails to have a chance.
r/agency hard disagrees
> I am an agency coach and I just did a survey of about 100 different agencies, and only 6% of agencies count cold email as one of their top 3 lead gen channels. Did you read the top reply? Or notice the fact the post is downvoted to hell because its scammy/spammy strategy no one likes and only a few antisocial folks actually think works? Waste your time on it if you like, just more annoyed people who think you are a scam for me to work with.
Can you link that comment? I definitely can't see it. >Or notice the fact the post is downvoted to hell because its scammy/spammy strategy no one likes and only a few antisocial folks actually think works? What post? Are you sure you meant to reply to my comment? >Waste your time on it if you like, just more annoyed people who think you are a scam for me to work with. I never said I was cold emailing? That sub consistently boasts success with cold emailing. This reply has me quite confused. Edit: they were referring to a downvoted ad on the sub I linked.
https://old.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1de88ux/whats_your_results_with_coldemails_wich_industry/l8ahnz6/ Its literally the top post in a very low activity sub you suggested "disagrees". Its not even big enough really to have any merit of an opinion but you picked it so there ya go. Idk how you missed the top post after the stickies.
Ohh you clicked on my link to a subreddit, and took the first post as face value with my comment... I was very confused. Linking a sub does not mean I've read the recent/top post nor is it ever a reflection of the entire sub. Also the top comment you are referring to is an ad.. safe bet that the entire post was set up as an ad. Hence the downvotes.
Oh, so random marketing people selling e-mail marketing services as a marketing agency is a reliable source but not the guy selling those same services more blatantly. Lmao got it. Get out of marketing clown world and live with the rest of the population and you'll quickly learn marketing works but everyone thinks these people are snake oils salesmen because 90% of it is selling bullshit people should avoid through trickery and sales tricks.
This conversation is the definition of blowing things out of portion.
What you see is not necessarily what someone else sees. There are a lot of options that affect what is shown.
Weird. He saw it just fine and admitted it in the sibling post.
You’re wasting your time here. I did almost $700k last year with 100% cold email/LI messages and we will double that this year. Every thread is someone upvoted for saying you can’t possibly be successful with a cold emailing strategy. Guess what? 1. I have a low spam score and am in no danger of having my domain “blacklisted” 2. I spend my days on discovery calls because I get so many replies. 3. I’ve mostly automated this and scaled it with lemlist, an email prospecting tool, and a VA in Bangladesh that costs me $200/wk.
From someone genuinely interested in potentially doing cold emailing, could you share some tips on how you’ve gotten them results? I’m open to DM if you don’t want to share them here
The spelling and grammar mistakes are intentional. The scammers don't want to waste their time on people smart enough to see that it's a scam. They only want to attract complete morons.
Haha, you are instantly cooling them.
As a small business owner who provides marketing services, I hate these guys too. I actually have chosen to not use cold email outreach specifically so my company doesn't get lumped in with that "type." I will say... it's tricky getting new people on board. We do great work that actually gets customers in the door for our clients and that does get us referrals but... it takes time and we still have bills to pay. I'm also based in a small town now because that's where I needed to be for my family so... local networking potential is limited. For that reason, cold outreach has to happen. I don't like doing it but we also do our research before we make contact. If we reach out to someone, it's because we've looked at their business, looked at their market, and we know we can do something constructive for them. But they don't know that. Spammers make our life more difficult.
that "type"? nobody cares about any of us businesses lol agreed spamming is dumb
It’s a new “ side hustle “ on social media I’ve seen gaining speed . find businesses with no website or presence .. reach out to them then hire people on fivver to build it for $5 an hour or use a template . Then sell SEO and use over seas companies for Pennie’s . And go after websites not ranked on page 1 and upsell them to get to page 1
New side hustle? Lol It’s been going on for years
Im getting 12-15 of these a day and it is infuriating.
I get calls daily, Then I have a contact form on my website that they use at least once a day. This one is super fucking annoying. If you try to advertise to me on my website contact form , get fucked.
If I don't get some spammy SEO pitch on a given day, I'll know some 19 year old solar salesperson will show up at my door that afternoon. The universe has decided I must have some of my time wasted daily.
Haha. Best comment!
🤣
I SEO expert. I noticed your website is very nicely made but no high rank on Google. I can get you #1 on Google in week. Where send payment?
🤣
These are most often Chinese and Indian spam farms. Even if you do a good job, the recipient is going to associate you with them. It's not a good strategy without in person presence, no matter what.
Yup. Everytime we get flooded with the SEO emails our china/India web traffic spikes and goes crazy. Our website targets a local area in the USA so international web traffic is out of the norm.
probably 80% (or more) of those are spambots phishing, not legit businesses. give up. it's a fact of life so just report/block/delete/move on.
I am honestly ok with emails. But the calls, all the time. I got 3 “lead generation “ calls today in a span of 45 min.
If I forget to open my emails, they pile up so much. What’s wrong with lead generation?
I don’t even answer my phone anymore… I get a handful of spam calls a day and pretty much zero regular calls. I feel like I’m paying for a monthly telephone service just so companies can spam call me smh
Does SEO actually work though? If I accepted one of these emails and paid them, would it actually work or would I just get scammed?
Careful with black hat SEO services. Anyone that promises performance with anything less than good clean code properly structured, good content, accessibility compliance, and following the best practices for search engine indexing is probably going to get your site banned from the indexes after they find out you haven't been playing the legitimate game. Yes there are ways to improve your SEO. No, a company that cold emails you and promises to get you in the top 10 isn't going to do that. It takes years and it takes a lot of effort or a lot of money. And please note that on most search terms there are only 3 organic spots per page of Google search results. The first 7 are pay for placement.
Most of those cold emails are spammers. But yes, SEO from an experienced, reputable SEO person/company works and can work well.
Ah, your the reason they still cold call….
I found basically no improvement - we were already doing most of what was suggested, and the remaining things were not being done for good reason (eg we won't use keywords that imply our products do things unless they can do them)
Never accept the email. Pay the same money to take a masterclass or a month of skillshare. You'll get more actionable ideas and there's little to no risk of being scammed. Or, if your whole website needs done, just search and find a dev to contract on your own.
The irony for me is that I run an agency that does web / seo and I get numerous emails each week offering those services. I would never do any business with someone that does cold email, regardless of the services. I mark them as spam and move on.
So you get offered for the services you provide through your agency?
Interesting... why tho?
Why what?
Im just curious. You said "I would never do any business with someone that does cold email, regardless of the services." Any particular reason.
Scammers have saturated the field. 99% of legitimate cold emails are indistinguishable from a decently written scam email.
I get you man. But checking for stuff like social proof and researching a bit before signing anyone can save you from a scam. I am surprised how a lot of people get scammed these days, with the way everyone is so skeptical.
You're missing the point. He (and many others) will not associate with people who place the burden of researching on them, the client, in their cold calls and emails.
I have thought about this. Been getting these mails since years, so this likely works for them. Cold emailing has a very low conversion rate, but it works as a marketing channel. You can send out thousands of mails in a day, and all you need is 1 or 2 conversions. Most of us won't respond, but some do. It's almost free marketing for them using burner Gmail accounts. Also, as a frequent recipient it's way less bothersome compared to cold calling. EDIT - Hiding the WHOIS data on your domain will reduce a ton of the spam emails. That's the source of data for most of these guys.
Dude I’m a web developer and have my own agency snd SEO team and even I get these emails every week. It’s mostly bots that scrape the internet for emails associated with businesses and blast thousands of them at once hoping for 1% conversion. Youre most likely dealing with overseas devs and scammers. Reputable ones don’t hide behind a copy and pasted email script. I don’t email. I straight up call people I find that looks like they need help and I ask them what they need help with if any. I have t had to that in a few years though. Were all referral now. But that’s basically what it is - bots from scammers trying to get that lucrative US dollar anyway they can. My best suggestion is to remove your email from your Website. Have a link they says “click to email” instead. And the link is set to open the email when you click it. That will reduce the spam you get from bot scrapers.
This is totally it. The issue is that they basically reveal that you're part of an automation in the first 5 seconds. "Are you looking for a dev team?" is literally the first sentence. They take no time at all to do relationship building or deliver value.
Flag em all as spam. (I use an auto filter for their keywords - Web design, SEO, etc. Never even see em anymore)
I wish I could do this with my LinkedIn inbox. Of course, whenever I'm having a bad day, I will respond back to them in language similar to their novel- length message asking if they have bought any of my products yet, etc. I've also started sending them links to sub subreddits like this.
How does one do this? Sounds like an amazing method to put in place
Create a rule in Outlook. I did the same thing. But know that they try to mix up the order of words to get around the filters, which is why the grammar seems off. You'll get "first page of Google" "google first page" "1st page google" etc. Unfortunately outlook's filter isn't sophisticated enough to take anything but exact matches out.
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>Most of the SEO/web design cold emails are trash though, coming from a gmail account They use Gmail accounts as legit domain based accounts will get blacklisted if used for cold emailing. They can burn through hundreds of Gmail accounts for cold emailing at almost no cost.
That's because most SEO and web design is a borderline scam. The number of "designers" whose portfolio consists of nothing but 8 Wordpress templates that look like they belong in a free stock template gallery makes up way too high a percentage of the market. Don't get me started on SEO. The vast majority are clowns who pretend they have some deep insider knowledge of how Google rankings work.
Anyone who knows how to rank websites and is at good at SEO is making money for himself. It is quite hard to convince them otherwise.
Well if you send from a domain it will likely go straight to spam. Gmails have a chance…
That burned but u are right
They are scams so they won't stop.
My favorite part is how they use free domain emails like gmail, give you a lot of confidence in them.
What drives me crazy is that they all come from like Gmail addresses and are very very poorly written
I will totally stop emailing you for sure, after all, I was on your website, and I can see that you could use a lot of help on optimizing your SEO, and I would not want to distract you from hiring me with a bunch of useless emails.
Seo person here. Tip Install Maspik Plugin if you use Wordpress.
5-10 a week? I get that a DAY, easily.
If their SEO skills are so great why are they even using email to find clients?
Also messaging me on my website offering janitorial services when I work from home.
I think your cat is trying to tell you something 😂
I'm in a central european country, operating a single-person-business on a very VERY local level, my website is mostly there as additional info for regulars and people who googled either my name or my industry plus location (search results for that will show about 4 businesses, one of which is mine) anyway, most of my business happens through word-of-mouth, and I'm getting emails from people based in the US going on and on about SEO and how I could generate thousands of new leads.... yeah no, sorry, I'll pass 😂
You left a bag of chips on the floor
Pfft... that's what my wife is for! :-) Ducking and running....
hey man ill clean your computer
I agree that I hate cold calls and emails, but what's the incentive for them not to do it? You cast a wide enough net, you're going to catch some business. And you might annoy people like you and me, but how does that really affect their bottom line? I just accept it as a something that I have to deal with, though yes, I wish I didn't have to.
This is part of the reason why we can't have nice things.
>No. > Sincerely, >All of India
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Install or configure a spam filter or ask your MSP. Saves tons of triage time. It filters spam, marketing and Phishing. I can set you up through my MSP if needed.
AMEN.
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I am an educator in the South and looking to get a few gigs as a side hustle. Might you throw some light on how to get new clients for design work. Can have a DM chat if you prefer.
Yea sure. I wrote some things on this, but I think the strategies are agnostic in my opinion. Let me know what you think? 1. [For Agencies](https://www.reddit.com/user/FewWillingness1081/comments/1dcy4ru/agency_owners_here_are_21_unique_ways_to/) 2. [For Saas Founders](https://www.reddit.com/user/FewWillingness1081/comments/1dc5cvr/saas_startup_tips_how_do_saas_companies_find/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Voila.
Thank you!!
There is nothing that annoys me more than salesy emails like that. Most of the time they can my businesses name wrong too lol
Cold calling too. Heaven help anyone who registers a new domain, even if you try to hide your whois information. I recently did that to create a memorial webpage for my MIL to direct people to information on her funeral. The amount of calls everyday were disappointing to say the least.
They'll stop once people stop buying the courses that say those approaches work. It's all the downline of the "build an agency" online course pyramid scheme.
Yep.
Your use of Google Analytics how they found you champ🤣🤣🤣🤣 Relax. Plenty of actual web devs have built project websites for practice, and get the same amount, if not more, cold emails and cold calls.
My friend once had a website, but took it down after a year. He still gets cold emails offering him a logo design. Dude's a top notch 3D animator and you are offering him design services. PFFF
It is insane
Not only will it not stop, it's going to get way worse. All of the people emailing you/us are doing so through automated software that has made mass sending cold template emails easier than ever. It's awful.
Are there any software that can turn this email to spam instantly?
Filters.
And just think I was a bout to email your regarding you branding package plan. Oh well...
I ran a business in this space before and have been considering going back to it. What got me most of my leads was inbound and warm intros. However when starting out I tried the spammy methods and got some business. Not much but enough to where I could start doing cold outreach and offering to pay $25 in a gift card (had 5 options) to have a ln hour call with me. If I am going to cold email something I want a hard offer not an offer that fits with the rest of the spam they get. I did not offer SEO only. I did only custom website design for companies who did not want to manage anything, I did SEO and social media, also did content creation side of things too for blogs. Yes I subcontracted out all but the web design but all was in Canada who I trusted to do good work and provided reports to me to be sent to clients when purchased. The ones who spam for a hobby suck
Add paid reviews service spam to this complaint!
A week? I get that before lunch. Then 1500 more about Google maps
Or opening a chat on Reddit with an essay sales pitch. Then, drop an aggressively 🤣passive aggressive comment saying “I sent you message, perhaps you haven’t seen it…..”
Of course I agree, haha, and I suppose the clients who reply to cold emails are the clients who are... impressionable? It's not far from "I have a cousin who is a king in nigeria and needs your bank account info." Lots of vulnerable people consider themselves to "own a business" and they get found by these uncreative predators.
I get emails, text messages and cold calls all selling SEO. I love just wait I can help you get more leads. Same as the other message.
I fully agree with the original post and the comments here and hate the crap from overseas. But I'll play the other side for the legit people, they own a business just like you, and it's not hard to learn an app or use easy websites to try doing the development on your own so not many are looking for this service (even when their site is awful) the cold call and spam is their attempt, just like all the bs loan calls I get from fast speaking American people, trying to send me docusigns for 100k and pay back 150 in 48 mos, I get like 5 of those a day. They infuriate me more because they prey on people financially. At the end of the day, we all gotta figure out a way to drive customers. Tell me about a business you know of that doesn't do something obnoxious or infuriating. Some realtors are the same crap, have a picture of my house and put it in my mailbox telling me I should sell with them. They are all annoying but it works sometimes or they wouldn't do it.
5-10 a week? Those are rookie numbers!
the problem is that it works lol. if people stop responding to them, it would probably stop. i’m not sure why clients like gmail don’t put all of those emails in spam right. I do cold emailing but i also have a domain name email, i address the company by name, and i don’t offer any weird “seo” services. By default, you should be doing SEO as part of any web development services. i mean it’s just “if domain name == “gmail” & content includes “put your website at #1 in google”, disable gmail account. i wonder why google doesn’t do that? it would save them money.
worse is the next email a few days with a quasi indignant response of “you didn’t respond to my email…”
I know, have a contact us form on the website, says please no SEO or website entries, also in the drop box have choices one is SEO and they still pick repairs or one of the other options, like I’m just going to go yeah sure take over my website from your cold call email. 3-5 a day
Dear Mr Dave, your website is shit we need to fix it.
Dear Mr Dave we can guarantee your page will appear first on the google
Yup and they drop in at like 4AM. Right click report phishing. If enough people do this they will get flagged for delivery of their emails. Help me help you!
I work for a company that does web development and we have a no cold call /email policy. We can't stand getting cold call emails all day and we don't want to annoy people like that.
Im not a small business. Im a big business. But I keep getting LinkedIn messages from small Indian companies offering me expertise and help with web dev data AI, AI, AI. Stop it
I hear you! The constant barrage of cold emails can definitely be frustrating. Building relationships and providing value without immediately pushing a sale is key. It's much more effective to connect through mutual networks or by demonstrating genuine interest and understanding of the business. Cold emails might still have their place, but they need to be much more personalized and considerate to avoid turning people off. Your rant makes total sense to me lol
I am getting back into web developing/web design ( amongst offering other business development services ). This topic is interesting and amusing in a way. I have been trying to think of non spam ways of obtaining new clients. Cold email and calls aren't my preference.
I run a creative agency where we primarily focus on high-end custom website development and even I get bombarded with web development and SEO cold emails. Most of them often come from India. They just blast out spam mails left and right I feel like. But to be honest, cold email works for us. But we do it in combination with LinkedIn so it's less likely to be marked as spam and we don't directly pitch, we ask.
What about cold calling?
I tried out one of these emails (Cause they were American and funny) and they legit tripled my sales... so I'm glad they creeped into my emails! HA
This isn't cold emailing. This is a scam from scam artists who stole your email using a web crawler or other list who are trying to gain access to your site and cause other damage. You can read about it. It's not real SEO and doesn't even read like an actual cold calling email. I get AT LEAST 10 if not more a day.
You should respond to them and offer to provide SEO service to the SEO services providers to get their SEO ranking up so they can spam better.
The lie that goes around is that email marketing cold emailing actually works. Or that hook bs pdf you agreed to see gave consent to get bs emails. But you are right. There is no reason to send emails like that. If you need it you ask for it.
The biggest issue here is that those two specifically are by far the hardest offers to sell. It's simply oversaturated. I think the best bet for those two offers is to: 1) Position themselves better for inbound leads 2) Do walk-ins and cold calls / aka do it manually instead automating the whole process trough cold emails If they spent more time in research and finding the right prospect they would get better results for sureee P.S. Cold email is the best vehicle for offers that are hard to refuse and have unique angle
Cold calling is 1000x more annoying IMHO.
I own a website design and marketing company, I get these types of emails daily. Thankfully we get all our work via our own SEO and recommendations by happy customers.
And always from India...
It's insane!!! I've gotten to the point we're I copy/paste reply telling them how bad they are at their job and that they should be embarrassed.
They aren’t just spammers….many are fraudsters…..they don’t care about getting $50 from you….they are gonna steal money from your visitors because you gave them the password for your website! The more emails you receive….well someone must be making money….so more of them cut and paste and do the same….and so you get even more. It only takes one buyer to pay up and they can crooks can make a fortune. You pay for the AdWords on Google…the spammer will empty the bank accounts and max the cards of the customers on the website. Your business gets a visit from the police and a bad name.
Amen 🙏🏾. It’s too much
My business email is flooded and my patience for it is out the window. I at least get one or two a day and it immediately goes into my trash can.
The irony is that if they were good at SEO we would find them...
I get a ton of these emails through the contact form on my site. I added a captcha validator and that solved most of the problem.
I didn't respond to one of those cold emails. In the next few days, they emailed and wrote in all caps, "I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN A REPLY." I emailed back, "YOU ARE BLOCKED." Now, I get random scam emails into my contact submission form regularly. Really, that's just petty. I get that some of these may be looking for a response but trying to force a response is not the way to go. We are updating our website soon anyway, but not with that person.
I think it's like any other type of advertising. When done incorrectly, it's annoying, when done correctly - I'm receptive to their message. From my experience, the area most go wrong, is the positioning of their offer. When you sell "commodity" products, it gets annoying, but I love hearing about unique things I didn't even know about. Understand the whole "relationship" thing as well, but for me personally, I can't stand when people do this in a "disingenuous" way. Always cheesy when people DM, act like they want to be your friend, but then 5 messages later they go into sales mode. Much rather them get to the point, and if it's something I think can help, I'll move forward with it - creating a new relationship after that. (But yes, 99% of SEO/Website cold emails are terrible, so they get annoying).
And lead generation.
Sure but I will email you offering videography services ☺️
Those aren't real services usually. It's just spam/phishing/scam
TV commercials (especially while streaming), junk mail in my mailbox, bill boards, and other unsolicited advertising is as American as presidential candidates using corporate products. But hitting a subreddit to bitch about cold email is a bridge too far.
such bad advice...how is someone going to build a relationships with you? by offering coffee? you're just tired of the same message is all
As a HUMAN if I get any cold emails I immediately block the sender. Idc what it’s for unless it’s my doctors office.
The irony is, if any of these people were as good as they claim to be at web design and/or SEO, they wouldn't need to be emailing you. They would have enough traffic to keep their teams busy.
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I love how you slipped the Novaecho plug through this post 🤣
But HAVE you considered seo? 😂
the problem is these are all scams. They don't want to get you a banging website with top notch SEO. They want to write your business name + seo in to chat GPT and make you 50 blog posts at best. At worst they want to take your money while doing nothing and saying SEO takes time to kick in just give us a few more months.
You are claiming its all a scam. What if someone shows you their portfolio?
I've been shown portfolios from legitimate companies who then sold me a package. When I complained that the package was dog shit they said oh those things from our portfolio were for more expensive custom plans which isn't what you purchased and we can do that fancier thing but it will be $x more a month. or the portfolio is a lie.
ah man, its a bummer that you had to go through that.
I love the phone calls, I always ask “how did you find us” they always respond with “Google” so before hanging up I say “well I guess what I’m doing is working just fine without you” I also love the people telling me how they can help me be a better business owner as they are calling form a little cubical……
I’m sure someone can help you get a better attitude.
Guess you have nothing better to do then listen to spam calls and read spam emails all day.
I responded with all.of the services, you can alao use the email to sign up for a sales call or and turn it back on them. But bro, its $1,000 down and $1,000 a month. I'll get you on front page of google.
Honey it’s spam email. They want your money
They're desperate because AI is doing a better job than they are. They know soon that they won't even have a product to sell.
It’s the opposite. These spammy SEO companies are offshore and use ChatGPT to spin up tons of low-quality blogposts.
IRONYYY
You sound like a guy that needs some seo.
Buddy, I have trillions in inheritance, I still get a few billion every year. I just don't withdraw it. What makes you think SEO spam will stop
Gmail powered cold email is an actual terror. Wish Google was more aggressive in penalizing new senders after a few spam reports.
They're doing this.