Don't Make Me Do Your Job

A cold email landed in my inbox this morning. It ended with:

"If internal systems aren't something you're looking at right now, feel free to say so — I won't chase further."

Last month I got one offering me face masks from a factory in Shenzhen. Another pitched me backlinks. Another asked if I'd like to "explore synergies." One wanted fifteen minutes of my time to discuss something they couldn't quite explain.

All of them asked for a reply. None of them did any real work. They send the same email to ten thousand people. Then they shift the next step to you. Reply if you're interested. Reply if you're not. Reply to tell them to stop. Reply to confirm you're the right contact. Reply, reply, reply.

Sending a template to strangers and calling it marketing is how we end up with our inboxes full of other people's lazy work.

Marketing is figuring out who actually needs what you have. Earning a moment of attention by being useful before you ask for anything. Doing the hard work so the person on the other side doesn't have to.

Spraying a template at strangers isn't outreach. It's a tax on other people's time.

The good ones never ask me to opt out. They already know I'm the right person, because they did the homework. They've read something I wrote. They've noticed something specific. They've sent it because they genuinely believe it'll be useful to me.

The rest can keep their face masks.

I didn't ask for the email. My silence is the reply.

* * * * *

Five things that made this top of mind:

1. An email pitch arrived in French. I don't speak the language. They called me Daniel at the top and David at the bottom.
2. A factory in China offering KN95 masks in bulk. It's 2026. I don't know what to say.
3. "Just checking in to see if this got buried." It didn't get buried. I scanned it quickly and chose not to reply.
4. An email that called my newsletter a "podcast." I don't have a podcast. They wanted to sponsor an episode.
5. A pitch addressed to "Hi {{first_name}}." The merge tag didn't fire. They still asked for fifteen minutes.