What I Learned from Spamming Indie Hackers (And an Apology)

I'm in the process of trying to revitalise Content Gurus (https://contentgurus.co.uk) and thought why not try cold emailing the Indie Hackers community to see if I could get a few members on board.

It was a mistake.

So first, let's look at the stats:

Recipients: 152
Opens: 31 (20.39%)
Replies: 8 (5.26%)

Positive Replies: 0 (0.00%)
Negative Replies: 6 (75.00%)
Not Interest Replies: 2 (25.00%)

I knew that cold emails need to be personal and personalised so ensured I dropped the name of the recipient and their company into the email. That's personal right?

Nope!

A reply from @BenLatz stood out and really hit the nail on the head when it comes to cold emails. To paraphrase, he essentially recommended, not just being personal, but also providing value and starting a conversation before going in for the sale.

I'd like to apologise for essentially spamming the Indie Hackers community but I have learned from it and by sharing my experience I hope that others in the community can learn that quickly building a list of emails and bulk sending them an email in the hope that something sticks somewhere is not the right approach for cold emailing.

And finally, thanks to anyone who took the time to reply to the cold emails and it'll hope with our strategy going forward.