Dear Spammers Sending Out Emails to SEOmoz Members (and members of other sites, for that matter),

You don’t impress me.

First of all, you're competing with lots of other spam companies, all of whom seem to be using the same “template” for their email as you do.

Secondly, I don’t care at all that you’re an ISO 9001:2000 certified company. I don’t even know what that means. Do you see any of your competitors in more mature markets brag about their ISO-mumbo-jumbo? No? That is because we don’t care. Nor do I care that you’ve been in business for 8 years, that you have 180 people employed at your center, or that your team can help me with ASP, ASP.net, C# or .NET. I don’t even care that your team can help me with the technologies I actually do use, such as xHTML/CSS, JS, AJAX, PHP and such.

Stop sending me jargon. I hate jargon. I can’t even be bothered to read through your email when you send it, because it’s long and it’s boring. 95% of the stuff you present in them is not relevant for me. And your titles suck - how are you suppose to catch my attention with an email titled “General Information”?

You lost me at hello.

I’m sure that trying to get people to stop spamming by simply writing this would be a waste of time, so instead I’m going to provide you with some tips that hopefully will waste less of my time in the future and maybe even provide you with some business, because after all, I’m always looking for good partners which I can rely on. So how do you get my attention?

Get straight to the case. Forget the bullshit about everything your team can do on paper; rather, show me what you HAVE done. That’s always the first thing people look for when they're looking for a partner to hire in on a project. I don’t care if your started your company yesterday or 10 days ago. I don’t care if you have a network certificate. I most certainly don’t about your ISO-mumbo-jumbo. Show me what you’re good for. Show me your portfolio. Tell my why I should work with you and prove how good you are.

Let me give you guys a new template you can all use:

“Dear sir,

We’re a <insert-what-you-do-in-very-few-words>-company based in India. We love what we do and have plenty of experience. Just have a look at some of our latest work:

- somesite.com : Our team designed and developed this site. After the launch of the new site, organic traffic went up 30%.


- anothersite.com : After our designated team started one comprehensive link building campaign, this site had a 100% increase in organic traffic.

- lastsite.com : We built the back-end engine running this site. Consumers are happier than ever and the client invited us to their next Christmas party.

We are always looking for new partners to expand our network. We think we can benefit your company in some way. If you want to know more about how we help you or if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me!

Best Regards,
Some Guy
Some Company
www.indiacompany.com”

See how much simpler that was? And you get straight to the case. I don’t have to go to your website too find your portfolio. If you’re great at what you do, you should show it off! If you’re not, you should either improve or find another job.

So please, if you're going to send me emails I haven’t asked to get, at least get it right.

EDIT FROM RAND: This piece was previously focused on spammers from a specific geography, which I've edited. See my comments below.