Although Mattermark provides valuable data that can be used by venture capitalists and salespeople for prospecting, their own sales prospecting emails miss their target.
I received this redundant sequence of emails from them a few weeks ago. It immediately caught my eye because the emails were supposedly from their CEO, Danielle Morrill.
Let’s take a look at their first email below:
From the start, the sender comes off as too self-focused when she introduces herself and her company. Instead of just talking about Mattermark with a boring introduction, Danielle should have used a more tantalizing hook to immediately catch my attention. Sharing an interesting insight or offering value would have been one option, but she could have also poked at a pain point or tried to cajole me by creating a sense of fear of loss or competition.
For example: “We helped {!Competitor} find 125 qualified leads last month…”
If she had started with how many leads she had helped my competitor find, I’d be much more likely to notice this email. Better yet, focus on something even more tangible she helped my competitor do, like how many deals were closed, or how much additional revenue was added from those leads.
While she might not have a case study like that to use in her cold email, another example of social proof could have also worked. Likewise, sharing an actionable insight or valuable tip with me would have created a sense of trust and reciprocity between us.
But that’s not what happened. And I’m still not convinced that this email actually came from Mattermark’s CEO, Danielle, since she’s also a writer, and probably could have written better emails.
The tactic of sending mass sales prospecting emails “from the CEO” was something that former Zenefits CEO, Parker Conrad, used to do. While this approach might have worked for Zenefits back in the day, I don’t think it’s as effective or credible anymore. In fact, it now creates the immediate knee-jerk reaction that you’re being deceived, which is a terrible way to start a sales conversation.
A few days later, I got another email from “Danielle”.
This one is even more weak and boring compared to her first email. If I was reading this email, and had no idea what Mattermark was, I would think to myself:
“What does a partnership really mean here? This sounds like BS to me. I’m not sure what part of lead qualification/generation Mattermark could help me with…if they had some stats or case studies, I would have more clarity and possibly trust them more…”
And then I got another follow-up email, (the third in this sequence) that was just as redundant and generic as the previous email, with no clear new value add. It was only designed to obnoxiously bump itself up to the top of my inbox.
Honestly, Mattermark’s emails aren’t the worst I’ve seen. They’re not offensive or stuffed with giant paragraphs or bulleted lists; just super weak and boring, without much substance or value. If they had only sent me one lame email, I might not have decided to put them on the Hall of Shame, but the redundancy of their sequence, and the fact that they’re in the lead generation space, themselves, made this one hard to resist.
What a better sales prospecting tactic would have been:
Let’s address the elephant in the room: It’s highly unlikely that these emails were personally sent one at a time by Danielle herself.
What’s the point of lying about this? I realize that theoretically “getting an email from the CEO” could make the recipient feel more special, and help them take the sender more seriously than a junior sales rep. But no one expects the CEO of a 48 person company to be doing sales prospecting either, though. In fact, having the CEO “send” untargeted sales prospecting emails can actually undermine the reputation and image of that company.
Likewise, what would have happened if I had responded? Would Danielle have taken a sales call with me, and everyone else this email campaign went out to? Almost certainly not.
So how would that hand-off between “Danielle” and the salesperson have worked if I had responded? If I had actually believed it really was her sending me a personal email, I would feel entitled to speak with her after I responded, which would lead me to feeling either disappointed or misled.
Sending mass sales emails “from the CEO” starts your relationship with your prospective customers on the wrong foot, creating a sense of distrust before they even respond to you (which I wasn’t compelled to do).
So please, fix the sender issue first, and then the introduction sentences in each of the emails, along with everything else I already mentioned above. Then I might be compelled to respond.
Have bad cold emails in your inbox? Send them to us!
Help us fight the thoughtless spammers, one crappy cold email at a time by sending us the worst cold emails you’ve ever received.
We’ll put them up anonymously on the “Hall of Shame,” and shoot you an email when they go live.
Please send all submissions to “[email protected].”
(And feel free to suggest what you want to nominate the “bad cold email for!”)
