Top Ten Worst Email Inbound Lines

Tenacity is a good thing…to a point.

Tenacity is a good thing — we don’t receive because we don’t ask, so being a squeaky wheel is a good thing…to a point. “Squeaky” soon turns into “Annoying” which quickly turns into “Desperation” (and brings much hilarity in the process).

How many ways can one attempt to email someone to invest in their new round, sign up for their new service, demo their new product, etcetera etcetera etcetera? Well turns out there are quite a bit of creative ways, and I’ve endeavored below to list but a few of my favorite ACTUAL examples culled (lovingly) from my inbox literally just over the last week. I had to cut it off there…

People somehow continue to believe that deploying one of the many email selling tropes onto a “primed” list of potential customers will lead to success. Well, note to the world: chances are around roughly, umm, ZERO that someone you NEVER met but chose to blindly email will not respond to your selling proposition. Further, this .0001% chance decreases exponentially with every subsequent followup email.

And after being made aware of this truth, I can subtly hear this being asked somewhere in the distance:

“So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”

TOP 10 WORST LINES FROM BLIND INBOUND EMAILS:

1. “I’m just following up on my earlier emails below to see how you want to proceed.” (yes, there were indeed numerous emails, did not my absolute silence inform you of my intention to proceed?)
2. Every email that starts with the wrong name. I was just called “Lhoucine” the other day.
3. “Following up on the below. Checking in one last time.” (translated “will email you yet again next week”)
4. “I believe we have corresponded in the past.” (uh, no chance)
5. “I hope all is well with you.” (ah, the soothing “all is well” line, where can I sign?)
6. “Wanted to check in and see if you had any questions.” (yes, one question thank you, why are you still emailing me?)
7. “As promised…” (huh?)
8. “Coming back as I’m sure you must have missed my earlier emails” (the old “email got lost” headline)
9. “What does your schedule look like next week?” (many creative ways I could answer that…)
10. “Hello.” (that was the entire email)
11. “The deadline has now passed and you have missed it.” (completely aware of this fact)

(Sorry, I couldn’t stop at 10 so this list goes to 11. It’s one louder.)

Would love to hear other email lines so feel free to share. Hopefully I have made a small dent in the everyone’s collective email spam with my bitterly sarcastic retorts to the above tantalizing emails from my inbox.

If you have unfortunately wrote one of these above lines, I am sorry but it was just too good to not share…. :)