I got a cold email from a guy named Adam Rosen. He runs an email outreach company. His whole business is cold email.

He emailed me four times. Same generic pitch every time, with a few words swapped out between versions. He didn’t even Google me. We have thousands of articles online, hundreds of conference talks, and he couldn’t be bothered to write one sentence that shows he knows who he’s emailing.

His final follow-up? “I emailed you a few times… Where shall we go from here?”

I’ll tell you where. Nowhere.

He sent the same template four times and thought I wouldn’t notice

The only differences between his emails were swapping “booking meetings” with “securing calls” and “I’ll unsubscribe you” with “I’ll take you off the list.” That’s not follow-up. That’s spam with a different hat on.

And then there’s the puppy donation guilt trip at the bottom. “Whether you are interested or not, we will make a donation of 5 bowls of food to puppies in dog shelters.” What does that have to do with cold email services? Nothing. It’s a manipulation tactic to make you feel bad for not responding.

Before you reach out to anyone, spend 5 minutes looking up what they do.

If they’re this bad at their own cold email, why would you let them do yours?

This is a company that sells cold email as a service. Cold email is literally their product. And their own cold email is generic, impersonal, mass-blasted garbage.

If you claim to be an expert, you’d better be able to back it up. Show me one personalized sentence. Show me you know what BlitzMetrics does. Show me anything that proves you didn’t just scrape my email off a list and blast the same pitch to ten thousand other people.

Even if they paid us, we would not permit them to send emails on our behalf. We’ve spent years building our reputation. One lazy email campaign can destroy sender reputation, land you in spam folders, and burn bridges with the exact people you want to reach.

I get a couple dozen of these messages each day across email, LinkedIn, Instagram, and iMessage. Cold email bros and lead gen dudes are in the same category as phishing scammers. And they are only getting more clever with AI personalization. Most of you are guilty of doing this, but don’t realize it. You’re unknowingly generating AI slop because you aren’t using high trust, third party ingredients.

Here’s what would have actually gotten a response

If Adam had spent 5 minutes on our site, he could have written something like this:

“Hey Dennis, I saw your article on why cold calling doesn’t work and your LIGHTHOUSE strategy for inbound leads. I actually agree with most of it. But I’ve found that targeted, personalized cold email still works when done right. Here’s an example of a campaign we ran for a specific company that got a 40% reply rate. Would love to hear your take.”

I would have responded to that. Not because of the pitch, but because it shows he actually knows who he’s talking to. Great marketing starts with love, interests so aligned that we can’t help but respond.

Whatever service you provide, make a step-by-step walkthrough of your process so potential clients understand what you do. When you do this, you attract great leads, you don’t have to keep re-explaining yourself, and you automatically disqualify folks who would otherwise waste your time.

Surgeons don’t leave the ER to knock on doors

I get hit up dozens of times per day by people I don’t know, who have no perceived authority, no proof that they’re any good, all peddling their lead gen services.

A surgeon doesn’t leave the emergency room to go canvassing the neighborhood for patients. Their time is too valuable. And they have more dignity than to beg to give a presentation on their services to anyone who has a pulse.

Most agencies come off like bloodthirsty mosquitos that are “just following up” to get 15 minutes on my calendar. Are you annoyed, too?

Many of you think there is no other way to get clients, except to bombard people on LinkedIn, blast out emails to lists you buy, and cold call like crazy. Sending one cold email is like expecting somebody to marry you after a single date. Blasting the same one four times is even worse.

Our firm has been 100% inbound leads since the start. Zero cold calling. Zero cold emails. Zero sales reps. Zero buying lists. People come to us because they’ve seen our work, read our content, or heard us speak. Like a hospital that patients willingly go to.

Build a LIGHTHOUSE, not a spam cannon

Modern marketing is not about outbound blasting, like artillery breaking down fortifications. It’s generating a beacon of light that draws people to you.

A LIGHTHOUSE is a client who loves you and is respected by others in the industry. When you elevate them and co-teach with them, not for “testimonials” but to actually be helpful, their audience comes to you.

Increasingly, your branding is done by your clients, not yourself. What your clients and community have to say about you matters far more than whatever you or your smart AI makes up. Then, the Dollar a Day strategy amplifies the true signal.

If you’re hitting a cold audience, you’re spamming. I don’t care how good you think your pickup line is. A cold audience is one where you didn’t get their prior permission to engage. You should always start from a warm list of people who have opted in.

Respect yourself, respect your time, and respect your clients by building a LIGHTHOUSE. Have awesome clients come to you, not you begging them. Clients who pay you well, treat you well, and don’t give you headaches.

This problem goes way beyond cold email

Adam isn’t a criminal. He’s just bad at the thing he sells. But the digital marketing world is full of people who take it much further.

There are fake PR agencies selling unauthorized Forbes placements for thousands of dollars, and their clients never find out the coverage gets zero traffic. There are people selling $15,000 AI-generated websites to roofers that I rebuilt in three and a half minutes using a free Wix chatbot. And there are agencies charging contractors $25,000 for SEO work that never gets done, then hiding behind vanity metrics when the phone stops ringing.

The pattern is always the same. They can’t demonstrate results in their own business, but they expect you to trust them with yours.

Want the full list of what not to do when cold emailing? I wrote 22 rules every cold emailer breaks, and Adam managed to violate most of them in a single thread.