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Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

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Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#11

Post by shitlord »

jrockway wrote: post #5
tebbers wrote: post #3

Sorry to say but Evan does not come across as particularly pleasant or likeable to anyone he corresponds with. Common courtesy would go a long way.

I think that it sounds harsh to say "I don't take meetings with no agenda", but is the right thing to do. Everyone wants your time, and it's the most valuable resource you possess, so being protective makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't reply to someone's email and accuse them of "low-effort sales" or whatever. I'd just say "thanks, not interested" and then be internally mad at the low effort. From the other side, I thi…

After reading the last comment on the task, he just seems oversensitive and hostile.

> I feel that your initial outreach was intentionally deceptive in a transparent and falsifiable way -- and for no reason. You could just as easily have said you were "interested" in Phabricator without being dishonest.

> It's important that I be able to trust people I do business with. It took you three words to violate my trust by lying to me.

It's okay to be annoyed with someone for using a standard email template. He takes it a step too far and accuses them of having malicious intentions when it's obviously not the case.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#13

Post by BillinghamJ »

jrockway wrote: post #5
tebbers wrote: post #3

Sorry to say but Evan does not come across as particularly pleasant or likeable to anyone he corresponds with. Common courtesy would go a long way.

I think that it sounds harsh to say "I don't take meetings with no agenda", but is the right thing to do. Everyone wants your time, and it's the most valuable resource you possess, so being protective makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't reply to someone's email and accuse them of "low-effort sales" or whatever. I'd just say "thanks, not interested" and then be internally mad at the low effort. From the other side, I thi…

I just mark these kinds of emails as spam and move on - no point in replying really

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#15

Post by yuubi »

dewey wrote: post #4

I was expecting something worse. Could the sales outreach be done better? Sure, but I've seen a lot worse and I feel like the initial email setting the tone with "This request is so vague and nonspecific..." was already more passive aggressive than it has to be and set the tone for the rest of the thread.

Interesting that you don't see the low-effort sales template message as the initial message that set the tone, but the reply to it.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#17

Post by dewey »

yuubi wrote: post #15
dewey wrote: post #4

I was expecting something worse. Could the sales outreach be done better? Sure, but I've seen a lot worse and I feel like the initial email setting the tone with "This request is so vague and nonspecific..." was already more passive aggressive than it has to be and set the tone for the rest of the thread.

Interesting that you don't see the low-effort sales template message as the initial message that set the tone, but the reply to it.

Sales people, just like recruiters have a job to do. I just recognise there's another person on the other end doing their job, so there's ways to tell them in a friendly way that you are not interested without being overly rude or smug about it.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#18

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

tebbers wrote: post #3

Sorry to say but Evan does not come across as particularly pleasant or likeable to anyone he corresponds with. Common courtesy would go a long way.

> Common courtesy would go a long way.

I don't believe this applies to salesmen, though. They're trained to exploit all holes related to human decency and courtesy. They expect a polite person will not reject an invitation (to a meeting they absolutely don't need and which serves only one party) and so on.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#19

Post by bjt2n3904 »

Interesting read. While the general consensus on the comments here so far are "why be so rude" -- I don't think this was rude at all.

I'd be similarly upset if I was treated this way by someone from marketing.

Edit: From a second read, I really don't see any of this as rude. You know how it's poor etiquette to start a chat message with "Hey, do you have a moment?", And it's much better to just write the question and wait for a response?

This is the email equivalent. "Request too vague, I don't want to meet. Please specify further, unless this is a sales pitch, in which case, preemptively not interested." It's not passive aggressive, it's just business.

If I had received, "You're right, this is a low effort sales pitch, and it works", I don't think I'd bother replying. That is an extremely passive aggressive response.

Re: Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

#20

Post by kelnos »

The only thing questionable I see here is that random sales employees seem to have access to customer information. It's not clear to me that the information they have access to is actually all that sensitive, though. Delivery rates and whether or not they've purchased a dedicated IP address? Eh, not sure that's a big deal.

Of course, we have no idea what other customer information this sales guy might have access to. And it's concerning that the information he had access to was incorrect, or he was somehow very badly misinterpreting it. Or, worse, he was confused and actually looking at another customer's dashboard, which, if true, would be pretty concerning. These things are perhaps worrisome, but it's not clear what was actually going on here.

I agree that the sales guy was more pushy than he should have been, seems like he was poorly-trained and not good at his job, and I too hate vague requests for agenda-less meetings, but this whole thing seems like an overreaction.

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