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The Cold Email

zachholman.com

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41–50 of 133 posts

Re: The Cold Email

#41

Post by cebert »

This is a great read, but I wonder how effective cold messages are in the AI era. I now receive customized cold emails and LinkedIn messages. There are several tools like Clay that make AI messaging effortless. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine if message are AI-generated or if a human actually took the time to write them and care.

I see in-person networking becoming increasingly valuable. Unfortunately, for me, I live in the Detroit Metro area. We just don’t have the tech community that other areas like the Bay do, and despite several people‘s best efforts. We don’t have the best networking opportunities and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Re: The Cold Email

#42

Post by JSR_FDED »

areoform wrote: post #8

I read a dozen inbound cold emails every day. I used to love it. I don't anymore, because every other single email uses The Sentence. Or, The Paragraph. Whatever model these people use, it always always puts in The Sentence (I don't want to disclose it publicly! I'm running an experiment. I'll write it up when it concludes. :) ). Or, worse, The Paragraph. Please use models to research people and learn about them. But…

[dead]

Re: The Cold Email

#43

Post by rationalist »

rtpg wrote: post #27
areoform wrote: post #8

I read a dozen inbound cold emails every day. I used to love it. I don't anymore, because every other single email uses The Sentence. Or, The Paragraph. Whatever model these people use, it always always puts in The Sentence (I don't want to disclose it publicly! I'm running an experiment. I'll write it up when it concludes. :) ). Or, worse, The Paragraph. Please use models to research people and learn about them. But…

Hey areoform, I just read your post on hacker news about people using The Sentence, and couldn't agree more!

Hmm...

Re: The Cold Email

#44

Post by rationalist »

I once called the phone number on a website for an obscure local event, and it happened to be a local business magnate's personal cell phone number, and he helped me out with my request, so that was awesome.

Re: The Cold Email

#45

Post by 1718627440 »

ralfhn wrote: post #31
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You joined a special interest technical group which is specifically for professional networking and informal meetups and you sent a general email to the entire group which led to a hiring process. Nothing about that is “cold calling” or “cold email”. Likewise, the posted article describes a Tweet from someone who announced they were hiring specific skilled professionals for an open position, and the author privately…

Sending an unsolicited email to a person or a group is a cold email. There's nothing to bikeshed here.

I think the point is, that sending a join message to an open mail list, is not unsolicited.

Re: The Cold Email

#46

Post by vanagandr »

Nice to see Zach still posting.

I have had reasonable success with cold emails. My favorite genre is every so often I email a musician or author whose works I tremendously enjoyed asking for a signed copy, an opinion, or simply to say thank you for having a profound influence on me. Some are very well known. But almost all reply with enthusiasm.

Re: The Cold Email

#47

Post by id00 »

When something like this was happening to me, I heard people were saying "Oh, he is just lucky". It kinda made me a bit mad because of how much work I've put in a particular thing behind the scenes and in general how unlucky I was with many other things.

Then I stumbled upon the concept of "luck surface area" [1] and it's kinda clicked with me. Yes, luck is a factor, but you definitely can increase your chances. Cold emails from the post is one of such instruments.

[1] https://umbrex.com/resources/tools-for-thinking/what-is-luck...

Re: The Cold Email

#48

Post by vouaobrasil »

sudo_cowsay wrote: post #9

Is human-like cold emails (with stuff like :D) better or worse than professionally written formal emails? Im a student and would like some tips. I know it depends on the situation but what would you rather see? And based on your experience, what would you respond to more?

The most important thing is that you are really, truly engaged in trying to connect with the person. I've had great success with cold emails, but only because I write to people that I seriously want to get to know, even beyond just quick networking.

Re: The Cold Email

#49

Post by danieldc »

tombert wrote: post #29

Something I learned awhile ago is that most people that I consider "celebrities" really aren't that famous, and as such are generally pretty happy to respond to emails. In ~2014 I sent an email to Joe Armstrong (one of the creators of Erlang) asking some questions about concurrency because I still didn't fully understand why Erlang was supposed to be better for it. I expected him to just point me to an FAQ or simply…

Will it b possible to share the problem and the insight he provided?

Re: The Cold Email

#50

Post by zahrevsky »

gerdesj wrote: post #30

I'm probably somewhat older than most here. What OP is describing is what used to be normal and should still be! In the past it was normal to write a CV (resume) and a covering letter that was mildly tailored to each target firm, either in response to a job advert or on spec. I'm not talking quill pens here - you'd do a mail merge and buy a really large book of stamps. Linked In is possibly the worst thing that ever…

The craziest part is that this tailored approach is now a red flag, because HR just assumes your covering letter is LLM-generated.

“Damn kids, they're all alike” vibes.

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