Semi-Automated is Worse Than Automated

The full version of this article was first published at: Semi-Automated is Worse Than Automated


It’s Monday morning at 10:12am, and like most Mondays, having wrapped-up our leadership meetings, I’m back to check emails. There’s something about the state of my inbox this morning, however, that has me a bit riled-up. Dirty, almost. I’ll start with a few subject lines: The Other Day… This is Interesting Allbound + ____ = Success Are You a Revenue CEO? quick feedback… Follow-Up Time today? Considering your growth Tried to call Time to meet? Here’s a screenshot of what pretty much every one of these emails looks like…I’ve blocked the sender info to try and be a little nice. Folks, the practice of semi-automated, “personalized” emails from SDRs who have managed to hunt down email addresses with tools claiming to have “hacked” LinkedIn’s API while using some next generation, venture-backed “machine learning” tool to try and relate the email to my socially derived personality traits…has officially reached NUTSOVILLE. Remember the days of those professionally designed HTML emails of the past that at least admitted they were marketing to you? Sure, you may get a few here and there – but more often than not these days, you’re being “techniqued” with some canned thread written by a “growth hacker” who just read his or her third ebook this week while hopped-up on double-shot almond milk Stevia Americanos. Listen, being in MarTech myself, I appreciate the innovation and effort. I’m even a big supporter of the SDR “movement” being lead by companies like SalesLoft, Outreach.io, Close.io, and others. But refinement is…
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