Bugging 24,990 people to make 10 sales

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I’ve shared my disdain for cold email many times on here, and a recent video that I watched help to prove my point. Similar to how I follow both sides of political contests online, I also keep an eye on cold emailers spammers to see what their latest techniques are.

I was watching a video a few days ago where the creator was sharing some “great tips to create hundreds of fake email accounts to send out cold email“, and he included a spreadsheet on how many accounts you’d need to create. Here’s a snippet from the spreadsheet he shared.

The red arrows are mine. By his estimation, you’ll need to send out 25,000 spam emails every month in order to gain 10 new clients. To keep the business running for a year, 300,000 people would have to deal with their spam.

This shows the problem perfectly. He had literally nothing to say about those 25,000 people, other than how best to try to cheat the system and get emails into their inboxes. To him, that’s just the cost of doing business, but he’s putting the cost on the wrong people.

There is certainly a “cost of doing business” for everyone, but I wouldn’t dream of putting that burden on unsuspecting people that didn’t ask to be part of my sales process.

Thanks to new tools coming out and AI to help, spamming is going to continue to get easier but that never makes it acceptable.

Treat customer data with respect

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One of the biggest assets that many companies have is data on their customers. By collecting, storing, and using piles of data on their customers, they can often turn that into additional profit.

In fact, at this point, it’s almost easier to collect too much data and so those companies that work hard to limit it deserve some respect. In her book “Data Reimagined“, author Jodi Daniels simply said this:

“Happily, the very fact of its difficulty makes treating customers’ data with respect a powerful demonstration of your company’s commitment to them.“

There are a lot of things that companies can do to help their customers, often in ways that reduce their revenue. For example, we don’t host websites for our clients. We’d love to, as it’s be another small revenue stream, but it’s not in their best interest for us to do that.

As with Jodi’s example above, it makes things a little more difficult for us to not host their site directly, but that also helps to showcase our commitment to their success. Data is the same way; you can choose to vacuum up every bit of data you can, but taking time to treat data respectfully is better in the long run and I greatly appreciate companies that take the effort to treat my data with care.

Learning conversations

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There are many types of conversations that we can have with others, but one of my favorites is a “learning conversation”, as explained by Charles Duhigg in “Supercommunicators“:

Our goal, for the most meaningful discussions, should be to have a “learning conversation.” Specifically, we want to learn how the people around us see the world and help them understand our perspectives in turn.

Even if it’s someone that you disagree with (or especially if it’s someone that you disagree with), understanding their point of view can be very powerful. It reminds of the idea of the idea of a “steel man” argument, where you understand the opposing argument so well that you’re able to argue on behalf of it. Related is Charlie Munger’s idea of not having an opinion on something he doesn’t understand, where he said:

I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.

In most cases you won’t change your mind (though you should be open to it), but rather it’ll help strengthen your own belief. If nothing else, understanding why someone believes they way that they do (such as the concept of the “Waters of the United States”) will lead to better conversations and better understanding for everyone.

Loss leaders are aimed at dumb customers

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Many stores offer special deals on “loss leaders” — products that are sold very cheap, often at a loss, in order to entice customers into the store to buy other things that are substantially marked up in price.

One store that doesn’t do this is Costco. Generally speaking, they try to simply keep low margins on everything that they sell; nothing at a loss, but nothing with a huge margin either.

The “Acquired” podcast did a great episode on Costco recently, and the hosts explained loss leaders this way:

Do you sell loss leaders in the store, loss leaders being when you mark down items below your cost in order to attract people into the store with sales? If you’re those other retailers, yeah, of course, this is a time-honored tactic and retailing. Of course you’re going to use this.

The flip side of doing loss leaders is that you have to make up for it somewhere. You got to markup other goods in the store to fat margins to make it worth doing the loss leader for you. Basically, it means you’re treating your customers like they’re stupid.

That’s exactly my read on this, too. I feel like Acquired number one tenet: treat the audience like they’re smart. If you’re going to ever do loss leaders, you’re violating that tenet and saying like, we’re going to get one over on our customers.

If a store has a widely-advertised loss leader to bring you, you need to question their prices on other products.

That said, Costco actually does have one loss leader — the hot dogs they sell. They’ve famously been $1.50 (with a drink) since Costco opened 42 years ago. In fact, when then-CEO Jim Sinegal stepped down, some questioned if the price of the hot dog would go up. Jim’s famous response? “If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.”

In Costco’s case, the hot dog isn’t hurting them a bit. They might be losing a few dollars with each one that they sell, but how much did you spend in total the last time you shopped there? 🙂

I like the way the Acquired guys ended their quote, essentially giving two options: treat your audience like they’re smart, or try to get one over on them.

It seems like an easy decision to make.

“What is spam?”, 10 years later

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I share a lot from Seth Godin on this blog and in emails to various people, but there is one of his posts that I share far more than others called “What is spam?“

He published it 10 years ago today, and I fear that things have gotten far worse over this last decade.

The entire post is amazing, and quite short, so I encourage you to give it a read. For me, the first two paragraphs are the ones that I promote the most.

First, he defines spam:

Spam is commercial, unsolicited, unanticipated, irrelevant messaging, sent in bulk. It’s the email you didn’t ask to get, the junk in the comments that’s selfish and trying to sell something, the robocall on your cell phone from a company pretending to be Google Maps.

Next, he explains why it’s such a problem:

Some spammers will tell you that all you need to do is opt out. But of course, the very problem with spam is that it requires action on the part of the recipient, action that can’t possibly scale (how many times a day should we have to opt out, communicating with businesses we never asked to hear from in the first place?) People are smart enough to see that once spam becomes professionally and socially acceptable, all open systems fall apart.

It’s the first sentence of that second paragraph that tells the story: “all you need to do is opt out”. Here are a few of those “all you need to do” messages at the bottom of spam emails that I received yesterday:

  • “Should you wish to be removed from these emails giving you current ocean costs, just let me know and I will be happy to remove you moving forward”
  • “If there is no longer an interest please let me know.”
  • “If you reply ‘Not Interested’, we will remove you from our lists.”
  • “If no interest, let us know so we don’t follow up further.”

I’d say roughly 1/3 include a message like that, 1/3 include a normal “unsubscribe” link (which may or may not work), and the other 1/3 just send the message with no instructions on how to opt out. In all cases, I just mark as spam and move on.

Of course, this is just email that we’re talking about but the problem is growing when it comes to text messages, phone calls, LinkedIn messages, and other forms of communication as well. Unsolicited messages in any of those areas is never acceptable.

The growing problem is not just the “evil spammers” of the world (though they’re problematic as well), but otherwise mostly legit marketing companies that think this kind of behavior is acceptable. It’s not.

I’ll end with the same statement that Seth put at the bottom of his post 10 years ago:

Trust, as we know, is the essence of connection and transaction, and spam is the radioactive antitrust device.

If you purchase from cold outreach, you’re condoning their behavior

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As with most of you, I get hit with cold outreach all the time. Cold emails, phone calls, LinkedIn connections, people at our door, etc. While they may occasionally have decent offers, my rule on cold outreach has become very simple — no.

Last week I had someone stop by our house to sell us a new roof. It was admittedly bad timing (I was on a call, and our dog was going nuts), but it helped me come up with a nice phrase to quickly get him to go away: “We don’t purchase from companies that do business this way.“

If you need to interrupt my day to insert your sales pitch, there is a 0% chance I’ll purchase from you. It’s kind of nice to have that set rule, as it saves me a bit of time because I don’t need to evaluate the offer at all. It’s just “no”.

Ads

Proper advertising is a bit different, as it’s part of the deal. If I’m watching live TV, I know there will be commercials and I have no problem with it. I know which podcasts insert ads, and I’m ok with the decision to continue to listen to them. If I perform a search on Google, I know that there will be (ever more…) ads on the top. I’ve accepted that deal and companies that play into those ecosystems are fine by me.

The random interruptions are the deal-breaker and most everyone hates them. The problem is, they can work, and they don’t have to work very often to make it worth their time. If a guy can knock on 200 doors and sell one new roof, it was worth his time (and wasting the time of 199 others is of no concern to them).

If you purchase anything that came via cold outreach, you’re condoning that behavior and telling them it’s ok to annoy as many people as they want as long as it leads to a sale eventually. Just say no.

It’s time to confirm your held time

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This was a new one for me, coming from a company that I trust(ed). I received the email below, and I was kind of surprised. I didn’t remember setting another appointment with them, but perhaps I had forgotten about it.

I hadn’t forgotten, but their goal seems to be tricking people into thinking they had.

I hadn’t scheduled that appointment, and I couldn’t go on that day and time anyhow.

I’ve seen that kind of thing out of scammers before, but this is an otherwise legit company. It’s sad when they go to tactics like this. If they had just sent an email saying “Hey, it’s about time to get another eye exam, click here to schedule one” it would have gone over a lot better.

I suspect that this technique is more effective than my suggestion, but being effective doesn’t mean it’s acceptable and I’m disappointed that they feel they have to go this route.

Looping for understanding

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Charles Duhigg’s book “Supercommunicators” had a ton of great insights in it, and I encourage you to pick up a copy. I have a handful of thoughts that I’ll be sharing over the coming weeks, but this was one of the most interesting to me.

So much of communication revolves around simply understanding what the other person is trying to say. Whether you agree with them or not, understanding their point of view is crucial. Duhigg unpacks the various types of discussions that two people might have with one another, but if you don’t understand their point of view, the conversation is in big trouble. His proposed solution is that you simply “loop for understanding”. In his words:

There’s a technique for this—looping for understanding. Here’s how it works: Ask questions, to make sure you understand what someone has said. Repeat back, in your own words, what you heard. Ask if you got it right. Continue until everyone agrees we understand.

Later, he unpacks it a bit further:

It’s a fairly simple technique—prove you are listening by asking the speaker questions, reflecting back what you just heard, and then seeking confirmation you understand—but studies show it is the single most effective technique for proving to someone that we want to hear them. It’s a formula sometimes called looping for understanding. The goal is not to repeat what someone has said verbatim, but rather to distill the other person’s thoughts in your own words, prove you are working hard to understand and see their perspective—and then repeat the process, again and again, until everyone is satisfied.

This leads me to two thoughts.

  1. “Not to repeat what someone has said verbatim” is a great practice in other areas too, such as taking notes. Certainly we want to have an accurate record of what was said (I share a lot of precise quotes on here), but being able to put their words into your own words helps to make sure you really understand what they’re trying to say.
  2. It almost goes to the degree of being a steel man — being able to fight for their point of view, even if you disagree with it.

It’s easy to jump in with your thoughts as soon as the other person has paused, but taking a moment to loop for understanding will help the conversation be much more productive for everyone.

The four ways Google is failing

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The list of ways where Google is falling short continues to grow, and none of them have to do with AI. Well, maybe some do, but none that I’m talking about today.

As I recently shared, Google’s approach over the last few years is very clearly aimed at shareholders instead of users, and it’s going to hurt both of them as time goes on.

The graveyard

The first, and likely most justifiable, is the Google graveyard. They’ve killed off hundreds of products over the years, and will continue to do so. Some made sense (did you use “Jamboard” very much?), some were frustrating (such as losing Google Stadia), and some just make no sense (why get rid of Google Domains?).

Google Reader

The telling one for me, as I’ve shared before, was Google Reader years ago. I don’t mind that they shut down the product, but the way they did it made the internet far less useful for millions of users.

Google Now

I just shared this one a few weeks ago, but this is probably the most glaring. They took a piece of tech that was super useful but hard to monetize (“Google Now”) and essentially replaced it with ads (“Google Discover”).

Google Analytics

The final one that points toward Google’s future is their treatment of Google Analytics. Google Analytics has been a free, powerful tool that website owners have used since 2005 to monitor the traffic on their websites. The problem is that the new version (“Google Analytics 4”, or “GA4”) is far too complex and powerful for most businesses. It’s fantastic for Fortune 500 businesses, but it’s awful for the tens of millions of small businesses that have relied on it.

Rather than letting companies choose to stay on the less powerful but easier to use version, everyone has been forced onto GA4.

Worse, your old data can’t convert to GA4, so everything you’ve tracked since 2005 isn’t in the new system.

Worse yet, Google is deleting all of that old data in just a few months, and they offer no good solution for companies to make a copy of it other than essentially manually creating hundreds of PDF copies of your data. It’s such a mess. We’ve put together a plan to help GreenMellen clients keep some of that data, but it’s tricky for everyone.

I’ve been confused about Google’s plan for this for a while now. Why not keep the old version running for those that prefer it? I finally figured out the obvious answer — money.

The tens of millions of smaller companies that use Google Analytics get it for free. With this move to GA4, Google is simply trying to push out the freeloaders and just keep more of the large companies that pay for things like Analytics 360.

Follow the money

I know that Google is a company that needs to make a profit, but as time goes by it seems that profit is now their sole motivation.

  • Google Reader was a great trick to get people off of RSS feeds and into their algorithms.
  • Google Discover is 1% as helpful as Google Now, but is wildly more profitable for Google.
  • Google got the majority of the internet to use Google Analytics, and now they’re thinking that was a mistake.

I’m not entirely leaving Google yet, as it’s difficult to do, but the small amount of trust that I had in them is fading very quickly.

Swipe right on Android to see why Google is heading the wrong way

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Google is no longer the darling that it once was. While it’s still clearly a huge, powerful and (generally) helpful company, it’s trending the wrong way.

Business Insider compares Google to lumbering giants like IBM, and last year I shared how Google’s treatment of RSS ended up being horrible for the health of the internet at large.

With Google becoming more sensitive to revenue and keeping shareholders happy, it’s making all of their services worse. We all all know how cluttered search results are becoming with ads, but there’s a relatively small thing on Android phones that showcases it even better — the slow death of “Google Now”.

Google Now?

For those not familiar with Google Now, it was a feature on Android phones (and iPhones for a while too) that was absolutely brilliant. You could swipe right on your home screen and Google would tell you tons of relevant information — info about your upcoming flights, weather, packages being shipped to you, concerts coming to your area that you might like, sports scores, and tons of other useful info. It was smart, personal, and very helpful.

Here’s an example of some of those cards from an article on Search Engine Journal back in 2012:

Or going further, here is MKBHD talking about Google Now in a video from 2013:

It was great!

Where is it?

The problem is that Google has slowly fazed it out in favor of “Google Discover”. When I swipe right on my Pixel home screen today, I get a bunch of algorithm-generated news articles to read. They’re somewhat relevant, but nothing even close to the value that Google Now brought, and for one big reason — money.

Google has the “Discover” area full of ads and click-bait, which pays the bills much better than my flight info and package delivery. Here is a shot of my “Discover” page at the time of this writing:

It’s not awful; I have an Android phone, I sometimes play city-builder games, and I have interest in learning more about Apple’s Vision Pro. However, you can quickly see how useless that screen is compared to what Google Now used to offer, but you can also see how Google is trying to make money from this instead of just offering me a great tool.

Google is continuing to head the wrong way. Their AI has had major issues lately, their search results continue to get worse, and you can’t trust that any product of theirs will exist tomorrow (here are 293 products that they’ve killed over the years).

I still have my Pixel, I still use Gmail, and life without Google Calendar would be chaotic. However, I’m trying to slowly de-Google myself as time goes on, as I don’t want to get caught having to frantically move to a new service if they kill something that I rely on.

Google still has a lot going for them, but their push of “cash over value” is becoming more clear every day, making them less important and easier to leave.