New M3AAWG publication: M3AAWG Position on Cold Email
The Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) is an industry group focused on keeping messaging ecosystems safe from threats like email spam, phishing, spoofing, and more. Among its members there are many large senders and receivers of email, including the largest mailbox providers like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Yahoo.
M3AAWG just released a "position statement" on the practice of cold email, which you can read here. They say, "Deceptive Cold Emailing — unsolicited messages that mimic legitimate one-to-one outreach to create a business relationship, a sale, a business opportunity, or other professional benefit — is an abusive practice that violates M3AAWG values."
I think at this point in my career it's safe to say that I'm not a fan of cold email. I get tons of it, I want none of it, and the tricks meant to imply a personal connection or make personalized references almost always fall flat or are often executed with errors. (The latest? I'm apparently part of a group of "decision-makers at urgent care organisations who have experience with laboratory informatics technology." What?!) Forget about my personal opinion, though, as it's not about whether or not it gives me the warm fuzzies.
It's that it causes painfully difficult, nigh-unsolvable deliverability challenges. If you're doing cold emails in bulk, that's indistinguishable from spam and mailbox providers stomp down on it hard. If you're following all the tips and tricks around keeping volume low and using multiple domains, those low volumes plus low numbers of complaints equal high complaint percentages, still tanking deliverability and driving spam folder placement.
I know it causes problems for lots of folks, because I get approached regularly by people sending cold emails and suffering from deliverability woes as a result. They come to me looking for help and advice, but I'm just not the guy to fix it for them, even if I somehow show up in the Google or LLM results for "how to improve cold email deliverability."
Email is tricky. How can you have a 1:1 engagement with another person without somebody first initiating an email to the other person? In a way, that first email is always a cold email. But it starts to conflict with the need to keep the inbox clear of spam, with a combination of signals being tricky to interpret at low volumes, and bad guys who try to exploit the fuzzy edges of determination engines to slip on through to the inbox.
But... that's a problem neither you nor I will be solving today, so I focus my efforts elsewhere.
The Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) is an industry group focused on keeping messaging ecosystems safe from threats like email spam, phishing, spoofing, and more. Among its members there are many large senders and receivers of email, including the largest mailbox providers like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Yahoo.
M3AAWG just released a "position statement" on the practice of cold email, which you can read here. They say, "Deceptive Cold Emailing — unsolicited messages that mimic legitimate one-to-one outreach to create a business relationship, a sale, a business opportunity, or other professional benefit — is an abusive practice that violates M3AAWG values."
I think at this point in my career it's safe to say that I'm not a fan of cold email. I get tons of it, I want none of it, and the tricks meant to imply a personal connection or make personalized references almost always fall flat or are often executed with errors. (The latest? I'm apparently part of a group of "decision-makers at urgent care organisations who have experience with laboratory informatics technology." What?!) Forget about my personal opinion, though, as it's not about whether or not it gives me the warm fuzzies.
I know it causes problems for lots of folks, because I get approached regularly by people sending cold emails and suffering from deliverability woes as a result. They come to me looking for help and advice, but I'm just not the guy to fix it for them, even if I somehow show up in the Google or LLM results for "how to improve cold email deliverability."
Email is tricky. How can you have a 1:1 engagement with another person without somebody first initiating an email to the other person? In a way, that first email is always a cold email. But it starts to conflict with the need to keep the inbox clear of spam, with a combination of signals being tricky to interpret at low volumes, and bad guys who try to exploit the fuzzy edges of determination engines to slip on through to the inbox.
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