Discourage use of Mailgun as a mail provider

The Subject and the content really lack actual content, and the points that I find ineffective are:

- Unclear/seemingly random subject; the goal I suppose is to evoke a response based on curiosity, but looking at my spam folder on gmail, I lump such a subject line in with emails like "what're you doing tonight?" "I'm lonely, can you save me?" (I'm cleaning up the titles a bit...) I read it as just fishing for some response and hoping that someone bites

- The email itself hints at a concern by citing a specific number, but then says "or more"; this strikes me as odd that they'd land on specific number but then add some open ended qualifier. To me, I read this as again a way to try to catch my attention and either misdirect me to the fact that the person hasn't really researched anything in my profile for us to talk about and instead just wants to get me on a call. It's "specifically vague", and I get the goal is to provoke a conversation, but I feel that this is very transparently a frustrating sales tactic, and another reason I would have just binned the email in the first place

- "See how Mailgun can help you succeed" to me this says that they have no specific strategy in mind and just want to propose some new offers/features. This in and of itself is fine, but like the author, I actually would just prefer they be upfront about this and mention what features they're interested in upselling. Maybe I do want one, but I don't want to learn about it from a meeting I can't prepare for.

- The "let's meet on Wednesday" part without offering up any of their available times is more of a personal pet peeve as I don't like going back and forth like that; if you want to meet with me, please just tell me when you're available and if it doesn't work __and__ I'm interested, I'll tell you.

The first email really does read just like a spam email in every way, and sure, it probably works.

The author's response is mostly fine in my opinion, though I must admit the last line reads more like someone's fantasy on what they wish they wrote to people, but for convenience I'll assume the author actually wrote that.

The next email from Mailgun though really surprises me if it's true:

> First, you're right, it is a low effort sales template. It does work.

I actually don't understand why they even include the "It does work" part or why they admit it's a low effort template. I feel like the sales person maybe thought they were building rapport and that a small 'mea culpa' would be a common ground to discuss, but personally I find this a very wrong read of the author's initial response, and a fairly low effort attempt to get the conversation going.

The rest of the email and subsequent ones I'm not going to break down point by point, but I have the same problem I had with the first "specifically vague" points; I actually share the author's concern about why the employee would have this knowledge and access (I don't deal with email at all for my company like this, so I have no idea if such access for the mail providers is normal; I assume likely it is for troubleshooting purposes, but if that's the case, I'd expect that such concerns are explained more clearly and why it's an issue, and that there are better answers to the inevitable follow up questions.

Basically, I see a failed attempt at a Sales person that basically raised suspicion in the part of a customer. The author I think had an absolute right to be a bit angry that the sales person basically said "oh looks like we've been charging you for a service that you didn't actually get to use" and then completely ignore the issue. If it was another rouse to get a conversation, I think it's a really offensive way to do so personally, implying that the company was billing me for a service I wasn't getting and not acknowledging "Oh wait, that's really wrong of us as a company" or at least looking into this further.

"It's their job" only goes so far; for me, the Mailgun rep really created a huge amount of discomfort and distrust to the point that they basically said the customer was being charged for a service not being applied to their account, and the sales rep did not even seem to care.

I absolutely would have driven far further and I too would share the same distrust. I'm not sure I'd write such a call to action like the customer, but I definitely would know that I would be looking to talk to anyone else at Mailgun about the entire incident.

The situation got heated as did the author, and frankly I have trouble blaming them. I don't see the author's responses as hostile or abusive; I do see the author as suddenly very concerned while considering that this might just be a bad sales person creating concern/worry for no reason, which I would personally be pretty angry about.

Someone illegally robocalling my cell will earn my scorn immediately. As well as any idiot calling at 3AM in the region of my area code. When I'm called the very next day by a company I asked to put me on their do not call list, while I won't emotionally terrorize the fellow on the phone, it's worth pointing out in no uncertain terms that this is completely unacceptable, and exactly why. If someone scrapes my git logs for emails to give poorly targeted recruiter spam, I'm going to share my two cents about how exactly I feel about their half assed effort.

> he comes off a low EQ.

Low in empathy, maybe. Low in EQ? I disagree.

High EQ doesn't make you a slave to false smiles and empty pleasantries, nor require you to engage in networking with anybody with a pulse. Not all relationships are positive, cooperative, and worth building and reenforcing, nor necessairly worth attempting to salvage in such a direction. The author's initial responses are a bit cold and testing - correctly suspecting low effort sales full of faux relatability without much actual common ground - while not being so negative as to prevent the possibility of correction should that suspicion be proven wrong instead of validated.

Evan perhaps makes a minor mistake in not triaging, cutting off, and ghosting these sales pitches earlier - when it becomes clear it's not a relationship or conversation he'll value. This would likely be driven by curiosity, concern, a desire to give the benefit of the doubt, and/or empathy despite the cold demeanor - but that's not particularly a low EQ thing either.

TL;DR: Sith lord EQ techniques are still EQ techniques.

It comes down to internal controls. If the email in the OP is actually an approach from a compliance or customer management department, it's a clumsy attempt.

To me, it reads as a sales pitch. If so, my opinion remains unchanged - I don't think I'd be happy if sales people had access to the recipient domains of my outbound emails.

Edit: Re-reading the post, the Mailgun employee says in their reply:

> First, you're right, it is a low effort sales template. It does work.

That really does suggest that this was an attempt at an upsell from a sales person.